Politics Isn't Working

What is Direct Democracy?

Direct Democracy would be such a paradigm shift for the citizens and institutions of power in the UK that it is demanding to explain in a single soundbite. So entrenched is the hegemony of our current systems of governing that several imaginative leaps are required to pierce our reality and see a new world of possibilities. We believe Direct Democracy would end party politics and chart a course to a more equal and free society. Truth, Freedom, Justice, Autonomy for all!

A World Without Politicians

First, question what your MP has ever done for you. Many people, it is regularly reported, cannot name their local MP. Some do know and despise their local MP. Some will have voted for them and will be happy that they won election. Regardless of those positions, ask yourself, what can your MP actually do for you? 

The quintessential delusion of Representative Democracy (the current system of governance in the UK) is that an MP is representing your views in Parliament. The issue of Brexit illustrated perfectly, with numerous examples, how an MP representing a constituency which voted to "Leave", would vote against Parliamentary Bills designed to legalise the UK's exit from the EU. These MPs voted in accordance with their own beliefs, following their own hearts and minds.

In regular surgeries, MPs meet their constituents and are asked to help solve their problems, which are often caused by the complexities of UK bureaucracy. Issues of Benefits, Immigration, Health and Welfare are frequently cited. Due to the pressures of workload, MPs can do little more than write - with their fabled headed notepaper - to local administrators who are responsible for such matters. A reformed bureaucracy would not require the “clout” MPs can supposedly bring to solving such issues. 

Next, understand that becoming a Member of Parliament is simply a form of employment, no longer a calling or noble pursuit. MPs are well paid for their time. As of April 2020 the basic annual salary of a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons is £81,932. In addition, MPs are able to claim allowances to cover the costs of running an office and employing staff, and maintaining a constituency residence or a residence in London. This self-policed allowances system was central to the MPs expenses scandal that emerged in 2009.

Becoming an MP is however unlike any other job. MPs can find themselves in positions of such power and privilege that they may believe that the rules do not apply to them. MPs can retain their positions in the face of criminal accusations, sex scandals and gross incompetence. History is littered with so many political scandals that acceptance of their inevitability is now "priced in" to governance. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Returning to aptitude, ask yourself, what is it that MPs think they can achieve? The vast majority of MPs will play no meaningful role in history - assuming they avoid scandal. They will vote the way they are whipped, repeat the party line in interviews and ask a few questions in the House and maybe on Select Committees. MPs do not single-handedly make laws and ensure they are policed. This is the function of the permanent institutions of power like the civil service and society itself - often described as the Social Contract.

The Social Contract

With the famous phrase, "man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains," Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserted that modern states repress freedom in wider society and legitimate political authority can come only from a social contract agreed upon by all citizens for their mutual preservation.

Myths of Power

Mythologies by Roland Barthes is a useful text for politics and sociology. Mythologies are human constructions that portray occurrences in ways that mask an underlying reality. An example of myth is the role of the conductor of an orchestra. Would the talented and trained musicians be able to play a piece of music without the frantic gesticulations of a conductor? Multiple myths hold our society together, for good and ill. None more pervasive than MPs being “servants of the people”. 

As Peter Geoghegan forensically exposes in Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics democracies are in crisis as unaccountable and untraceable flows of money utterly distorts politics worldwide. Antiquated electoral laws are broken with impunity and secretive lobbying bends our politics out of shape. 

Lobbyists operate in the shadows deliberately and their influence increases when it goes largely unnoticed by the public. But if the reasons why companies lobby are often obscured, it is always a tactical investment. Whether facing down a threat to profits from a corporate tax hike, or pushing for market opportunities - such as government privatisations - lobbying has become another way of making money.

Accountability

If MPs are partisan but ineffectual self-serving middle men and women, serving only their own and the interests of donors, couldn't we do without them? The primary concern citizens have with this is accountability. Who would be held accountable in a United Kingdom without MPs? We cannot answer this question without first asking, who is held accountable now? Who was held accountable for the Grenfell Tower disaster? Who was held accountable for the Iraq War and the thousands of deaths it caused? Who will be held account for failing to to heed the warnings exposed by Exercise Cygnus - a 2016 simulation of a pandemic which found holes in the UK's readiness for such a crisis.

A Democratised Civil Service

The institutions that do the most work towards the actual implementation of laws - new and old - and governance of the nation as a whole is the Civil Service. In 2018 a democratic audit was commissioned and it's findings were illuminating. 

