The way forward... a potential positive future

If it's on the side of a big red bus... does it have more credibility?

Broken democracy?

The Brexit referendum in 2016 cut across the traditional Conservative and Labour politics of the United Kingdom with a result that was 51.89% in favour of leaving the EU and 48.11% in favour of remaining in the EU. A less than 2% swing would have reversed the decision. The campaign was vitriolic with accusations of lies on one side and projected fear on the other. That has continued and there is no sign of 'the country coming together again'.

Voting pattern of those eligible
to vote in the 2016 Referendum 

Though some Leave voters argue the referendum was clear, I do not believe one can really argue that it was an overwhelming result either way nor what the desires of those who did not vote are, one can only say that just over one third of those allowed to vote wanted to leave the EU and just under one third wanted to remain in the EU.

It appears to me that there was significant discontent with the government of the time from some areas in the UK, particularly those which had suffered most under the austerity of that government. Many of those most affected by the referendum were denied a vote. Alongside this it has been argued that those whose lives will be affected, by that I mean the young, were also denied a vote. And here I compare with the young people allowed a vote in the Scottish Independence Referendum.

As someone who holds a British passport, but has lived outside the UK for more than half my adult life I look at the UK as a mixture of outsider and insider. It appears to me that the UK democracy is severely broken. Here there are some of my thoughts on the remedy and healing.

Confrontational Politics

One of my concerns with the UK politics and democracy, which is echoed in the USA, is that it is confrontational and divisive. In reality, there are only two political parties in control of the UK and the referendum question with it's simplistic yes/no question highlighted this.

House of Commons in Westminster
showing benches facing 'the enemy'

The House of  Commons in Westminster displays this confrontational approach with benches on two sides and the opposing parties facing each other. The leaders of the two parties face off across a table speaking or shouting into elderly German microphones. The parties heckle and disparage each other and there is something called Parliamentary Privilege which allows politicians to knowingly lie in the House of Commons and not face any consequences. The aim for each party appears to be to denigrate the other and to either stay in power or to take power from the other party. Listening to Prime Minister's Question Time has become what sounds like a childish slanging match more than a serious debate.

The EU Referendum was indicative of this confrontational approach. Since the question was a binary choice the Leave and Remain campaigns focussed on running down the other side rather than seeking any compromise or balance nor any consensual agreement. It was therefore inevitable that a section of the UK population would feel aggrieved and continue the battle to see their side 'win the war if not win the battle'. Because there were Remainers and Leavers in both of the two main parties this created a strange matrix and UK politics have been further fractured with the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn appearing to support the Conservative leader Theresa May, leaving the nearly 50% who support remaining in the EU feeling voiceless yet continuing the battle.

Binary politics

This confontational politics is played out with the traditional 'Left' vs 'Right' basically representing fiscal policy of public or private ownership of many of the utilities and functions needed for society to work. But that only tells half the story since either can be implemented in an authoritarian or libertarian manner. A two dimensional approach has been suggested in what is called the Political Compass where left and right are augmented by up and down for authoritarian and libertarian.

2017 General Election map
from Political Compass

If you look at the political parties in the UK taking place in the 2017 General Election then the Left/Right is probably as you would expect with the DUP/UKIP/Conservatives on the left and SNP/Scottish Socialist Party and Labour on left of centre.

Notice the Liberal Democrats are not much further left than the DUP but they are significantly differently placed in the Authoritarian-Libertarian axis. The SNP and the SDLP are both the same as far as the left-right fiscal policy are concerned but the SNP slightly more authoritarian than the SDLP.

Notice too that this is not a straight line running bottom left to top right, so it is not acceptable to class all fiscally conservative parties as authoritarian nor all fiscally left wing parties as libertarian.


If you take a look at the policies of the three main parties - Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat over the last 45 years you will see significant movement over their placement on the chart.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats have moved more than the Conservatives, moving in and out of different quadrants.

This shift demonstrates some of the reasons that traditional Labour voters feel disenfranchised.

A bicameral legislature

The UK has what is known as a bicameral legislature, which is just a complex way of saying it has two houses in the decision and law making government. In the UK this came about through history, as much of the UK structures have. The Lords and King ruled the UK. Then came Cromwell and the commoners held sway but they retained the House of Lords as a balancing of Lords and Commoners. The House of Lords could not make law, but it could review and change law, which would then be referred back to the House of Commons for approval. The House of Lords has come out in favour of remaining in the EU and has been threatened with being effectively destroyed if it uses it's reviewing position to 'thwart the will of the people'.

The whole idea of the Lords is really archaic, but the concept of a bicameral legislature has merit and has been used for thousands of years. James Maddison, one of the founding fathers of the USA, expressed it thus... 'The use of the Senate (the second house in the USA) is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system and with more wisdom, than the popular branch.' That expresses what the House of Lords should be.

An alternative structure

History has moved on and many modern democracies do not have a confrontational layout with an 'us versus them' layout but an arc. Alongside this the two concerns of government are constituency representation and national representation. It would thus be wiser to have two houses in the UK: The Constituency House and the National House. I believe these should be elected differently and have different functions.

Scottish Parliament, with a more modern
and less confrontational seating layout

The core to the Constituency House is that the majority of the electors in a constituency should prefer the person representing them to other choices.

Cyprus does this in a simple way: There is an election. If more than 50% of those who vote do so for one candidate that person is their candidate. If less than 50% then one week later it becomes a runoff election between the top two candidates. You can thus vote initially for your favourite candidate knowing that if they do not succeed there is the possibility of voting for the person you favour over others a week later unless they have already got the majority of the people in the constituency voting for them.

