The unknown change

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

I was recently asked by Power2010 to submit an idea for how political reforms might affect the future of our democracy. My instinct was to say that any changes to the way our economy and our democracy are run would be bottom-up, and that political reform would have to keep up with the people power, not the other way round.

My full response is below. It’s very vague, but it’s a notion that has come to me over a period of time after conversations with a number of people, including Chris Cook and Anthony Painter, who both have their own variations on this theme. Let me know what you think.

You can also submit your own contributions to Power2010 here.

The disconnect between politics and the people it seeks to serve has rarely been more complete. Most of my mates – who as often as not were raised in state schools by parents on and off benefits and in and out of hospitals – resent paying tax, not because of any political ideology but because they see no correlation between the chunks scythed from their pay cheques each month and the schools they attended, the roads they get to work on and the police that make them safe. Instead, all they see in the press are stories and political or personal mismanagement of their money and often willful abuse for private personal gain.

I suspect, as with Google or the Arctic Monkeys, it will begin in a bedroom in San Francisco or a sedate moment in Sheffield. Someone will develop an online or handheld application that will revolutionise the way we interact, and politics and democracy will inevitably have to follow, as it always has and always will.