Conference: Democracy’s Dragon’s Den

The Electoral Reform Society, in association with Lib Dem Voice, hosted a conference fringe asking party members to suggest big ideas to improve democracy in this country. Joe Otten reports back…

Ideas to revitalise democracy usually revolve around wearing baseball caps backwards to appeal to the ‘youth’ – that shallow monolithic mass of humanity that doesn’t, apparently, have the same diversity of values and beliefs of the rest of us.

I submitted a dull-but-worthy suggestion to the Den about improving the standard of public debate on scientific issues by publishing scientific advice to ministers. Obviously this wasn’t going to go far. But it gives me a standard against which I can impartially judge the more colourful options preferred by the voting public.

Pitch 1, Adam: The necessity of federalism in the UK.

Federalism in the UK has a big problem: England. As it turns out that rivalry between Glasgow and Edinburgh stems, allegedly, from these cities being in different countries a millennium ago. So we could provoke rivalry, discord and conflict within England by going back to the boundaries of some old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms or other. (I think this was the idea, the 2 minutes were up before he actually got to the point).

Obviously, this is a plot between the Scots and the French who want to crush England and restore the Jacobites or something. The panel voted 0 out of 4 to this one, which is overgenerous.

Pitch 2, Lisa: To turn elections into an X factor type program.

Because people like that sort of thing. Each party would pick a candidate, and they would go through training mentoring and so on, and get voted out along the way. And hopefully the viewers would come away with a huge sense of how democracy works and how utterly non-trivial it is.

The pitch was slightly marred by Lisa’s admission that she hasn’t quite thought it through. I found this very difficult to disbelieve. Clearly it is important to consider, as the panellists observed, how entertaining and good-looking our political candidates are. 0/4.

Pitch 3, James: The people’s veto.

A big enough petition, say 1,000,000 in, say, 2 months after a decision should have the power to stop a piece of parliamentary legislation and put it to a referendum.

This raises basic questions of trust between politicians and the public: opponents of the measure don’t trust the people, and supporters, perhaps trust the politicians. But of course at the end of the what matters, normatively, is who the public trust, not who the politicians trust. (What matters, practically, is, of course, the opposite). Only public consent makes political power legitimate. The panel seemed largely sympathetic but all seemed to have reasons why they didn’t like it. 0.5/3 + 1 don’t know.

So, an interesting format. It would be improved by following the example of television news by having serious items at the beginning, and then a jokey one at the end, rather than the other way round. None of the ideas were as good or as dull as mine, but they were chosen by the fickle electorate, and
that has to count for something.

* Joe Otten is a Lib Dem member in Sheffield.

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