Politics has become poisonous. I don’t think it needs to be. Government doesn’t work. I think it can.

I have some ideas, and because I have no power and no platform, writing them down here is the best I can do. The positive ideas will be at the end, and it gets negative first.

Bear with me. The ideas make more sense with the framing.

What do you MEAN, government doesn’t work?

Isn’t that the kind of thing neoliberals and libertarians say? Government is bad, and then they get elected and prove it?

I’m an optimist, and I tend to believe that governments are full of people who sincerely want to make places better and run them well. Even the selfish ones, and the misguided ones. The problem is that by now the structure of democratic government is against them. It can’t work.

Some reasons why:

  1. There are bigger powers than governments. Most democracies are market economies, with mass information systems. Yes, technically, the governments make the laws, but we have all seen what happens when they try to do so against those forces.

  2. A lot of the power they have, they’ve given away. As democracies have developed, many have seen democratic power itself as a thing to be feared, and have created all sorts of mechanisms by which anything considered truly important can be put out of democratic reach. Quangos, courts, international treaties, theoretically permanently binding settlements, and so on. This is presented positively as “de-politicising”, which glosses over the fact that in means nobody has a say in those things any more. It suits, at times, to be able to say “there’s nothing we can do”, and purposely make it so.

  3. Any elected government has the wrong incentives. In a democratic system, the one big incentive is re-election, to stay in power. This is not the same thing as the good of the country, though we pretend it’s a proxy for it. Short of that, the next biggest incentive for the individuals involved is to make things better for themselves. Generally, people stand for election for civic-minded reasons, but incentives weigh more than we like to think.

  4. Voters don’t vote for what they think they’re voting for. We vote for representatives, when what we want is action and improvement. Lip service is paid to manifestos and platforms, but practically voters have no say in what is done, only who is selected to do it. So it’s a complicated dance in which we try to judge who will do the most of the sort of thing we want and the least of what we fear, all the while looking at what everybody else seems to think, and vote on vibes and prejudice rather than on what changes we want to see. Often the only clear decision we can be confident of is “we don’t like what we’ve got, let’s try the alternative”.

  5. Because of all this, voters don’t believe politicians at all. This is corrosive. To be elected, politicians have to promise things, and because of the reasons above, they can’t deliver. Voters don’t expect them to deliver, so vote in an information vacuum, for all the insistent media coverage. We try to judge character, while despising them all. A person standing on a platform of truthfulness would get nowhere because the message would be so unwelcome, yet we wonder why we get politicians who lie and prevaricate.

All this sets us up for unrealistic aims, implemented by glossy incompetents, using levers of power that have been deliberately disconnected. We’re not unlucky in our governments, it’s what we’re set up to get.

A loss of trust

This being the case, though few of us want to admit the hopelessness of our governments, it isn’t surprising that an increasing proportion of the population in many democracies openly admire other sorts of government. When our governments are feeble, authoritarianism can look attractively effective.

But if the incentives are bad for elected politicians, they’re worse for unelected ones. In that case, by doing away with the problems of short-termism, the raw incentive of power itself is the only thing that remains. “Benevolent dictators” may be the absolute ideal, but are vanishingly rare. When there is the chance of unchecked power, it tends to go to those who want power for its own sake. And there are no checks on them, no way for a dissatisfed people to throw them out peacefully.

Democracy, as Churchill said, is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried. So it’s worth thinking about how we can fix the current state of it.

The bogeyman of populism

Leaving aside the unhelpful words that are thrown around like “fascist”, “neoliberal”, “woke”, “progressive” and so on, many people feel that the root cause of our political problems is the rise of populism.

Those who do so are often right that the people who are the face of populism are deeply unpleasant. But in focusing on them, we miss what is really going on, and why the idea of populism exists to be exploited. It’s the endgame of this problem where we want democracy but don’t trust it.

The real divide in politics now is not between left and right, where the left is about the state and the vulnerable and the right about the market and self-sufficiency. Nor is it even between progressives, who think the world should move forward, and conservatives who don’t want change. Our party systems in most countries haven’t caught up with this, so politics is kind of divorced from reality, with weird results everywhere.

