Sceenshot: Citizens Assembly of Ireland, YouTube. April, 2017.
Brexit has morphed into a messy divorce that has exposed not only deep political divides but competing visions of Britain and what they should look like. Whatever the political outcome, the referendum has laid bare a fractured country, where the problems are deeper than the issues of Brexit and speak to nations divided about their identity and future priorities.
In this febrile atmosphere, is there a place for national dialogue? In Britain this dialogue could be used as a preventative tool, to navigate away from our current poisonous atmosphere, enshrining dialogue as part of the political culture. Convened in the spirit of reconciliation, it could provide an opportunity to bridge our deep fault lines and diffuse our shrill debate; going beyond the current political divides, to deeper conversations relating to how we should live, how resources should be allocated and what the nature of tolerance and pluralism should look like in the twenty-first century.
