Brexit: A clash of democracies

What even is a democracy?

In Britain at the moment, two groups of people act like they know the answer, constantly pouring abuse over the other group. This goes to the very heart of the mess - constitutional, political, personal - that we are currently in. Until we get to the bottom of it we are as a country in mortal peril of either falling prey to violent populists who will, despite what they say, take power for themselves and ruin millions of lives, or of descending into a state of disempowered sullen and permanent hatred of unaccountable politicians who seem to ignore the people, until one day the people have had enough and revolution breaks out.

What you think is currently happening in Britain is possibly strongly shaped by which way you voted in 2016 (disclosure: I voted Remain, but that's immaterial to this I hope). Everyone is fighting for that slippery spot at the top of The High Moral Ground and there isn't room for us all.

There's not much analysis going on anymore, but here is some. All this goes to the two different forms of democracy that have collided, and the differing mandates that they deliver.

In 2016, one system challenged the other for legitimacy. No-one - certainly not the Prime Minister of the time - considered the implications of this and we live with them now.

On the one hand, we have the system of direct democracy. This is the purest form of democracy and in one form goes back to the Ancient Greeks (though there only free men could vote). This is decision making by plebiscite, or referenda, with the citizenship making decisions after which a group of individual delegates then execute their instructions.

On the other, we have representative democracy. This is the form of democracy that has evolved in the last two hundred years or more in every Western state. It involves the election of individuals to a legislature (a Parliament) where they make choices on our behalf. They are elected, regularly, and we take a view each time on whether their outlook, opinions and values reflect the sort of position we would like to see taken across a range of issues - or not.

Direct democracy is the 'purest' form. As a population, we simply tell our leaders what to do. What could be clearer? But it has some pretty serious drawbacks. Good decision making depends on time, expertise, debate and commitment. It usually requires people to really focus on the detail of something. We could try and do all this ourselves and there are certain forms of 'citizen's assembly' that attempt to do so, but because we have busy lives and some of these issues are intensely complex (fancy going through a 200-page bill on trade relations with South America yourself or on the safety of electrical goods, or the regulation of the insurance industry?), we have developed a process by which we allow others to do the heavy lifting and handle it. They debate it, committees look at the issues, improve the thinking and they vote. Imagine what life would be like if we had to do all this, all the time? And even if we decided only to look at, or vote on, the really important issues...who chooses what the really important issues actually are? I may not care about your important issue and you may not care about mine. Someone somewhere else might well be deciding, like a President, and only letting the people have a say when it suits him or her?

Representative democracy is the other approach. It's far from perfect. We cannot keep an eye on everything our representatives do; ultimately we must trust them, based on our view of who they are and what they stand for. But, given that every 5 years, in the UK, we have the chance to sack them, it's been a system that has seemed to endure. Vitally - and this really is a big deal - we must focus here on the system. Not at this point the people in it (I will come to that). Thinking that the latest bunch of MPs are a shower does not mean the system is inherently broken, and that the People must take over. It means that the latest crop of MPs are low quality and we should vote them out.

Brexit was the collision of these two systems of democracy. It needn't have been. The Referendum was, constitutionally, advisory. Now, to be clear, I am not suggesting that it had no legitimacy and should have been ignored (leaving aside any claims of who broke what laws etc, at this point). But it was constitutionally advisory for a very good reason - because by being so, it tried to ensure that the two forms of democracy would not collide. It said representative democracy was still the primary system. When Cameron said that he was going to ignore that, and treat it as an instruction whatever the outcome (which he did because he thought he would win, and he wanted an end to it), he jeopardised this clarity and set up the current car crash.

The result? Half the country enraged now, three years later, because their democratic vote hasn't been acted on. The other half enraged because Parliament has been suspended. Both claim 'the end of democracy' and scream at each other online and in the streets. Yet In a pure sense, both are right. And wrong. It depends on which system you give precedence.

In other, more sane times, perhaps we might have been able to get through this. Perhaps there would have been a popular vote and we would have been able to accept that our decent, detail orientated, thorough, MPs were going to work through it and take a considered view, whichever way that fell, that we could accept? That we haven't been able to do that is the fault of two major problems in our representative system, and the exploitation of these by a third player:

The first has been the system of governance of our representative system. This also goes to personal ethics and the decline of public service. It has been coming since the Expenses scandal, when we became aware that some (though far from all) MPs were milking the system for their own ends. Tensions had been rising through the Blair government about the Iraq war (people were not feeling heard). This was followed by the financial crash and all its implications, in which the banks were not seen to suffer whilst millions did. MPs walked straight into this mess by being caught lining their own pockets. They, and we, live with that disaster still, with the reality of austerity since 2009 sharpening the country's pain.

The second is our electoral system. We have a First Past the Post system that means that in many constituencies, up to half (sometimes many more) of those who vote end up feeling that they needn't have even bothered. Their vote means little or nothing. This is a total disaster for representative systems ultimately (particularly in times of systemic stress like recessions etc) because they only work if the periodic opportunity to be heard is there. These days, with 24/7 everything and social media we are more aware than ever about what our elected representatives are up to, and if you felt your vote was utterly pointless and always will be because of where you live...what do you do with those feelings? What do you do if you voted Tory and want to leave the EU, but Jo Swinson or Catherine West is your MP? What do you do if you voted LibDem or Labour and want to Remain but Jacob Rees-Mogg or Dominic Raab is your MP?

Don't know? This is where we come to the third factor. With trust in MPs already at rock bottom, people feeling powerless, and voting seemingly pointless, up step the populists and the power crazy. Their first move is to help you shape and direct your anger. They often start with the system itself - representative democracy. They are not listening to you because they are all elites! The system was built for them - it's a swamp (the MPs expenses scandal played right into that one, alas)! You can hear the words of Donald Trump. The system is at fault, they say - all this talking and arguing and hand wringing! We just need firm action...it's very simple! For good measure, you can extend this massive blame game to the judiciary (the Judges are all crooked and against you too) and the Civil Service - two other key features of 'the system'. It's not long before we are being asked to sweep it all away in favour of the 'will of the people'.

No surprise, to me at least, that when Nigel Farage set up the Brexit Party, he didn't build democracy into it at all. It's a Limited Company with a Board, controlled by him. He is on record as hating the way UKIP's democratic system worked (I am no fan of UKIP in any way, but his frustration was pointed). His power-to-the-people rhetoric feels to me like the shrieking of a man who wants to be able to take 95% of the decisions himself. As he already does.

How do we fix all this? If only I knew. For a start though, we have to understand what this clash is really about - precedence of one tradition over another. We have to talk about it at this level, rather than pouring pails of excrement over each other everywhere. We have to work out which system we want here. If it's direct democracy, we have to be aware that no-one has actually made that system work for thousands of years. We must understand that when calls for it re-emerge, based on the 'will of the people' etc, (with all their plausibility) they are often led by an authoritarian figure who, history teaches us, wants to manage and exploit that will for his or her ends to destroy democracy in short order.

If we want representative democracy to sustain, we have to make it work. That starts with Proportional Representation in our voting system. Would that create coalition governments more often? Maybe. People's votes need to matter. We simply cannot go on with millions of people thinking that there is just no point in bothering to vote, because that will take us to national disaster.