We need a new kind of politics: a vote every five years is not enough

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/may/13/new-politics-uk-vote-five-years-not-enough-democracy

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When you stand back and draw breath after this dramatic and surprising general election, there is a deficit in true democracy in the United Kingdom as worrying as the economic deficit. It is related to another kind of deficit: trust. Despite a long and vibrant democratic tradition, the “mother of all parliaments” is failing her children.

Voter turnout at this election, at 66.1%, although trumpeted as the highest since 1997, was only marginally higher than 2010’s 65% and was well behind the 71.4% who voted in Blair’s first victory. A depressing 7.5 million people – almost one in six adults – failed to even register to vote.

The UK parliament brings together 650 MPs representing, on average, almost 100,000 constituents each. Issues and solutions should therefore be able to rise bottom-up as well as top-down. The truth, however, is that parliament is far from representative. Although the number of women has risen by a third to 191, they still represent less than one in three MPs. While 43% of Labour MPs are now women which may bring a different and more collaborative style to the party, the eight Liberal Democrat MPs are all men. There are only 43 MPs from ethnic minority backgrounds, which is up 50%, but still only 7% of the total. More and more MPs seem to be career politicians with little experience of the working world about which they make decisions.

Most people feel as if they are watching a small body of powerful people make the real decisions behind closed doors

The major political parties also reduce the ability of MPs to genuinely represent the views of their local constituents because they are made to toe the line on so many issues. No longer is parliament an aggregate of local needs debated at national level.

Most people in the UK feel most of the time as if they are watching the spectacle of a small body of powerful people or organisations make the real decisions behind closed doors. They have lost the knowledge of how to influence and the habit of trying. They need to redevelop a sense of how their individual actions make a difference.

Voting once every five years is not the same as democracy. Interactive, responsive government is an aspiration cherished by many, promised by a number of political leaders, including our last three prime ministers, but is definitely not yet a reality.

In 2010-11, according to the Department for Communities and Local Government’s citizenship survey, 74% of people said it was important to be able to influence local decision making. Yet three years later, the Cabinet Office’s community life survey showed that only 41% of people took part in any civic participation in the last year, a statistically significant decrease compared to 2012-13. Only a third of people felt that they could influence decisions affecting their local area, a statistically significant decrease compared to the previous year (38%) and all other years since 2001. So there is a widespread thirst for participation in democracy that isn’t being quenched.

Many have talked about the lack of real power even at the centre of political life. Rory Stewart, the Conservative MP for Penrith and the Border, has said that being an MP is the most powerless position he has ever held, and wrote memorably: “You get there and you pull the lever, and nothing happens.” This system is not working for anyone: the tiny minority apparently in power or the powerless majority. It’s ittle wonder that so many people think there’s no point in voting. It’s time to tear down the Berlin Wall between politicians and citizens and reconnect. The UK invented modern, parliamentary democracy. We now need to reinvent it.

Related: Five million votes, two seats: smaller parties demand a change in the rules

The peculiar maths of this election may of course give rise to renewed cries for proportional representation. Just under 1.5 million people voted for the SNP and yet it won 56 seats. But the Green party won only one seat from just over 1.1 million votes.

The solution lies not in PR but elsewhere. The Tories created the rhetoric of “big society” without delivering on the substance or enabling mechanisms. It sounded very welcome, for example, that a petition with 100,000 signatures could trigger a parliamentary debate. In reality, these debates are usually staged on a Friday when most MPs are in their constituencies.

Participatory budgeting doesn’t happen nearly enough and when it does it’s often confined to a single area of spending such as childcare. The demands on councils to publish all their spending has often simply resulted in laundry lists that even the most time-rich and determined citizen activist would struggle to build into a coherent picture of priorities.

In an age where people can interrogate most companies and products online as well as elsewhere, the government still remains largely remote and inscrutable. We need to create new links between individuals and ministers.

Left and right are not the issue any more, just as Green should no longer be a party but rather a universal strategy. We need to reinvent politics altogether.

If nothing else, irrefutable maths requires this. We have a maximum of 40 years to halve carbon emissions and avoid the most dangerous climate change, the next 10 being the most critical. We need to actively engage NHS staff and the public to be proactively involved in everything from better diets and more exercise to the constant improvement of care through pooling the observations and ideas of frontline clinicians. No politicians invite us to improve the delivery of services in the profession or sector in which we work or give us the tools by which to achieve it. Yet the technology to enable us to all be involved has never been more plentiful.

This election has lacked a powerful ideology to inspire people, to bind us as citizens into a common purpose. Huge issues have barely been touched on and, tragically, the party that raised two of them – the Liberal Democrats, with their manifesto commitments on mental health and education – were wiped out.

People are starting to declare very passionately the level at which they feel they can genuinely have a say and need to have an influence. It seems to have strong echoes of what the ancient Greeks felt about democracy in Athens: that once you get beyond 15,000 to 20,000 people – the “polis” or city from which the name “politics” is derived – it’s difficult for people to really feel they have influence.

We need many more mayors leading cities; much more participatory budgeting by local authorities; a North of England and a Midlands assembly; citizens’ juries and regular votes and informed debates, both digitally and in public meetings, on issues as critical as immigration, food poverty, the housing crisis, care for the elderly and the future of the NHS. That way we can live up to what the Athenians created and held dear: true democracy.

It is in the mutual self-interest of the state and the citizen to form a new relationship of collaboration. We are all capable and we are all vulnerable. We must work together in that spirit.

This is an edited extract from Paul Twivy’s book, Be Your Own Politician, published by Biteback Publishing