Jon Bright (London, OK): Decent article by George Monbiot in the Guardian today on the lack of participation in British politics. Brown has perceived the problem, he says, but looks like he will do little more than paper over the cracks. And he makes the interesting point that the idea of a Yes/No vote on the EU treaty is absurd for anyone who actually wants a say in the EU:
A referendum containing a single question is as disempowering as leaving the decision to other people. If the treaty contains 448 articles, we should be permitted to answer a set of questions that reflects this breadth - not 448 perhaps, but at least a few dozen. Otherwise we have no means of expressing what we want: Europe good or bad is meaningless if we are not permitted to define what Europe represents. You might think that voting on a long list of questions sounds crazy. If so, it shows how far short of true democracy your demands now fall. If we are not competent to make these decisions, we are not competent to determine whether our representatives are making the right decisions on our behalf.
His point is well taken - the EU treaty has gone so far down its path without any form of public participation that, even if we were allowed a say, it would boil down to two polar opposite choices (bin the whole thing or sign up unconditionally) when most people would probably have preferred some middle ground.
Equally good on PR:
While Brown cannot create a grassroots mobilisation, he could give us a redemocratisation of the representative system. But his speech last week was more remarkable for what it left out than for what it contained. How could he talk of "a new type of politics which embraces everyone in the nation" without mentioning proportional representation?
What he picks up on, of course, is that a democratic system such as the one Britain has isn't well equipped to make radical, systemic changes to itself, even if it needs them - the person or party in power really has little incentive to change the system that put them there, unless public demand is overwhelming. At the moment, blogs like this one notwithstanding, democratic reform is not a subject on everyone's lips. Low participation was a problem at the last election - but with two bad candidates and a foregone conclusion this is hardly surprising. It is bound to go up next time - the winner can then claim a revitalisation of British democracy, as Monbiot concludes:
Though Brown's intentions might be good, the new politics looks like a new con, another means of creating an impression that the political crab still lives, while the corporate maggots jostle beneath the carapace. The danger is not just that his proposals will fail to revitalise the current political model. The greater danger is that they will legitimise it.
So how do we remedy that?
