I have noted what was said by Sam Tarry, who is Jeremy Corbyn's re-election campaign director, on Radio 4 this morning (reproduced via the Guardian) when he said
[A] complete overhaul of the entire [political] system” was needed, including giving citizens greater rights to challenge decisions taken on their behalf.
“That's why we are suggesting things like citizens' assemblies, genuinely participative and representative assemblies of people that could actually start to look at the big democratic deficit issues of the day,” Tarry said.
“This is really about drilling down to the local-est level possible. It is about saying we want more democracy in our economy, we need more democracy in our community and actually across the country, we need more democracy.
“Ultimately what we want to do is give more people more power to design their own democracy and what I mean by that is, for example, in this country we don't even have a written constitution, we don't even have our rights properly enshrined. What I would like to see is a citizen-led process to actually design the regulations that govern them, rather than just be told: this is how you will be governed.”
I do not agree.
I would not agree with unpaid MPs.
Or unpaid councillors.
I think it absolutely wrong that magistrates are unpaid.
Nor do I agree with the expectation that those serving on government appointed committees be unpaid.
Or that evidence is called from people who are not paid for it.
And for exactly the same reason I do not agree with citizen's assemblies.
For centuries the architecture of power in the UK was designed to make sure that only the wealthy could take part: the person who had to work for a living was denied the chance because they could not afford the time or cost of doing so. That was wrong. It still is wrong that people are denied access to power on consultations because they cannot afford to submit evidence: I have long suggested financial support should be available.
But as candidly, I think it just as wrong that democracy will be devolved under Corbyn's plans to those with the time to turn out to Citizen's Assemblies. What about people with childcare responsibilities? Or who have to work when the Assembly meets? What about those who have other interests in life and are committed to volunteering regularly? Is our democracy to be selected again on the basis of those with the time available to make a decision? If so, that is no democracy at all.
Our democracy is not perfect: sweep away the Lords, I say.
Pay local councillors more so people can afford to do the job.
Introduce PR, for heaven's sake (the one big reform Corbyn will not go near).
But don't, whatever happens, undermine the democratic process of voting in elections by creating a process where power is given up to those who will turnout relentlessly to claim control over communities who they no more represent than the aristocracy once did. That is not the way to any form of democracy that I know of. It is instead the route to oppression by a minority, and I will always oppose that, from wherever the suggestion comes.
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The suggestion for Citizens’ Assemblies is nice and cuddly and is a proposal for yet another talking shop. I’m afraid the line about ‘in spite of their best endeavours they have come to no firm conclusions’ seems to be made for the Corbyn camp…
Mind you, a Universal Basic Income and Citizens’ Assemblies might be another possibility entirely.
I agree with your last comment
This was my first thought too but there’d still be those working shifts (by choice, one imagines) and with responsibilities which demand their time as mentioned. Meetings could be recorded, though, transcripts made available for those who were interested, which would not be everybody, I imagine. They could be held in different locations and at different times, in series, effectively, and decisions arrived at over a period of time so call could participate. Many wouldn’t though, just as now. I don’t think we should be too quick to dismiss the idea before playing with it for a while.
Oh come on then: you just end up with a mess in that case
And what we have now isn’t? But still the biggest problem, one we undoubtedly have now, would be educating the general public to the extent they were capable of understanding their best interests. Many simply wouldn’t be intellectually sufficient. Many would and I believe do, have emotional problems which blind them to certain arguments. We need to be ruled by benevolence and wisdom. I wonder how we might achieve that?
I once sat on a “citizens’ jury”. The idea was that people were selected to consider a major issue in local democracy, hear witnesses from all sides and come to a decision.
We were a collection of the unemployed, students, homeless and childless. How could we not be? Who else could give up an entire evening a week?
Obviously those people should have a voice, but claiming their voice is representative is ludicrous.
I entirely agree all need to be heard: it is why I support funding for the currently voiceless
But all have to be heard, as you say
One of the things I find terrifying is the sheer ignorance of what Parliament is, and what MPs do. I am assured, for example, by a member of the JC fan club, that MPs are self-employed.
I must disclose an interest here; I used to be an FT Inspector of Taxes, until I retired early, in order to spend more time with my doctors. Richard will know exactly what FT means; I am part of the last generation because the FT qualification was so prized that people could more or less double their income leaving public service. The powers that be could have tackled this by increasing our pay, but they went for Plan B; reduce the quality of the training so nobody would poach them anymore.
That worked very well.
So, there are vast amounts of case law on the difference between employment and self employment, but you don’t need me to know it; you can just look at the page here:
http://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/members/pay-mps/
which tells you all you need to know without spending more than five minutes. Clearly Corbyn’s fan club are not up for this, but equally clearly they are not fitted to take part in ‘Citizens Assembles’.