'The 'revolving door' denotes a set-up where senior mandarins can retire or leave their posts, but then move into private consultancy jobs or posts in public service contractor firms.'

'There have been some notable and recurrent lapses in the equal treatment of some black and ethnic minority citizens, women and people with physical or mental disabilities within the police, prisons service, NHS and local government, with a succession of adverse scandals. The Windrush scandal exposed a systematic race-biased Whitehall policy stance enforced over many years'.

'Corruption blackspots remain, especially in areas like overseas sales of defence equipment, and private contractors taking over government-run services on a payment-by-results basis.'

Future threats are also identified. 'A loss of EU migration is likely to adversely impact labour shortages, most particularly in the NHS.'

'New public management' strategies plus many years of austerity policies have worn thin the UK state's capacity to cope with crises and unexpected contingencies. The August 2011 riots in London and some other cities showed one kind of vulnerability, eventually requiring 16,000 police on the streets to bring them to an end. And the 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster and scandals around building safety de-regulation demonstrated another facet of the same underlying fragility.'

Direct Democracy UK believes that the UK Civil Service requires reform, but not the kind pursued by Boris Johnson with the ideology of Dominic Cummings that would kneecap and subjugate it to the current ruling party.  Our reforms would build a local and collaborative Civil Service. We do not seek to secure power for ordinary citizens only to then hand it back to an unaccountable bureaucracy.

A Codified Constitution

'The drafting process itself could prove a useful tool for pulling the country back together. The conversations it prompts will be as important as the text itself.'

'It will need to be a living document with the flexibility to be interpreted as the world changes. Recent debates on gun control in the US and the right to self-determination in Catalonia demonstrate that constitutions can also be barriers to change if they do not allow for contemporary amendments.'

'The UK constitution is still a piecemeal collection of conventions and common law open to misuse and abuse. The current crisis demands that we put this right and agree a written constitution that clarifies beyond doubt the separation of legislative, judicial and executive powers and the role, if any, of the monarchy. This would be hugely preferable to the current situation, which requires expensive judicial reviews to decipher the blurring of legal and political power.'

'In Iceland, following economic collapse in 2008, the crowdsourcing of a written constitution began with people sitting down to talk about the basic values they shared with their neighbours. By and large, the Icelandic drafting was not done by constitutional law experts – members of the public were selected by ballot and included a farmer, a truck driver, a pastor, a film-maker, a student and the director of an art museum. Conversations took place in town halls, on social media and even in knitting circles. The resulting Icelandic Constitutional Council opted to give legal personality to nature itself.'

An Elected Second Chamber or none

The UK is the only democracy in the world - with the exception of Canada, that has an unelected second chamber. An obvious democratic deficit, the House of Lords, has presented problems and opportunities for many administrations, particularly in the last 50 years. The largest recorded annual number of Lords defeats - 126 - occurred under Labour in 1975-76. Defeats under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were also commonplace, with 12 occurring on the 2005-6 Identity Cards Bill. 

'For more than 100 years, Lords reform has focused on the convenience of the executive, rather than the quality of government. Greater clarity of purpose will be needed, if the next century of reform is to be more successful than the last. 

Any future reform should begin by asking what the House is for. If we want an active and assertive chamber, able to block legislation and defy the will of the Commons, it must be democratically elected – and on a different system to the Commons. But if we want it to act simply as a revising chamber, it may be wiser to reform the existing model.'

The House of Lords is a problem for governments when it seeks to block legislation and it provides an opportunity for administrations who seek to pad it out with friends and donors.

Unicameralism, the practice of having a single legislative or parliamentary chamber, is in place in approximately half of the world's sovereign states, particularly in Scandinavia and Africa and also Australia and New Zealand. The principal advantage of a unicameral system is more efficient law making, as the legislative process is simpler and there is no possibility of deadlock. Proponents of unicameralism have also argued that it reduces costs, even if the number of legislators stay the same, since there are fewer institutions to maintain and support it. 

Flatpack Democracy

In our current situation, Direct Democracy is likely to gain a foothold first at a local level. At the administrative level of county councils, citizens have historically felt more connected to the levers of power and have witnessed first hand how pressure, participation and campaigning can bring change to their immediate environment. 

