Equality by lot

John Rentoul writes in The Independent:

[Nigel Farage’s] leaflets, posted through every door in the country, say: “Politics is broken. Let’s change it for good.” Where have we heard that before? On the R side of politics, that’s where. The Remainers in Change UK left their parties complaining that politics is broken. They too rail against the two-party system, even as the two main parties’ combined share of the vote in European election polls is now 34 per cent.

On the other L side of politics, the left-liberal side, the consensus is also that politics is broken. It was a powerful part of Jeremy Corbyn’s message when he was the future once. For many Corbyn supporters, “politics” is an elite conspiracy against the many that needs to be swept aside by radical forms of democracy.

The same theme animated the Extinction Rebellion protesters when they had a sit-in in Parliament Square. The government has done too little to slow down climate change, they said, so politics has failed. As ever, the problem with our democracy is that it is the wrong kind of democracy. Extinction Rebellion want a citizens’ assembly – a group of non-politicians chosen by lot to discuss the climate emergency. Once upon a time, “the Commons of England in parliament assembled” was a form of citizens’ assembly, but now the protesters want to tear it down and start again.

Of course not, says Rentoul. It’s all just a technical issue.

To change the rules to allow an exhaustive ballot would require a yes/no vote. MPs would also vote no to that, because voting yes would in effect be voting yes to the deal: if there were to be an exhaustive ballot in the Commons, a no-deal exit would be eliminated in the first round, and the deal would defeat Remain in the second.

[…]

There is probably a name for this paradox, by which a group of voters ends up with a less favoured option because it cannot agree the mechanism that would arrive at the most favoured one. But it is not necessarily undemocratic, or evidence that politics is broken.

Better just keep things as they are.

“Politics is broken” is a powerful slogan, especially when parliament has failed to act on a referendum. But it is a dangerous one. Some of the alternatives to parliamentary democracy are less benign than citizens’ assemblies. Anti-politics sentiment can easily turn anti-democratic, and Farage’s opponents should be careful about feeding it.

Filed under: Ballot measures, Elections, Press, Sortition |