I believe Corbyn’s policies on tax are thoroughly week kneed. Of course, I spent time at the beginning of my career negotiating adjustments which would be charged at 98 pence in the £pound…
FT was an entirely appropriate civil service goal
But that was lost site of, at considerable cost to HMRC
Your example can be extrapolated into a great many areas
Hi Richard, I’m a longtime reader of you blog and always find it interesting and informative.
I’m for PR, will vote for Corbyn and was interested to hear him state recently that he is not against PR as long as the constituency link can be maintained.
But he knows that means that proper PR is not possible: PR requires larger constituencies at the very least
If he is saying that is not on his agenda then his support is just a sham
the constituency link is a reason Conservatives always give for being against PR. It is supposed to look like a concern for democracy. I feel it is because they know that with almost any system of PR, they would never be in power again.
It is worth recalling that the first parliament was in 1265, and we have only had single member constituencies since 1885.
Totally agree with you. There is no way Citizens’ Assemblies can be democratic – just forums for big gobs. I think PR can be married to constituency links through a top up list system. But as you rightly keep saying, you’ve got to win power first to change anything. The trouble is that last time New Labour was in power it didn’t change the fundamentals and in some cases (privatising and outsourcing) made things worse.
Just who would turn up to such assemblies? The local jobsworths, busybodies, aliens have landed types and sundries and people excessively fond of their own opinions. In short the type of people any normal person would prefer to avoid at all costs.
That may be a little over the top
The chance that they would be representative is, however, extraordinarily low
Which is why I gave no time for the idea
But I would add Trotsky would have done, just for the record: it fits quite comfortably with a view of democracy that rejects the view of the majority on whom reliance cannot be placed (the peasants) by replacing it with a view of democracy based on the decisions of the reliable (the organised factory based proletariat) who will turn up
How different is that to the average trades union branch?
It doesn’t matter because trade unions are not runnning the country
But let’s not forget that that’s just the milieu in which – if I’m not mistaken – Corbyn cut his own activist/political teeth, before being elected to a safe Labour seat (ie one in the gift of the then TU-dominated party machine).
That Tarry’s proposal tallies closely with that milieu is therefore perhaps no mere coincidence.
More democracy is no bad thing. So getting more people involved in local issues and making decisions at a local level seems, in principle at least, a reasonable proposition.
How do you get “genuinely participative and representative assemblies of people” though? If no one is elected, then does it come down to who turns up on the day and who turns out to be the most vocal/persuasive speaker?
Has this kind of thing been tried before, either here or anywhere else in the world?
PR, on the other hand, yes please.
I am a democrat
But that policy cannot be decide on the basis of those who turn up
This is, for example, why the idea of quorums was created
Steve H., it’s been tried plenty of times. Back in the early 1990s I was on such a consultation group set up by my lib dem controlled local authority. A bit later after the 1997 election the Blair Govt set up a system of policy forums. I attended meetings of my constituency policy forum. We used to come to some conclusions, feed them up to the regional policy forum, who then might or might not feed them to the national policy forum – a body that I believe still exists. I’ve been out of this sort of thing for a long time due to work and family commitments.
That Sam Tarry can regard this sort of thing as “new kind of politics” as laughable. It’s particularly laughable that so many people my age and considerably older in the Labour Party regard it as such.
Agreed
Also laughable that they think it will result in democratic representation
How do you get “genuinely participative and representative assemblies of people” though?
Sortition. It’s the only way I can think of to select a body of people who are genuinely representative of the populus.
But that assumes that ability and willingness are not necessary criteria for appointment
No, willingness is not a necessary criterion in a sortition-based system. It’s about public service.
Regarding ability: any body of a significant size selected randomly will have a distribution of talents representative of the population from which it is drawn. It’s not immediately obvious whether it would produce a better distribution of relevant abilities than representative democracy. However, it should be noted that the abilities which voting systems select (self-promotion, moral flexibility, etc) are not particularly useful for deciding on most political and economic issues. So, I think sortition is worth some consideration. It has many advantages over voting.
By the way, I agree with you that self-selecting assemblies, whilst they may be great for building political engagement, cannot be the basis of legislation.
So significant size is the issue?
That solves nothing then
It isn’t going to happen: what that demands is that people come for long hours, often, to say nothing
Not a hope
I’m not saying it’s anywhere near the Overton window at present. Most people have never heard of the idea, except as a method of selecting court juries, let alone given it five minutes consideration. However, seeing as the discussion seemed to be about the merits of different methods for selecting public committees, I thought I’d throw the idea into the mix.
It’s an antidote to many of the problems which are systemic in representative democracy, viz. personal ambition, corruption, nepotism, party group-think, etc and it’s the only way of selecting a committee which is actually representative of the population.
I appreciate you have a multitude of comments to moderate and limited time. Sortition may be worth thinking about though.
