Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I feel discomforted by being at Bournemouth. I spoke at the ippr fringe meeting on democracy at Bournemouth. The best contributions were by Meg Russell of the Constitution Unit and Francesca Klug, who helped draft the Human Rights Act. I addressed my remarks to the Minister, Michael Wills, who is in charge of the Gordon Brown’s democratic programme (except, it seems, Citizens Juries – who IS responsible for the unfolding debacle?). I said that while it is extraordinary and indeed historic for a Government to place the nature of the constitution as a whole into public debate, many congratulations, etc, the exercise is taking on all the signs of trying to cure the symptoms not the illness.
My argument is that there is a growing, catastrophic collapse in trust in our institutions (see the demands for a referendum on the EU treaty) and this is not going to be solved by a consultation processes that fails to let go and trust the voters. Anyway, it does not really matter what I said in 5 minutes. The point of fringe meetings is to watch and listen to Ministers in a relatively informal context. The Minister denied that there is a catastrophic loss of trust, to put the record straight on that point. He insisted that real changes were being planned, proposals he could not announce “that will make you happy, Anthony”. This is something I look forward to.
I hope ippr will have a podcast of the event.
