Calm down, calm down. This is not a post about Brexit. It’s mentioned but it’s not about it.

So relax. Wooosa. Woooooooosa.

Smooth, calm water. Breathe in……Breathe out.

It’s been a bit of a wild ride for the last few years eh? Bit of a roller coaster. What with the old US Electoral College process? That’s a corker eh? Some genius came up with that one. Trump becomes president despite not commanding a majority of votes from the people he is supposed to serve. He becomes the Nero of our times, but with nukes this time, because of some arcane compromise dreamt up by the Founding Fathers.

Then along comes old Cameron with his wheeze of offering referendums all over the place.

“Were bound to win” he says, “I mean, who would vote to leave? Narf, narf. Pass me the porter old boy”.

And that was just the Scottish referendum in 2014. I’m betting he had a bit of trouble with the old sphincter muscle during that one ‘cos, for a time, it looked a lot like Scotland was going to vote for Independence. Just squeaked it.

Bolstered by his “victory” in Scotland, and getting ready for the General Election in 2015, he pops another bullet in the chamber and spins the barrel again.

“I know”, he says, “We’ll offer a referendum on whether we stay in the EU in the Manifesto. Nobody’ll vote to leave the EU – no way! But it just might get me a second term”.

The EU? Are we talking about that least democratic institution on the planet bar Kim Jong Un, EU? The same EU that everyone in the UK has been moaning about for the last 45 years and who are still alive to vote in the referendum? That one? That EU? Really? We didn’t see that one coming?

Click! BANG!! Ooopsy! Alas, poor Dave, we knew him well. Awww….apparently, she makes dresses that don’t make you look fat now.

Then there was the aftermath of the Brexit Referendum Leave vote. Oh Dear Lord. Three and a half years of absolute carnage while all the “democrats” who lost the referendum, tried to clamber aboard the parliamentary equivalent of a DeLorean time machine. Such determination to get the leave vote overturned. “They didn’t know what they were voting for” and “Everyone has changed their minds” and “Just run the referendum again, with the questions we want, that’s all we want…pleeeeeeaaaase?”.

And then the political betrayal. All the grubby, disingenuous politicians, from all parties, scrabbling around in the dirt trying to find a way to use Brexit to win power and in so doing, forgetting that the majority had spoken. This ain’t Star Trek people! The needs of the few do NOT outweigh the needs of the many!

Luckily, and I do mean luckily, a sort of democracy prevailed at the very, very last minute, and the original referendum result was sanctioned via an overwhelming majority for the Conservatives in the 2019 General Election. If the general election hadn’t taken place it would have been close. The will of the majority may well have been overturned. It’s as close as we’ve been to a civil war since, well, the civil war.

Meanwhile in other news, the Democrat held House of Representatives in the US compile a treasure trove of evidence of Trump’s alleged malfeasance and corruption, the like of which has not been seen since Pirates of Caribbean. The House elects to impeach Trump but everyone knows he’ll get away with it because he’s going to be tried by the Senate, which is controlled by guess who? His very own Republican Party! We know they wont convict because they have stated that they wont convict, no matter what the evidence is! Did the same genius that came up with the Electoral College system come up with that one too? Since Trump took office, he has single handedly shown that the American Constitution is a toothless instrument, if you just have the will to simply ignore it.

So all in all then, WTF??

There’s an old saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. There’s another old saying, “if it’s Fubar, then throw that shit away”.

Parliamentary democracy is Fubar. Very fubar. Tremendously Fubar. It’s so Fubar it couldn’t be more Fubared if it tried. It has shown that it can no longer be trusted to serve the will of it’s master, the people. For this crime, there can be no reprieve or pardon. Orff with its head! or as the French would say “En route par Madame Guillotine”. Time to throw that shit away.

We are gathered here today brethren, to consider an alternative to Parliamentary Democracy. A better democracy. A democracy that re-empowers the people. A democracy that returns sovereignty to the people and rids the world of second rate, partisan, unintelligent, dishonest and self-serving politicians once and for all.

It is my thesis that Parliamentary Democracy is no longer fit for purpose. Further, I will show that a new, better and pure form of democracy is available today that could never have been available before . Moreover, I will argue that it’s implementation is feasible.

I’ll state up front that whilst on the face of it this might appear to be a simple proposition, in fact, it’s not. I spent the morning in my kitchen the other day redesigning democracy and, it turns out, it’s quite tricky. However, nothing worthwhile is easy, so I persisted, and by lunchtime I’d cracked it. I think if we all work together, stay objective and really get our shoulders behind it, I think we can get this all sorted out by Christmas. So come on let’s get started!

The Vision

We are going to keep democracy, but we must move away from a system of indirect representative government, to direct government by the people, supported by an expert administrative infrastructure.

We will replace national and locally elected representatives, and the unelected house of Lords, with a clever little App on your phone called Bob (My App, so I’ll call it what I want). More about this in a mo’ because Bob (the App not our dog), is the key in the door.

There will be no general or local elections because there isn’t going to be anyone to vote for. Political Parties will be abolished. Why should we be limited by one party’s manifesto and voting habits inherited from our parents and their parents? We should be able to progress any idea no matter where it comes from, and we should all be sufficiently well educated and informed to know the difference between good and bad ideas.

Annual taxpayer cost of £292.6m against a contribution of 1.8Bn? Sheeeit, I’ll take dem numbers eva’ day of the week Bra’ (Side Note: my wife has suggested I really oughtn’t attempt urban slang very often or indeed at all, but I tend to think it makes things so much more jolly) .