In early 2018, after seven years of austerity, Northamptonshire council - a model of Tory ideology - effectively went bankrupt, becoming the first local authority in two decades to issue a section 114 notice. Mismanagement was blamed, as if years of government-imposed cuts had no impact, or the projected £69m black hole opening up in its budgets for 2021 was immaterial. This crisis in municipal finances is not confined to Northamptonshire. Last year Lancashire county council published detailed research showing these very same pressures would, if not mitigated, leave it technically bankrupt by 2020. Now, under the strains of Coronavirus, eight out of ten English councils are at risk bankruptcy. 

Over the last five years, more and more often, I have found myself stating that we have never lived in a democracy and what pretends to be one is an obscene farce.  Now no one is pretending any more.  

As individuals our powers to act are strictly limited mainly because we have given our powers away to so called representatives.

Meanwhile, it becomes increasingly difficult for many people to find and retain housing, to find employment that is not short term and poorly paid, and to meet other basic needs.

I believe that by focussing on the things we can control and pushing those boundaries to the limits we can reclaim the decisions that affect our own lives.

This is even more important now, not only because our politics is so fundamentally broken and needs a total makeover, but also because the pressures we face are increasing so rapidly.  

As we (almost certainly) crash out of Europe, we'll find ourselves dealing with much more stress and uncertainly not to mention the lack of certain foods, medicines and other things we take for granted

A joined up, resilient community will have more chance of riding out the chaos and emerging less damaged and ready to move forward positively into the future.  

Add to this the great unknown of the impact of climate change which could well make everything else that went before seem insignificant.

A town council focussed on regalia, twinning and bus shelters will be completely unfit to do much in the way of supporting its own community over the coming years. 

If you haven't already, I would urge you take over your own council and drag it into 21st century (and if you don't have this level of council, there are ways to create one).  

Only then can it begin to address the big issues we face now and into the future.

Since 2013 the Flatpack Democracy movement has shown that, by standing as a group of independent local councillors working closely together, people all over the country can and do steer their local councils to thrive and prosper, democratically.

Flatpack Democracy is such a crucial precursor to Direct Democracy that we will go into its emergence in detail elsewhere on DDUK.org. In the meantime check out these articles on the movement's ascension and achievements. 

Digital Democracy

In 2015 the then Speaker of the House John Bercow sought to make good on his pledge to be a champion of democratic participation by setting up a commission to improve and open up 'the workings of the House of Commons' in an era revolutionised by digital technology.

'Over the past 25 years we have lived through a revolution – created by the birth of the world wide web and the rapid development of digital technology. This digital revolution has disrupted old certainties and challenged representative democracy at its very heart. With social media sources such as Twitter, blogs and 24/7 media, the citizen has more sources of information than ever before, yet citizens appear to operate at a considerable distance from their representatives and appear 'disengaged' from democratic processes. The jargon and practices of the House can be alienating and the sheer weight of information about politics, now available, can act as a wall, keeping the citizen out of the mysterious world of Westminster.'

'As Speaker I have tried to encourage greater participation in politics from the widest possible range of people. Hence, I established this unique Commission to consider the challenges and opportunities for our democracy that digital technology presents.'

Bercow's noble intentions were waylaid by events as Parliament became consumed with Brexit and two subsequent General Elections. The commission's targets for 2020 have obviously been missed, if not delayed indefinitely.

Communicating the basic functions of Parliament, let alone its arcane procedures remains a distant goal. The Palace of Westminster's traditions, ceremonies, participants and their costumes continue to baffle onlookers and distance people from elected representatives. An ancient dialect of Norman French is still used during a Bill's passage through Parliament by officials in historical dress more suited to a pantomime.

A fully interactive and digital parliament has not been achieved for 2020. The Petition Parliament website set up in 2006 has been through several iterations and regularly generates press as citizens seek only to propose reforms to their country's laws and have them debated in Parliament. Shockingly four of the five petitions with the most signatures were all rejected by governments.

A small concession in the digital direction was the introduction of electronic voting for MPs during the Coronavirus pandemic. The unprecedented conditions in Spring 2020 forced the government's hand so on the 12th May, the first ever remote division (the MPs vote) in the House of Commons took place. This modest update to Parliament, echoing the digital realities of contemporary life and many other parliaments worldwide, were short lived, as Leader of the House Jacob Rees Mogg ensured procedures returned to the methods of his favoured 18th century. And so MPs were forced to return to in-person and socially distanced voting, queuing for an hour in a kilometer-long queue around the palace estate, provoking ridicule and dismay.

