The Jury’s Out

By Emma Burnell / @scarletstand

I’m worried by the call from Compass and friends for a “public jury” to examine British public life and Public Interest tests. Not because I don’t think there is a good idea in there, but because I think issue like participatory democracy are really important struggling concepts and I struggle to believe that in its current inception, this campaign will be the right one to get a popular movement towards this kind of important step – and could damage the longer term prospects of adopting such techniques on a wholesale basis.

After the disaster for the democracy movement that was the AV referendum, I strongly felt that a period of reflection was in order from those leading the campaign. I’m very sad that so soon after the previous defeat, a new campaign has been launched (and the list of signatories to the Guardian letter launching the campaign is almost identical to the Yes to AV list) and launched in such a way that it is clear that few of the lessons of the referendum have been listened to or learned.

The democracy movement in the UK have become stultifying and self-serving. As individuals there are a great many people on that list I like and indeed admire. As a group, the must recognise that they have become the very elites they rail against. They talk to themselves in their own language about their own preoccupations at the expense of talking to and understanding the vast majority of the country. Now they are asking for public money to do more of the same.

This is the lesson that should have been learned by the movement. That when the public hear people from Unlock Democracy and Compass talking about political elites, they think it means you too. Me too. I’m a London-based, Guardian-reading, Leftie political activist. I’m not exactly what you would call representative of the Great British Public. I have to respect that when campaigning. I have to understand that I am persuading them not by automatic right of my doing things I believe to be right and democratic representing them. Sadly from the language of the petition, this does not seem to have sunk in.

I’ve witnessed participatory democracy in action and it can be truly inspiring. When a roomful of people representative of their city discuss their priorities on a focused question, the buy in for the results can transform lives. I truly believe in this process and in fact wrote about Labour policy being discussed through similar techniques in my submission to Refounding Labour. I am absolutely in favour of this kind of decision making being used well and empowering those who would not normally have a voice.

But used badly, and all it will do is spread further cynicism about electoral reform. As someone who doesn’t want to see a good method squandered by poor delivery, I have three major concerns about what Compass is proposing. If Mark will allow, I’d like to invite Compass or one of the other organisations concerned to respond and I hope this dialogue will strengthen the management and outcome of this project.

My first concern is that 1000 people is too many to examine such a complex topic thoroughly. To get a properly ramdomised and representative group of people to the point where they are well versed enough in the background of a topic to be a properly investigatory group, willing and capable of understanding, examining and critically questioning evidence is a slog. If they are a truly representative group, they will have different levels of education and therefore different aptitudes to dealing with evidence. To ensure that this doesn’t become a group of a few leaders and a great deal of followers there will have to be significant (and costly) training from an impartial source before the first evidence session can even begin to be conceived. The best examples of participatory democracy that I have seen have been on much smaller questions; singular issues where the evidence can be chewed over and understood. I admire the ambition of this project, and as I wrote just last week, ambition is important. But before anyone should fund or support this project, that ambition needs to be backed up with some real planning.

Which brings me to my second concern: The “paid secretariat with the resources to commission research and call witnesses”. Not to be facetious, but isn’t this all a bit familiar? Isn’t this what we (I worked there briefly) did at the Power Inquiry? Will the make-up of this Secretariat be drawn from new blood? Or from the people who have been doing this sort of thing over and over again for at least at least 1988? This is a movement crying out for new blood, for outsiders to come in as new brooms to sweep away the disaster of the AV referendum. If the same people run the secretariat, it will come to the same conclusions. The same book will be written, the same articles dusted off and placed in the same newspapers and life will go on much as before. Like so many other good ideas, a failure to let go by a power hoarding elite will stifle their ability to be passed to a new generation. That would be a real tragedy for democracy. What guarantees are there that this project will be run robustly from the start, with fresh thinking and new ideas and a sense of lessons learned in management and campaigning style from the AV referendum?

My final concern is the witness list. I strongly suspect it will look an awful lot like the signatory list. That would be a mistake. As I have said above, I admire a great deal of the people on the signatories list and agree with an awful lot of what they have to say. But for this to be a genuine investigation, all sides must be heard. There should be witnesses in support of an unelected House of Lords, against any regulation of the press and politicians. All sides of the argument must be put. Otherwise you might as well have the secretariat take the statements of the elites of the democratic movement, put them in the report and stop bothering the poor 1000 people in the middle. What processes will be put in place to ensure not just party political balance but ideological balance?

I hesitated about writing this piece. I genuinely think there is a germ of a good idea in this campaign and would like to see it flourish. I write this piece in a genuine attempt to be helpful. To be a critical friend, not just a critic. A robust process has been missing from projects like this in the past. It will be essential not just to the flourishing of this project now but also to the legitimacy of the democracy movement in years to come.