Now, on one side we have populists, who tell the people they can have everything they want even though it’s impossible.

And on the other, we have elites, who believe that they know better than the people what they need, but can’t say so outright and are therefore at a loss how to sell their programme.

The irony here, in passing, is that neither side believes in democracy at all, and only the fear that the other side might take control keeps them paying lip service to it. Populism tends to be attractive to authoritarians, and the elites generally believe that people are too stupid to be trusted with any say in power.

It’s important, here, to notice that it’s the seemingly inevitable association of authoritarianism with populism that stops us facing why there is any populism – which is that it makes the promise that democracy should be making, that of listening to the people and giving them a say in how they are governed and what their lives are like. If people believed that democracy was still doing that, populism would have no selling point.

A new dividing line

On the face of it, this new dividing line is not an encouraging one. I don’t want to have to choose between people who lie that they’re listening to me, and people who think I shouldn’t have any say and should leave everything to them. But this IS the actual biggest point of difference we now have, and everything broadly comes back to it.

Even if the actual political parties haven’t coalesced around the new reality yet, entirely.

I have to hope, though, that a lie-free non-authoritarian populism can emerge, because otherwise by default we end up with a hollowed-out democracy if we have a democracy at all.

Do I hear a skeptical laugh?

Can populism exist without the lies and power-hunger? Maybe not, but the aspects that people actually want could be co-opted. You might not call it populism in that case, but it’s a moot point.

What people want is a sense that they have a say, that what they think and feel counts for something, is worthy of respect, and makes a difference.

As I’ve written before, I am generally optimistic about people, and I think this desire is completely reasonable and would be healthy to satisfy. For everybody. If that puts me on the populist side of the dividing line, so be it. I simply can’t believe that a few people, no matter how able, can be trusted to know what’s best for everybody.

Is a society with no “us and them” possible?

Something I wrote recently attracted responses that worry me.

A substantial proportion of people take it for granted that government is a “them”, and “they” are an enemy. This in democracies, which makes a nonsense of democracy as an idea. These people won’t listen to any suggestion that democratic government is what we’ve developed to be able to work together as a society. For them, the idea is ridiculous. Government, whoever any of us vote for, exists to exploit the rest of us, control us, and whittle away at our freedoms.

The interesting thing about this is that in a way, our democratic governments sort of agree with that. They try to get our votes, but then thereafter see their responsibility as doing what we should want rather than what we do want, and protecting us from our own wishes.

Governments know, better than anybody, that governing is a horrible compromised job. There are trade-offs and no easy answers, every good must be paid for, and not every bad can be prevented. The problem is that they don’t believe the public can handle all that, so they pretend they’re doing what we want while doing what they think is actually best, and hoping political skills will cover the difference.

And then we wonder why trust in politics and government is draining away, as the responses I mentioned show. Nobody believes in the system we all loudly claim is best, and blames another group or side for the problems.

Could we turn that around, and make the “them” of government into “us” in some way?

So what would that look like?

At some point, I think, a party leader is going to realise the implications of the rise of populism, and create a platform that’s all about direct democracy in some form. They may not believe in it themselves, or like the implications in terms of dilution of power, but take the trade-off as a way to get any power at all.

And then we’re going to see a very interesting face-off between those who seize on the idea of having active say in government, and those who react with horror because government is too important for non-professionals to be involved.

I’ll be clear, I’m on the first side. But I see too many people talking about the stupidity of the general public, and limitations on who should be allowed to vote, to assume that mine is the most popular.

What could we do?

I’ll be honest, I don’t know. Everything from this point is speculation, and anybody is free to call any of it unworkable nonsense. I’m just laying out some ideas that show the kind of thing I’d like to see, and that I think would jolt us out of what isn’t working.

Option One: true direct democracy

Technically, I don’t see why every citizen couldn’t vote on every issue, and approve every single law.

We’d need technology, probably apps, and infrastructure to inform us, and there are all sorts of awkward questions about turn-outs required for things to pass, and verification, and on and on. It would be frighteningly knotty to accomplish, and I imagine everybody would dismiss it as completely impractical. But I set it out as the ultimate option, the lodestar, and I’d like to at least see it seriously discussed.