Ok!
Am I having a flashback or are 1970’s students’ union style politics making a comeback. I thought the parody in Life of Brian had killed that off for good.
I lived through that era
It’s definitely back
And Corbyn and McDinnell are old enough to know it
I listened to the whole interview. When Tarry said that these assemblies should be asked to vote on things like ‘outsourcing local authority services’ he was asked (in summary)’what about other things?’ his reply really was ‘only if we say so’ Didn’t say who ‘we’ was.
“I think it absolutely wrong that magistrates are unpaid.”
There are about 30.000 of us out there in the country that find the system works well on a voluntary basis. It’s rare to hear anyone criticising a volunteer lay magistracy. If you think we are still the great and the good, and ladies who lunch, and that we are unrepresentative of the general public, I would have to disagree. I’d be interested in your objections.
I believe people will be excluded by the rule
Many self employed, for example
And that’s not reasonable
As well as the issue of who participates, there is also the issue of how power is devolved and the framework in which the power exists.
ie. lets take the issue of housing estate renewal, in which often local residents participate in the process, and will also vote as to whether they want their estate to be regenerated (demolished and rebuilt) or renovated.
That is an example of very local level democracy in practice, but it is fraught with problems, because the council sets the overall framework in terms of what information gets released, in terms of what are the options and parameters for possible redevelopment etc.
So while in some circumstances there can be a very successful participatory process, other times it can be basically a sham.
As a practitioner in what we call tenant participation for 10 years in social housing I have to reluctantly agree with Richard.
I have had 10 years of working with tenants as a means of improving housing services and it has been very frustrating. There is no doubt that people who want to participate in service delivery/corporate governance have to be trained first – not doing so means policy led by opinion – not fact. At worst you see a bunch of well-meaning service users manipulated by senior managers.
For those 10 years I saw Freire’s concept of ‘naive consciousness’ in action with people thinking that they had done enough by just turning up to a meeting – never sure of what the outcome should be. I saw projects and committees turn into social gatherings with no obvious outcomes.
I saw good ideas rejected because of dogma – held up by tenant chair persons who were just ignorant of everything – except of the power their position gave them.
If we did do this sort of thing I would insist on training being provided. Mind you the training I offer to tenant board members of my own org’ is often badly attended. So when we engage with them at Board meetings about my section’s work, they do not understand and meetings descend into chaos.
The training and support for people who wish to take part needs to be provided and improved in order to get to Frieire’s desired state of ‘critical consciousness’ before we opt for more of this style of democratic inclusion.
BTW: everything I have said above about citizens assemblies can also be applied to modern day Parliament too I’m afraid. And proceedings at most local Council meetings are no better.
Democracy is in crisis because it give politicians too much power over techincal issues of providing services to the country and secondly we have stopped listening to those who actually know what they are talking about or we just overpay them to shut them up.
I do not think that there is anything wrong with citizens groups per se. But what I do worry about is the potential for them to become the source of astro-turfing.
There have been inquires in my area regarding the activities of residents associations that are used as support for local projects that have been accepted as support which is not really there. Fortunately public consultations have taken place as well, but there is the potential for projects to be pushed which the public are indifferent to until the effects are felt.
My conclusion is that elected individuals should always seek to make sure that proper consultations take place to make sure that the views of citizens groups do really represent what is wanted. In my own experience this is often down to the integrity of local representatives, but probably needs more regulation.
I have spent nearly 20 twenty years now working in the public sector Sandra.
As far as elected officials are concerned I have seen plenty of bullying and incompetence. The best local councillors I’ve seen in my area are actually the Lib-Dems!
My view as a professional person is that no organisation in the public sector should need a councillor to check up on whether or not local people had been consulted on their work because they should be doing by now – it should be normalised.
If such a department is not consulting, the department head should be dismissed.
I have a very low opinion of politicians I’m afraid and to set them up as guardians of processes when increasingly we should be protected from THEM is something I just cannot stomach anymore.
However, your example above has also happened to me – my organisation actually set up a community group and then made out it had actually set itself up in order to access some funding from Government!!!
But these shenanigans also reflect that Government funding for community development work is at all time low since 2010 – with austerity squeezed budgets meaning community start ups have flat- lined in my area at elast. So, the Government reaps what it sows – or rather what it doesn’t.
I still say though that rather than see a Councillor, service users need to talk to heads of service and delivery managers on a regular basis using the principles of kaizen – continuous improvement – plan – do – review. That’s all that needs to happen. You don’t need a political intermediary in the 21st century. Not at all – not at a local level anyway.
But now we have elected Mayors. A sign of a failure as far as I am concerned.
Mayors are a disastrous idea
I note even Ken Livingstne agrees
And he odd things about Lib Dems was they wanted to be councillors: that was their ambition