I have written about this before here, but make no apology for doing so again.
Democracy is not a spectator sport. In this video, I explain why writing to your MP is still one of the most powerful democratic actions you can take—and how a simple tool can help you do it with ease.
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
You really need to be writing to your MP.
It's something that I've been doing for decades, if I'm honest, and I never expect to get an amazing or illuminating answer, but I still do it, and I still do it for a very good reason.
First of all, democracy is not a spectator sport. It's a participatory sport, and one of the ways in which we can participate in democracy is by letting our MPs know what we think.
I assure you, they notice. I have met a lot of MPs throughout my career, and not one of them ignored the letters that they got. Even if they did not supply great answers to the questions that were posed to them, it's still a fact that every single one of them monitored what people were saying to them.
That was how they worked out what was of concern to people in their constituency. So if you don't write about what matters to you, your MP may not be raising issues which are of concern to you in the House of Commons, in the questions that they ask, in the speeches that they make, even in the preparation that they might have for the next general election.
So you need to write to your MP. And I have tried to make this easier for you because I have developed a Chat GPT Prompt, which is available right below this video, or the link to it is available below this video, and you can use that to turn the content of any article that you've read, including ones that appear on my blog, again, linked below this video, as the basis for a letter to your MP, and I think that makes the process of letter writing about as easy as it can get.
And the reason why using a Chat GPT prompt is also important is because that prompt lays out a list of things that you might want your MP to do. Now, you might not want to include that in every single one of the letters you write; there are some things that it produces which you might think are not appropriate to a particular situation. Of course, feel free to change whatever Chat GPT produces to suit your circumstances.
But the point is, any letter to an MP is improved if you actually say what you want. Like, you want a reply, or you want them to ask a question in the House of Commons, or you want them to lay down a motion in the House of Commons or, and this one is particularly important, you want them to pass your letter on to a minister so that the minister might comment, and by the way, if an MP does that, the minister is duty-bound to provide a reply which must be sent to you. As a result, your letter might put an issue on not just your MP's radar, but on that of a minister as well, and again, they will monitor what is sent to them.
So, how does this work?
Well, first of all, you have to write to your own MP. And you have to include your own name and address, and some of them now insist on your phone number.
Then, be clear about the issue that you want to raise. My Chat GPT prompt will do that for you if you copy and paste an article into it. But if you don't want to do that, be clear about what you are asking and what your opinion on the issue is, and then, as I've said, ask them to take specific actions.
But one thing to be careful about, don't be too political. If you are, and for example, say "You are a typical Tory, or you are a typical Lib Dem, a typical Green, or typical Labour, or SNP" or whatever, then you will get a political response, and it may not be what you want. So, appear to be reasonable. That's really important.
And do make sure that what you are doing will be followed up. In other words, if you send it to the MP and you just get an automatic reply saying, 'Thank you for your letter, we will deal with it in due course', and they don't come back to you, send them a chaser. Make sure that they take action, because, my point is, and I said it at the beginning, democracy is about involvement, and you want your MP to know that you are involved in creating opinion in their constituency, and therefore, what your opinion is does matter to your MP because you are going to try to shape things whether they do or not, and that's the point about writing to your MP it still matters because you can shape outcomes.
You might not think you'll make a big difference, and let's be honest, in the grand scheme of things, you may not, but unless you try, nothing will happen, and making sure that something happens does matter.
Taking further action
If you want to write a letter to your MP on the issues raised in this blog post, there is a ChatGPT prompt to assist you in doing so, with full instructions, here.
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I wrote to my MP urging him to vote against the Welfare and PiP bill (its first incarnation). He replied, voted against it (before amendment) and has invited me to join a Zoom meeting to discuss further developments. Admittedly I am a former activist who resigned from the Labour Party in disgust but I am slightly cheered by the fact that he does appear to be taking note.
Very good.
There is hope.
If there were multi-member constituencies – say three MPs per constituency with the same number of MPs in total – then constituents would have a choice of MPs to write to.
A constituent could write to one or more MPs and there might be a choice between MPs belonging to different parties, different sexes, a range of ages and different ethnicities.
In a heathy democracy there should be this enhanced real choice that goes beyond mere proportionality between the political parties, which PR with single-member constituencies will produce but with a House of Commons full of far too many party conformists.
To produce a really invigorated and vibrant HoC, and a HoC truly representative of the multi-ethnic, sexual and demographic nature of the UK – or some sub set of it after independence referendums for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – then PR with multi-member constituencies is de rigueur.
Agreed
RIchard, it seems your extensive ChatGPT prompt has now been internalised, because I just typed in:
“I want you to write a letter to my MP.
The letter should raise my concerns about the issues raised in this blog post ”
then I accidentally sent this as the sole prompt, and it generated a response that matched the outline that your whole prompt asked for!
The URL was https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/07/03/someone-elses-job-someone-elses-problem/ which reflects how privatisation in the 80s and 90s and division of responsibilities is leading us to crumbling infrastructure by incentivising skipping spending on day-to-day maintenance and just hoping nothing breaks on your watch.
Excellent….
Thanks. I’m sorry but I don’t see the ChatGPT prompt, or a link, anywhere. This might be entirely my lack of observation. If it is there may I suggest you make it a bit more prominent? Or maybe it’s only in the video itself? (I only ever read the transcripts, but that’s my problem: I prefer reading to watching or listening)
Hi, Robin
Link added at the bottom of the post now. Sorry…
Inspired by your work on this site, I wrote to my MP in early June, using ChatGPT to assist with the drafting. I complained about the misleading, inaccurate way in which Government finance is discussed, and the negative impacts this has on policy choices. I talked, too, about Government “borrowing” and the way the realities of this are misrepresented. I asked for a couple of things to be done. My MP has recently responded (with AI assistance I suspect!) agreeing with me.
She said she will raise the matter with colleagues on the Treasury Select Committee (I assume she means the 2 Lib Dems) and explore how we might encourage a review of how fiscal data is presented to Parliament and the public. She also supported the idea of improving public financial literacy, and promised to write to the Chancellor to ask what steps the Government is taking in this regard.
On its own, this exchange of letters in all likelihood won’t achieve anything. But if we all follow your advice and write to our MPs, maybe things will start to move.
Thanks, Cliff
I agree with you, Cliff. I’ve sent many emails to my MP and the one in our neighbouring constituency suggesting they read blogs and books and watch videos by Richard, Steve Keen and Stephanie Kelton on the fallacies of and garbage that is neoclassical and neo liberal economics, in the vain hope they will digest the material for themselves and also encourage the Chancellor to do so. Hmmm, I wonder if she and they will change?!
Maybe not.
The status quo suits them very well.
I wholly endorse what Richard has said about writing to your own constituency MP. It is very important they know what their future voters think.
But I would add, don’t not write to other MPs, ie not your constituency MP, for example, those on a particular select committee whose issues interest you; or a spokesperson on a particular issue for a party, such as the shadow Secretary of State. They also need prompting, but always politely.
You are right of course. I should write to my MP but I’ve sort of given up. His stock replies seem to be written by by the central press office, seem designed to contain enough virtuous platitudes to send his constituents back to sleep and never actually tackle the issue. Apart from convincing me never to vote for him or Labour ever again it seems a waste of time. I know I should be more of a fighter but I’m not. Sorry.
I emailed my MP , using your chatgpt link, about the scrapping of proposed changes to small and micro businesses reporting , he is a Conservative and normally diametrically opposed to anything I propose. However on this occasion he is going to contact the department for business and let me know what they say. Partial result.
Yay!