We’d retain a legislative body to draft the laws in the first place, naturally, and we should have an elected executive for rapid decision-making. The population-wide stage would be more like the current UK House of Lords – consultative, and with the power to block or approve.

Option Two: a permanent citizens’ assembly

Speaking of the House of Lords, we could replace it with random people.

Rather than either an appointed body or an elected one, we could treat it like jury service, making it constantly representative. Advocates for the upper house often argue that there is long-standing expertise there, but structuring the approval chamber like a court could work well, with the expertise and permanent oversight being part of the administration rather than the decision-making, and having to make their case to normal people, such as are affected by the proposed legislation.

Option Three: radical localism

Another approach is delegating much more to small areas of the country, allowing much more difference, and much more immediate feedback and control. Not just token things, but real actual power over tax and funding and how and what is done.

I don’t think this would solve the problems by itself, because some systemic issues are at the level of the whole country (at least), and need national attention and action. But the more that could be done locally, the easier many of the issues would be to deal with, and (as important), harder to avoid.

Option four: official online discussion forums

This is different to option one. It’s not about the voting, it’s about thrashing things out.

It happens on social media, but isn’t effective there. The Plurality project has interesting ideas about it, and there’s more to explore in what they’ve found than I can detail here. Even if nothing else is done, it’s surprising how effective a public well-moderated place for exchanging views and fears can be.

Imagine if there was no need for polls, because we all had somewhere we could actually see directly what everybody thought about issues?

… and what are those supposed to achieve?

Government of a whole population is a messy compromised business.

In times of peace and growth, a general sense that things are improving papers over a lot of the cracks. In the proverbial “interesting times”, the compromises show up harshly, and we get the cycle of distrust and anger we see now.

The fact is that there IS no “best thing to do” about almost anything. The people who say so are either lying or deluded. Every possible course of action has winners and losers, pros and cons, costs and benefits.

We are seeing the argument more and more that the only chance of picking between all these actions is to leave it to the most capable. That we’re all too ignorant, and a subset of us had better take charge for our own good. This is a trap. Nobody is that capable, and if anyone thinks they are, they shouldn’t be near the levers of power.

No, the grown-up thing to do is to accept that there are trade-offs, and make them willingly, en masse.

So, in my thinly-sketched options, the first thing to be achieved is as direct consent as possible for anything that’s done, and no space for things to be slipped through for our own good. If it isn’t possible to persuade a majority that it’s the best thing to do … who is it best for? This question needs to be unavoidable.

And the second thing is subtler but as important: the consent needs to be not only actual but felt. People need to feel that they had a say, whether they were on the winning side of a debate or not. Generally, people are able to accept that they didn’t get what they wanted, just as long as they can feel there was a reason and they had the chance to make their case.

The third thing – looseness, for want of a better word.

Not only is there no best thing to do, but the world of tomorrow won’t be the world of today. We need the flexibility to try things, and be able to say we were wrong. The long-standing assumption that stability can only be achieved by locking things in place hasn’t worked out. I am pretty sure that we’d have longer-lasting results if we were more willing to change and adapt. And there would be less fear of radical solutions. Which frankly we need.

The obvious objection is that we’d be prey to manipulation. Imagine the wrong ideas being seeded and running amok, the bad actors spreading bad ideas!

To which I say: is it more likely everybody can be manipulated, or that a chosen subset can be manipulated? How do we know how much manipulation is already happening? If everything was where we can all see it, would it be worse? Come to that, how happy are we we with how things are working now at all?

Anyway, the combination of these things should turn government from a “them” into an “us”.

Would it? I don’t know.

I’m no political genius, or any kind of leader, and my ideas aren’t worth much.

I do firmly believe, though, that anything that doesn’t fix that problem is just rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. If my ideas aren’t the best ones, other people should be coming up with others.

Otherwise I fear where we’re headed. Human society has an irresistable urge towards “us and them” in some form, and too many of the possibilities are frightening. It feels odd to me that many of the people who claim to fear those possibilities, and see them in the rise of populism, don’t see trust as the solution. Trust in the population, otherwise who are we saving from what?