TAKE back control. That’s what we all really want, isn’t it? The sense that we’ve some power over own lives – that each of us has a role to play in the destiny of our countries. That we and our families matter – that our voices count.
The current political system will never give ordinary people control. Did an X on a ballot paper ever create the change you really want? Politics has failed across the west. To apply the word “useless” to politicians of all stripes is to be kind. But systems can be reformed, even the rotten stagnant ones in the UK – and the national disaster that’s Brexit could be the catalyst for change.
The issue of a Citizens’ Assembly, as a means to resolve the Brexit crisis, is now moving on to the stage – and if we go for it, if we truly give power to the people through Citizens’ Assemblies, then we could transform our dying democracy into the most vibrant democracy on Earth.
Citizens’ Assemblies are about ordinary people – you and I – honestly informing the thinking of other ordinary people without the involvement of any politician whatsoever.
If you’re a little unclear about what a Citizens’ Assembly does, then look to the west and see what Ireland has been doing of late – a country which has transformed itself into one of the few healthy democracies in Europe with an engaged and informed electorate.
In 2016, Ireland knew it had to deal with the issue of abortion. A previous referendum more than 30 years before had been ugly and divisive. So, Ireland looked back to the founders of democracy in ancient Athens and experimented with a Citizens’ Assembly – giving real say to the people, allowing ordinary voters to shape the debate.
Some 99 randomly-selected Irish citizens, with a back-up team of another 100 in case of drop-outs or sickness, were chosen to become what amounted to a jury on abortion. Like a jury they were meant to be representative of the population in terms of age, sex, class and geography. They were chaired by a judge, had staff attached to them to take notes and give advice – effectively their own civil service – and they met every weekend for 18 months to hear evidence and discuss abortion, and four other topics. The 99 were split into smaller groups so they could interrogate evidence and witnesses in microscopic detail.
Citizen Assembly members could call anyone they liked to speak to them. On the issue of abortion there were 13,000 submissions and they heard from every shade of opinion. The hearings were public and streamed live online, so every nuanced piece of evidence, every statistic, every medical fact and figure was relayed to Ireland’s 4.8 million citizens as the assembly heard submissions.
As on a jury, it is hard under such circumstances to keep your mind closed, or to fall back on your beliefs rather than what the evidence of your eyes and ears is telling you. Hard-working facts will defeat lazy opinion.
Politicians in elections and referendums do not try to convince us with detail and evidence – they play fast and loose with the truth, and they manipulate our prejudices and emotions. Politicians want us to be uninformed as then we can be swayed – as Brexit showed, with a bewildered, confused electorate making choices to leave or remain based on their gut and their heart, not their mind and the facts.
In 2017, after their long deliberations, the Irish Citizens’ Assembly members voted – and 64 per cent recommended that the Dail allow abortion in Ireland. It was as if the tide went out and never came back in again. It marked a sea-change in Ireland. The facts – the truth – had been pored over in minute detail and when the national referendum campaign on abortion began no-one could get away with a cheap lie, or a manipulative advert as the public had been informed.
In the end, Ireland approved abortion by 66 to 34. The idea of a deferential Ireland tagging along behind the Catholic Church was dead, and the nation stepped forward as a progressive, clever, flexible and informed democracy – one that Britain with its tarnished travesty of a democracy should envy.
It isn’t just Ireland where Citizens’ Assemblies have been tested. In the Netherlands, an assembly looked at – and recommended – electoral reform; in Japan, it was nuclear power; in Poland, they looked at flood prevention and migration; Texas used one on energy; Canada for health.
Citizens’ Assemblies would transform our adversarial democracy into a deliberative democracy, one in which thought, consideration and consensus are the brokers, not lies. The worst elements of populism would be leashed – as who could say, when it came to the big issues, that power did not lie with the people. In this age of unreason, we would start to restore truth; fake news would be fought with fact.
Citizens’ Assemblies would also restore that most important part of democracy – compromise, something which we have lost. Without compromise there can be no democracy, only the tyranny of the majority.
Citizens’ Assemblies could unlock a peaceful non-divisive path by which we could resolve our most intractable problems. For a start, we could reform our defunct UK-wide voting system which keeps two Jurassic parties in power and smothers new, interesting and representative voices.
A Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change would silence forever the nonsense of climate denial – in a forum of facts, the climate deniers would be reduced to the status of flat-earthers. And surely, a Citizens’ Assembly here in Scotland on the question of independence would allow the people to truly get to grips with the issues that were puppeteered by Better Together and the Yes campaign last time around. What is the truth about the economy? What are the facts about Europe? About oil? About Trident? About pensions, tax, welfare? As a Yes voter, I thought I was right when I cast my ballot for independence – but was I, or was I working on gut and spin?
Why not permanent, rolling Citizens’ Assemblies on tax, health, poverty, education, prisons, policing, defence?
We live in semi-darkness at the moment. Politicians keep facts and truth in the shadows so they benefit, not us. But sunlight is the best disinfectant.
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