The various apparent faults of our democracy became the dominant topic in a post-election debate held by a forum aiming to make democracy more accessible.
Held in the surprising venue of a Mayfair club given this aim – although one that let everyone in, jacket and tie or no! – the GlobalNet21 discussion centred around what was wrong with our democracy. The narrowness of the debate, the over-mighty influence of the media, the unfair voting system, and the lack of engagement from the electorate themselves all featured in a series of ‘Speakers’ Corner’-style contributions.
With many speakers only selectively referencing those who had already spoken, if at all, it was a good display of our democracy in action: the minority of those enthused talking about what they want to, without necessarily engaging with what others say. A couple of the speakers drew sharp comment for telling the room what we apparently all think, without having heard from or met most of us. This gets to the nub of the issue, I think.
Are politicians really having a conversation with us?
Labour said they had five million doorstep “conversations” during the General Election, but came out of the experience with little apparent understanding of what the electorate wanted. This leads me to speculate that both these people were not being honest – and, indeed, the outgoing Lib Dem cabinet member Vince Cable, losing his seat, said the electorate had “misled” him – but, more importantly, that these were probably not conversations at all. A conversation is two-way; politicians prepared to listen on their failures and on uncomfortable territory, such as on immigration?
Whilst I agreed with all the speakers that the voting system is not fit-for-purpose and the press has disproportionate power and that some important issues are off the agenda, I agreed far more with the final speaker, the facilitator, who commented that most of us had bemoaned “the system”. For we can all take concrete steps to making politics different. I know that it matters how you do activism, and the same goes with the model which aims to change things through the ballot box. Can we have better, different political conversations?
Ones that are not simply about politicians empathising, and then blithely carrying on with whatever policy they’ve been advised to pitch and whatever message they’ve been told to communicate (the messages are in any event savaged by influential people in the losing parties and the policies often regretted by those at the top of winning ones). But conversations where the ins and outs of issues are fully explored. Some would counter that most people have neither the time, inclination or even the ability to grapple with the great issues of the day – indeed, one man at the debate was adamant that the electorate do not care about climate change, they would never back action on it at the ballot box. I disagree. We cannot reach conclusions based on the current lack of deliberation.
Community organising trusts the people to come to decisions
But the experience of citizens juries and deliberative democracy suggests that everybody is, if given the chance and undistorted information, able to contribute to debates, even about complex technological or ethical issues. And if you don’t give us this chance, we – organised communities – will force our way onto your agenda and re-write your policies on, say, the private rental market, whether you like it or not and whatever you think of our abilities.
So instead of losing politicians when losing is deciding to unilaterally re-write policies, as if the answer to an ailing democracy was less democracy, why not talk? Just don’t give us a monologue – as some do at Speaker’s Corner.
OrganisingLee 