Democracy: the liquorice allsorts of politics

The word democracy seems to be dragged into every argument lately that I hear or read about, whenever someone wants to give power to an argument. 'It's democracy' is their killer blow!

Anybody would think we are all constitutional experts who understand these things as our birthright. But we don't. We have to be taught, and some have been taught badly, or did not listen in their constitutional history class. Democracy has long been misunderstood. People seem to think it means "my way should be the way we go." I'm afraid it doesn't. 

There are basically two types of democracy:  the direct way, and the representational way. The direct way means, 'government is by the whole population' and 'representational' means we are governed through elected representatives. Now, if you think about this, it's obvious that democracy cannot mean 'my way or the highway.' If government is by the whole people, then the inevitable way to go is through endless referenda, because how can a voting population of 40 million decide anything? Whereas representational democracy happens by regular elections, in which those who receive the most votes are then endowed with the power to decide on our behalf.

I think none of us need reminding that both ways can be pretty toxic and ultimately lead to no action at all. Once you accept the principle of government by referendum, it means that decisions are rarely final, and lead to the demand for further referenda to clarify the question, to to make more options available, to consider new developments and so on. These are not wrong demands, they are the inevitable result of having posed the question that way. Many types of question are unsuitable for referenda. They work best with clear moral and social choices:  Is hanging an acceptable form of punishment? should we make gay marriage legal? The decision here has some chance of being viewed as final, at least for a generation or two. And it is clear how to implement it. You need to change the law, and then it is done and we can move on. There will be consequences of changing this law, but they can proceed as part of normal parliamentary business. Complex political questions such as 'should Scotland become independent' and 'should we leave the EU' are hopelessly inadequate to be dealt with via referendum. The choice is far from clear: what kind of leave, what kind of remain? when? how? what are the consequences likely to be of each choice? To say that we dealt with these questions during the preceding debate is dubious to put it mildly, when each side had its own entrenched political position and gave different answers that suited them without being required to fact check what they said, and when there is no such thing as a whole nation debate, so some people heard some answers and some heard others! Listening to current debates on the subject of Brexit, you would think that some people did not take part in the debate at all, given their fanciful accounts of what happened.  However, the most important flaw in the process was it was never clear from the outset how the answer would/could be implemented. Nobody seemed to think that question important. Yet, since it was clear that it would have to be implemented by Parliament, it was surely clear that those involved in the campaigns would need to know what Parliament thought about it, since they would be the ones who would have to implement it! No such research took place, as far as I know. 

Representational democracy has its limitations too. A good deal of trust has to be placed in the elected representation, and he or she needs to be given plenty of latitude to listen to debates, do their research and follow their own consciences. At one time we took for granted that elected Members of Parliament were honourable and trustworthy people. Now we do not. And they themselves have not helped their reputations with events such as the expenses scandal, and other signs that some MPs don't take their responsibilities as seriously as they should. However it is simpler and has on the whole served us well in past times. Nowadays, it is not so clear that it does, in a world where there are wide differences of opinion which are clearly not fairly treated in a first-past-the-post voting system, and where the margin seat is the only one that gets real attention.

However, if you wish to create a perfect political storm, try combining both methods of democracy! Which is exactly what we did three years so with the EU referendum, when we casually moved from one system to the other because it suited the Prime Minister of the day, who needed a means of disciplining his own party. Then stand back and watch the results!

I'd like to suggest that we need constitutional reform, and Lord Kerslake's paper to the Annual Chamberlain Lecture in London June 25th is a good place to start. Listen to it here on https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0006sw1/briefings-lord-kerslake  But also we need to think again about our concept of democracy.

Democracy is not a process for making sure the winner takes all! Nor is winning all that matters. Dictators have used the zero-sum game to their own benefit easily. If you're not fussy about how you get votes, you can get people to agree to anything. The ancient Greeks intended it as a process for opening up debate widely. These debates took place in the Forum which was the town centre, essentially, and were not universally franchised according to our standards. What they did was share power for the first time, to the extent that they enabled public participation in decisions about the country. Everyone qualified could have their say, and to that extent it was a major innovation.

I think it's time we revived this aspect of democracy. Stopped viewing it as a weapon for killing off the opposition and started using it as a method of encouraging participation. It's the values that underpin democracy that count, and that we seem to have forgotten about. The values of democracy are openness to public accountability, readiness to make participation easy and barrier free, fairness in giving equal opportunities to all to take part.

Democracy is not a guarantee that you will get your own way! It is a way we can all hear and share the debate, listen well and carefully, and perhaps come to different conclusions from the ones we started with. Changing your mind is called growing up! You win some and you lose some, and you need to be prepared to accept that. But people will never accept a vote that did not seem to them to be fair, open or accountable. It was the values underpinning the choice that caused the ructions, and those won't stop until we find a method of testing public opinion that seems to them to be genuinely rigorous and fact checkable and implementable!