I agree with David Purdy that the real issues that we need to collectively deal with today are the economic and environmental crises. But the character of these big issues is such that we won't get the right sort of solution to them from a Parliament that demonstrates the attitude we have seen towards problems of social choice.
Think about the deep nature of the big crises. The economic crisis was the end and failure of "gentlemanly capitalism"---a system by which agents (bankers) were assumed to be the trustworthy delegates of pension fund beneficiaries, shareholders, etc. But they weren't trustworthy, and ultimately they took down the financial system and the world economy with them. Rebuilding a way of allocating capital is an important political task today. But wouldn't we expect a group---our MPs---who have abused their own institutional position in such an analogous way, to be rather blind to the deep causes of the financial problem?
Similarly with climate change. Despite widespread recognition of the dangers of climate change and the sorts of action we need to take to counter it, there is a sense that collectively we continue to "fiddle our expense account with nature." Everyone's doing it, so no one's responsible ... We haven't been caught yet, so why not continue ... We're not bad, carbonophagy just creeps up on us ... We will have to change our systemic dishonesty to nature and to the future if we are to reduce our carbon emissions. But how can a group that has become institutionalised into a culture of "getting away with whatever you can" really change our political decision-making to tackle a problem which requires us to abandon exactly that thinking.
The way these bigger issues are dealt with will reflect the institutions through which our collective wills are exercised. And the nature of the issues suggest that Parliament as it now stands will not generate the right kind of understanding of the world to solve these bigger issues.