Online voting will not even be in place for the next General Election in 2024. Instead the Conservative government has announced plans to create online ID cards which critics argue is likely to disenfranchise thousands of poor and older voters, after hundreds were denied a vote in the 2019 General Election which trialled pilot schemes requiring voters to produce photo ID at polling stations.

Technology, instead of liberating individuals and improving ancient systems of governance, is increasingly being deployed to curtail freedoms and obfuscate political machinations. We must reverse this worldwide trend which imperils democracy itself.

Managed Democracy

The problems associated with our current political systems have consequences. Some consequences are welcomed by those who support the status quo, such as voter apathy. If everyone voted and their vote was counted with Proportional Representation the political landscape could look much different. Other consequences are even more serious than disengagement. The current socio-political situation in the UK is approaching what is known as a Managed Democracy.

In a Managed Democracy governments are legitimised by elections that are free and fair, but do not change the state's policies, motives, and goals. In other words, the government controls elections so that the people can exercise all their rights without truly changing public policy. While these governments follow basic democratic principles, there can be major deviations towards authoritarianism. Under Managed Democracy, the state's continuous use of propaganda techniques prevents the electorate from having a significant impact on policy.

Culture Wars

Perhaps the most dangerous impact of Neoliberalism is not the economic crises it has caused, but the political crisis. As the domain of the state is reduced by Neoliberal privatisations, our ability to change the course of our lives through voting also contracts. If politics ceases to offer the possibility of change then “politics” often finds expression in alternative spheres of life. 

Often organised in a decentralised manner, the movements eschew leaders and lack an ability to effect change in the current political system of Representative Democracy. 

What Is To Be Done

Our movement has three paths forward. One path would look like a revolution. It would require the mobilisation of millions of people, with a clear agenda and goal, to come out onto the streets and protest for change. A second path would be to work within the current systems of power. That would require the formation of a political party that fought in elections to win seats in parliament. The third way forward would be a combination of both. But with a crucial difference. 

You can no longer change politics from inside of politics. The barriers to entry and power are - by design - too high and the entrenched systems of the state are too deep. Today you can only change politics from the outside. 

Although this method failed in the 20th Century, in the case of Hippies, Yippies or the myriad of self-improvement fads, there is increasing evidence that such praxis in the 21st century, super-charged by the internet, achieves results. It is known as Parallel Politics. 

Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah is an anti-pollution health campaigner who successfully campaigned to have air pollution listed on her daughters death certificate. Gary Stevenson campaigns on the issue of wealth inequality. Jack Monroe is an anti-poverty campaigner and food bank activist. All have achieve successes in their fields as they hold the government to account, better than the official opposition.  

Marcus Rashford's social work is an example of generating enough “online heat” to change government policy. Critics note that the government itself did not change. But no long term, sustained project for political change has yet been attempted. Movements like Extinction Rebellion are approximate, but have in effect now been illegalised.

Direct Democracy UK, as a mixture of start-up and social movement; serves as a pressure valve, releasing pent-up frustration with traditional politics into the electoral system. Free of the constraints that the media, party machines and constitutions impose, rivals can neither ignore nor negotiate with our new presence. Like a tech company, aimed at rapid growth, with email sign-ups and PayPal donations replacing formal membership - our purpose is to disrupt. We make the political weather and set the day's agenda.

We would however renounce the label of protest party and utilise the flexibility of a platform party. Our platform is digital. Our central aim, now that we have the technology to do so, is simply to replace MPs with the true will of the people. The means to achieve this will be our focus for the coming years.

A New Future

To travel peacefully on the inevitable journey towards self-rule, equality and autonomy, we need to change some things, lose some things and gain some things. All those who stand to lose power and influence will wield their significant financial clout to fight these changes. Those who feel disempowered by the current situation and sceptical of any promises of change will remain apathetic. 

Our goal is to overcome both the entrenched power of elites and the apathy of the majority. It will be an uphill struggle as our current system of governance has been so thoroughly captured and corrupted by moneyed and vested interests. The billionaire owned press and million pound Think Tank industry will deploy their considerable resources to convince citizens that nothing should change. But things can and will change if a decentralised, post-ideological, a-political movement can prove it's worth.