How to create a mass movement for democratic systems change
Rich Wilson | January 9, 2024
On Christmas evening as most of us were slumped on the sofa, William Hague wrote in the Times that “As our political parties start to draft their election manifestos, they would do well to think about how citizens’ assemblies” could be used to consider food, health, social media regulation and AI. Another pillar of the political establishment calls for citizens’ assemblies to fix politics. A present I don’t think any of us attending this week’s UK Democracy Network Conference was expecting.
84% of the UK population now think the UK political system needs reform, and 52% think it needs major changes. Political disaffection isn’t new, we know it’s what drove Brexit, and political engagement has been in decline since the 1950s.
What is new are the historically low levels of trust in our democracy. Just 6% of us have full trust in the political system, and there is extraordinary demand for major political systems change. This demand is strongest in the same “former industrial heartlands” that voted leave in the Brexit Referendum. In places like Neath, Wolverhampton and Burnley, over 55% want to “completely” change the political system and over 85% want some form of political systems change. Just 9% of the British public say they trust politicians to tell the truth, down from 12% in 2022, making them the least trusted profession in Britain.
These are the same places where both main parties believe the 2024 General Election will be won or lost. Since Covid, there has been a sharp rise in the proportion of people who think politicians are “out for themselves” (now over 65%), and the ongoing Covid inquiry, expected to report just before the election, is predicted to exacerbate the anti-political sentiment.
Surely, if ever there was an election when there might be a “democratic dividend” for fixing politics this would be it. A recent IPPR report found that a “lack of faith in politics/politicians” had almost the same public saliency as immigration, and is catching up with the NHS, in terms of voter priorities. Hague knows this, but despite that, none of our major parties are offering any meaningful programme of political systems change. That is despite the Brown Commission outlining one just over a year ago.
This means that the vast majority who want to see political systems change stand to be unrepresented in the general election.
Last month Professor Ben Ansell delivered the 2023 BBC Reith Lectures on, wait for it, Our Democratic Future. In them, he proposed three ways of fixing democracy. Firstly to bolster mainstream, especially national, media, because it’s usually much more accurate than alternatives. Secondly, to back citizens’ assemblies, and thirdly, to support proportional representation.
His lecture was perhaps 95% analysis of the problem, and 5% at most, on what we should do about it. And this my friends, points to our problem.
We don’t yet have a compelling agenda for democratic change. Ansell’s three horsemen of the political anticlimax are not enough to build a major political movement around. And that’s our fault. We, the democracy nerds, haven’t come up with anything better.
In the words of Bill Moyer, the great social movement theorist, we have yet to “develop public support for the alternatives” we want to see implemented. Support in the form of a movement that can turn the 84% of the population who want change, into real change.
So here’s my starter for 10, to throw into the mix at this week's conference, of how we might do this. Here are our three principles and six big ideas to create a mass movement for democratic change.
Three principles to create a mass movement for democratic change
1: Focus on the big issues
Amidst the global polycrisis, the UK is in an especially deep hole. Unless we can come up with a democratic reform agenda that is designed to address issues such as health, cost of living, climate and migration; we shouldn’t expect anyone to take them seriously.
Luckily there is substantial evidence on how citizens’ assemblies in particular come up with much better policies than politicians do themselves. They tend to be too low profile and small scale, but we know they work.
Critically, we need to locate our calls for democratic reform within the big issues people care about. Hague is right - we need powerful citizens’ assemblies on health, social media regulation and AI among others. Where I disagree with Hague, is that they should be consultative. As a minimum, they need to be able to put their proposals to referendums, as in Ireland.
2: Build and redistribute power
If it wasn’t for the universal suffrage legislation of 1928 we never would have got the NHS and the other welfare reforms of the 1940s. Similarly, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibiting racial discrimination in voting in the USA, and the 1969 Representation of the People Act reducing the voting age to 18 in the UK both had an impact on the policies of the subsequent governments.
In November I was talking to a county councillor who asked me whether there was any point in having a citizens’ assembly that wasn’t mandated by the council. I asked her: “Let’s imagine the next government doubles your budget (which they have said they won’t). Will you have enough money to cover your outstanding costs, to maintain infrastructure, social care and wages?” She said, “Probably not”.