It also means you should always have more than half the electorate in favour of their representative. Frequently this is untrue in the UK and therefore people feel disenfranchised. The role of Constituency House Members of Parliament should be to represent the people in their constituency and to do what is best for their constituents. They are less concerned with what is best for the nation as a whole.

The National House is the direct opposite and should be concerned for the country as a whole and less for individual areas or constituencies. Sometimes the needs of the country might overshadow the needs of an individual area. That these two houses hold power together should create a balance where neither overwhelms the other. MPs for the National House should be elected by a form of proportional representation that means the politics of the country as a whole is realistically represented.

An alternative physical  layout 

In the Constituency House, political allegiance would be ignored
and MPs seated approximately due to geography 

Both houses should be seated in the shape of a horseshoe not in the confrontational layout currently used. In the Constituency House MPs should be seated according to geography not partly allegiance. Think of it as a giant arc with Cornwall at one end around through central England and Wales to Scotland and Northern Ireland at the other. This would mean MPs would sit near others who represent their area rather than those who might share their political views, almost forcing co-operation based on area rather than politics.

National House seating layout, showing seating
close to the results of the 2017 General Election

In the National House MPs would be seated by party affiliation relating to fiscal policy. The reason I specify relating to fiscal policy is that the UK, much like the USA has drawn up party lines in a confusing and unhelpful manner.

Both houses should also have the ability to show visual media in the houses. It is totally archaic in this day and age to not be able to show anything visual! It also creates a potential problem in that only audible learners and orators can be involved in the Houses of Parliament thus excluding a large segment of the population.

A codified constitution

As I explained in my previous blog post Constitutional Crisis in the UK? the UK doesn't have a written codified constitution. This I believe to be a major failure and which in the process of updating the structures of the UK democracy to the needs of the 21st century should also be rectified.

The 1689 Bill of Rights made Parliament sovereign and that has continued to this day. I believe it is time for the UK to have a codified written constitution and that parliament should no longer be sovereign but constrained by this new constitution.

There is a muddle too between the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which needs addressing. At the moment it is just causing stress.

When I see pictures of the British Cabinet meetings I am frankly horrified. It has become way too big. I very much doubt that any meaningful discussion can take place in a group that size. I suspect that one or two people actually control the agenda and decision making. This group needs slimming down to 12 people. That should be embodied into the constitution so that unwieldy sized groups do not grow again in the future.

Will this all ever happen?

The UK is currently spending an inordinate amount of money on renovating the Houses of Parliament, but not updating the inherent flaws in both the system and the buildings. Whilst British people often wish to claim that Westminster is the mother of all democracies, this is patently untrue and sadly reflects the misconceptions many from the UK have about their country.  It would be both better and cheaper to build something new that reflects the needs of a 21st century country. Keep the current Houses of Parliament as a museum to British History.

The second paragraph of the report recommending major restoration of the building includes these sentences:

Many of these systems were last replaced in the late 1940s and reached the end of their projected life in the 1970s and 1980s. The patch-and-mend approach which has seen the building through the decades since then is no longer sustainable. Intervention on a much larger scale is now required. Unless an intensive programme of major remedial work is undertaken soon, it is likely that the building will become uninhabitable.

I believe the 'patch-and-mend approach' has been the British way for centuries, not just the building but the political structures housed in the buildings, and it is time for a major overhaul. They are no longer fit for purpose.

So, will this ever happen? Sadly I doubt it. The UK spends a lot of it's time looking backwards rather than forwards. It spends a lot of it's time thinking that it's way is the best way.

Some of you will have noticed similarities to the Scottish Parliament as well as the European Union Parliament. The EU however functions more in a tricameral  than a bicameral structure with the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission, though the Commission in some ways functions as the professional civil service appointed by the countries it serves. The UK is in itself a mini-EU with three countries and a province. However it has a vastly inferior method of governance and less democratic than the EU. It needs to change.

Condorcet's jury theorem

'The Jury' by John Morgan, painted in 1861

Condorcet's jury theorem is about the way groups make decisions towards a given group of individuals arriving at the correct decision. Wikipedia explains it simply:

The assumptions of the simplest version of the theorem are that a group wishes to reach a decision by majority vote. One of the two outcomes of the vote is correct, and each voter has an independent probability p of voting for the correct decision. The theorem asks how many voters we should include in the group. The result depends on whether p is greater than or less than 1/2:

• If p is greater than 1/2 (each voter is more likely to vote correctly), then adding more voters increases the probability that the majority decision is correct. In the limit, the probability that the majority votes correctly approaches 1 as the number of voters increases.

• On the other hand, if p is less than 1/2 (each voter is more likely to vote incorrectly), then adding more voters makes things worse: the optimal jury consists of a single voter.

In other words if the issue is sufficiently simple that each individual has a greater than 50% chance of being correct, then adding more people increases that probability. If on the other hand the issue is sufficiently complex that each individual has a less than 50% chance of reaching the right conclusion then adding more people reduces the probability of reaching the correct result and a single wise and knowledgeable person is the optimal decision making size!

What I have observed over the last two years is that the issues relating to Brexit are complex and very few people understand the workings of the UK government let alone the pan-national EU governance. Indeed I would argue most people have a significantly less than 50% knowledge of even the basics of how the EU functions! Thus following Condorcet's jury theorem I would argue that a referendum and large national Cabinet are inevitably likely to make poor decisions for the country and for the population. From all I have seen the structure of UK governance is so antiquated it is no longer fit for purpose and needs urgent and radical change.