Forty years in the making

 First published in LibDemVoice 22nd Nov 2020

Liberal democracy is in crisis, particularly in the UK and the USA. In the UK we are perhaps bemused at how we could have come to elect such a corrupt, cronyistic and incompetent government, and in the USA there is much debate over how the Trump lump has not gone away despite four years of Trump’s Twitter tantrums.

There is a tendency to view this as a short term phenomenon – what went wrong four years ago, six years ago, even ten years ago. In my view this has been coming for forty years. It has not been inevitable but, during the neoliberal period (roughly from the 80s till today), social forces and personal decision making have moved us steadily towards the situation we now find ourselves in.

In a nutshell, the elevation to power of Thatcher and Reagan marked the start of what was seen to be a move towards freedom, opening up societies all over the world to the liberating forces of the market. This had two sides, globalisation, an ineluctable social force beyond the power of individuals to affect, and the strategy of global elites both old and new, to use globalisation to create new wealth and power for themselves. They have been very successful. So it turned out to be a move towards freedom for some, but by no means all. The elites used liberalism as their watchword, while ignoring the principle of liberalism that their freedom is only valid in so far as it does not compromise other people’s freedom.

At the same time there has been a steady corrosion of community and democratic values, partly because the new markets require it (they don’t work without precarious labour) and partly because of media elites who found that telling lies worked, and political elites who did not care to confront them. People sold on consumer capitalism found easy answers to all the ills in their lives in the lies told them by the media. Rupert Murdoch and Hugh Dacre, among others, spent decades preparing the British public for the Brexit lie. They have succeeded in making many people’s lives precarious and hoodwinking them into blaming others for that.

The reason this perspective is important is that it sheds light on our immediate future. The Trump lump and the Brexit lump are not going to go away. Their defining feature is resentment, honed over forty years. It won’t disappear just because Trump has blown himself out and Brexit has happened. (Farage is already looking for new ways to foment resentment by attacking lockdown.) If we want to make our countries more liberal again, then we have to look at long term solutions as well as short term ones – there is no quick fix for a problem that has been forty deliberate and persistent years in the making.

We still need our short term activity. We can and must fight to win elections and to influence policy. But we also need a long term strategy as deliberate and persistent as theirs has been. The epitome – and the nadir - of the liberal attitude was the remain campaign in 2016, the most disastrously disorganised and inept campaign I have ever been involved in. We deserved to lose. Our biggest mistake was expecting the voters to be sensible. That did not happen and will not happen again until we make it happen. We must seek to persuade over a long period of time – a drip, drip of persistent, deliberate and targeted conversation over many years, if we want our countries ever to be generous again.

What should we do with the Palace of Westminster?

First published on Liberal Democrat Voice.

The Houses of Parliament currently function as the location in which Parliament expresses and exercises its sovereignty. It seems obvious that they no longer fit that function well: archaic logistics, terrible accessibility, lack of office and meeting space, and chambers designed perfectly for the cheap game show otherwise known as PMQs, but not for deliberation or wise governance.

Soon the buildings are to have a very expensive makeover during which time MPs and Lords will have to decamp. Perhaps we should make the decampment permanent. Build a site suitable to house the legislative body of a modern democracy.

Some argue that such a building should be outside London. That is a separate debate. But whether it is in London or not, it then leaves open the question of what we should do with the Palace of Westminster. My suggestion is that we should bear the cost of the refurbishment, and then turn them into the home of an Institute for Democracy.

One of the many lessons of Brexit, whichever way it goes, is that we desperately need a way of re-engaging the mass of citizens with the democratic process. People in every region and in every section of society feel, and are, disenfranchised. We can, and should, argue all we like for reform of the voting system and other formal and administrative tinkering, but it will take more than that to re-enfranchise many ordinary citizens.

An Institute for Democracy can have many functions and many forms. One of the possible forms is the holding of regular citizens’ assemblies, in which people from all over the country are randomly selected for invitation to an assembly which may last for several days, in which they learn about, discuss and debate one of the many issues about the way we are governed. Attendance at the assembly might be treated like jury duty, with the assemblees paid for their expenses and their time, and employers and others required to allow them to attend. The chambers of the two Houses can be retained for the purpose of holding plenary meetings of the assemblies.

This would be, in my mind, the main activity of the Institute, but I can envisage many others. It can hold seminars, conduct research, act as a library and a repository for material and data about democracy. It will still be a tourist attraction, and can also attract income from sponsors, sales and hosting events.

Given the catastrophic effect Brexit has had and is still having on our democratic processes, the Institute needs to be set up and to start to do its work well before the Palace is refurbished. It could start immediately, and hold assemblies in all of the different regions in whatever remains of the UK. I would hope that it would continue to do that, one of the biggest problems about the social and economic shape of
our country being the enormous weight attached to London and the south east. The Palace would form a magnificent centre piece for the Institute, but never its only home.

I suggest that this should become Liberal Democrat policy.