That’s why we need more democratic infrastructure. To build the power of our places and communities to be able to do more themselves. This will involve allowing councils to raise their own funds, perhaps through means such as buying public assets and running them to generate income, rather than being forced to sell them off. It will also be about creating structures for the community to organize themselves, and to not be in a “parent-child” like relationship with the state.
3: Don’t expect turkeys to vote for Christmas
The big parties “like the current system and I won’t expect turkeys to vote for Christmas” explained Ansell in the first Reith Lecture. Indeed civil disobedience is almost always required for substantial redistribution of power. Be it the Suffragettes, Civil Rights Movement or student protests, increasing democracy has to be fought for.
This doesn’t mean we don’t have allies in parliament, the civil service or in the media. We do, but we absolutely can not expect the beneficiaries of the current system to lead the change themselves. They need us both to make the case and create the pressure for change.
Six big ideas to create a mass movement for democratic change
Based on the three principles above, here are six proposals we should consider seriously.
1. Establishing a permanent and empowered citizens’ assembly that millions can participate in annually
Permanent citizens’ assemblies now exist in a growing number of places such as Paris, Belgium, Milan, Armenia and Newham; and there are plans to establish one for the UN. When established as important independent governance chambers they create new power centers. These can drive public debate and policy as we have seen in France, or galvanize resources as we have seen in Armenia. A permanent and empowered citizens’ assembly for the UK would provide a much-needed counterweight to parliamentary debate, and a mechanism to ensure that anyone can always get heard on the big issues.
2. Reduce the voting age to six
To many, David Runciman’s proposal to lower the voting age to six years old seems ridiculous; are children competent to vote? At least as competent as many over 75 according to many academics. Runciman argues that lowering the voting age by 12 years “would be comparable to the other great enfranchisements, including working men in the 19th century and women in the 20th.”'.
Runciman points to our rapidly aging societies “in which older voters have come to outnumber the young…This results in pensions being protected while student debt goes unaddressed.” Runciman argues that we don’t test anyone else on their understanding of fiscal policy or political complexity before allowing them to vote, so why disenfranchise children?
3. Politicians must put people before party: a Hippocratic oath for politicians
The MYMP2015 campaign pledge required all candidates to commit to polling constituents on key parliamentary decisions. When called for by a minimum percentage of constituents, it also asked them to vote accordingly. The purpose of this was to ensure that residents of a constituency knew their representatives would, when necessary, put their interests ahead of the party. Nearly 300 candidates from across the political spectrum signed the pledge that year, and we need something similar for 2024.
4. Bar politicians and candidates that lie from politics
There can never be another Brexit Bus in the UK. When politicians knowingly lie they are attacking the basics of our democracy. It’s a form of treachery that we can no longer tolerate. The bar needs to be at the right height, and it wouldn’t be useful for our political system if lawyers started making millions over everyday exaggerations. But published campaign messaging that is willfully misleading must receive a strong punishment. It manipulates millions of people and damages our democracy.
5. Replace the House of Lords with a House of Citizens
The Sortition Foundation is leading the charge to have members of our second chamber selected by sortition, to ensure they are genuinely representative of the country. Keir Starmer has already pledged to abolish the House of Lords to “restore trust in politics”. It seems obvious to me that another elected chamber would only create problems, competing with the commons and not working to restore trust in the ways that a house selected by lottery, and representative of the country, might.
6. Repurposing national broadcasters and regulators to promote accurate reporting across all media
It is no accident that the BBC was founded in the aftermath of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which gave all men above the age of 21 the vote. The roots of the first two public purposes of the BBC Charter “To provide impartial news and information…” and “to support learning for people of all ages” can be traced back to the Reithian intention to ensure people were sufficiently well-informed to effectively participate in democracy. Our public service broadcasters need to have this remit strengthened and repurposed for the digital age, to improve the accuracy of the information we all consume on whatever platform.
Friedman said “Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” We are living in an age of crises and sadly many think it will get worse. It is up to us to ensure that the ideas that are lying around are commensurate with this, our crisis.
At Iswe, our focus is on political systems change. If you want to help build a mass movement for democratic systems change please get in touch.