The Civil Service will be empowered to run the administrative departments of government (Transport, Defence, Education, Health, Trade, Foreign Affairs etc). Heads of department will be appointed based on their subject matter expertise in the specific responsibilities of that department. These heads will not change every 5 years. Their pay / bonuses will be tied to achievement of prioritised SMART goals (Specific, Measured, Achievable, Realistic and Timed), set by the people. If they don’t perform, or deliver, they get fired by the people right then via Bob (the App not our dog).

Apart from these national bodies, there will also be local Administration at the County and Town level, so that local issues can be decided by local people and not be held up by national priorities. Bob (the App not our dog), will handle both.

Any individual aged 18 or over (we’ll call these people “Adults”), can propose and, if a simple majority of the people support it, be paid by the state, to create or amend national and local laws with the support of these local and national administrations. Similarly, any Adult can propose new national or local initiatives, that do not require new law to implement (like building a new local bridge or something).

A word about the Ministry of Defence. Defence is tricky. All sorts of secrecy and ability to act when faced with threats to National Security issues to deal with here. We are going to need some deep and expert thinking about the processes needed to authorise, and subsequently scrutinise, military action when we no longer have an executive branch. These processes will need to maintain our ability to act in time, whilst maintaining the secrecy our intelligence and military communities need to operate. This means that whilst major strategic military interventions (wars) can, and should, be approved directly by the people with a simple majority vote via Bob, tactical or counter terrorist interventions cannot. At least not by all of them. We might need a suitably qualified people’s COBRA (Cabinet Offices Briefing Rooms, Briefing Room A) that can come together quickly, on-line or in person, at times of National need. Like I said, lot of thought needed here.

It’s time to take a look at how all this could work, which means we need to take a closer look at what Bob can do (The App not our….Ok, so I might need to rethink that app name. Got it! BobsApp!).

How it’s all going to work.

Even though Parliamentary Democracy is broken, it has been around a while. The first parliament, called an Althing(i), was formed by Iceland in 930 AD). Britain’s Feudal system was actually a form of Parliament because William the Conqueror established it in 1066 to take advice from the nobility and clergy. Our first proper parliament here in Britain though, was created in the early 13th century and the Parliament we have today is directly descended from that.

I decided to take a deeper dive into how the Parliamentary Process really works to see if there is anything that we could salvage from the wreck of our current system to build into BobsApp (much better).

I mean, for something to last this long, and pass the test of time, it must have had some inherant goodness that prevented the people from sweeping it away in a barrage of musket balls.

Checks and Balances. I think it’s fair to say that the entire current model, is a way to make sure that we, through the offices of our representatives, don’t introduce just any old crap onto the statute books. this is achieved by forcing Bills (Proposal for new laws or amendments to existing laws), through many different stage gates. This process is orchestrated across three different institutions before they can finally become law. In its simplicity and practicality, it’s beautiful really.

Which is a bit of a bugger to be honest, and in the hands of another Blogger, might have caused something of a hiccup in the narrative. Not I. I am made of sterner stuff.

DOWN WITH PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY! Down I say! It can no longer serve….ahh shit.

I can’t do it. it’s really not that complicated. Everything about Parliamentary Democracy works except one thing. Politicians are untrustworthy. Shocker. ‘Twas ever thus. The process is fine. The institutions are fine. Just think about the collective legal, constitutional and every other kind of wisdom aggregated in the ancient heads of the Lords. Do we really not want that collective wisdom to take a peek at the laws we want to introduce? Well I do. I wanna keep the Lords, and I want them to keep doing what they are doing.

I think Occam’s razor applies here. “All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one”.

We can’t burn down the whole house because one window won’t close. The problem we all have is that we don’t, and can’t, trust our politicians to vote in such a way that the will of the majority is reflected in the outcome. Ergo, the simplest solution is, don’t let them vote. Everything else can stay the same.

Any vote which currently takes place in the house of commons will now be taken by the people via BobsApp. We can leave the Lords alone, because ultimately power resides in the Commons, and we are going to move that power to the people.

There is no question about the viability of the technology. Each of us intuitively knows that such a voting app can be built. Every day I get crap coming into my phone via different apps that I’m supposed to do something with. It’ll be nice to have something important arriving for a change.

Removing this power to vote from our MPs however imposes a great burden on us the people. It will be up to us to follow, and be informed about, the proceedings both in Parliament and in the body politic. I think we are more connected today, more than we have ever been, but we’ll need to do more.

We will need to read the document that we are to vote on, and to understand what it will do. The way Laws are written will need to enable comprehension by lay people. This isn’t to say that lay people are not bright enough to understand them, but they can be complicated documents to read. If you aren’t legally trained or experienced at reading legislation, you could miss something.

There is a general assumption though that people are just too dumb and cant be trusted to deal with this stuff. These same people hold down jobs, drive cars, run their household budgets, put food on the table, take care of their families, go to church (or not), obey the law and sustain the fabric of society every day of their lives. They are more in touch with what matters to people than anybody else, because they are the commoners and they deal with real life all the time.

I would trust them every day of the week and twice on Sundays to make the right call over the Members of our Commons. It will be a new skill for sure but it will develop over time. We can add it into the school curriculum and get the kids to learn it from an early age. My daughter Lu (11) can tell you all about fusion, I think she can handle politics. In any case it has got to be better than what we have today.

So, Shouldn’t we remove the Parliamentary from Parliamentary Democracy?

Well no. It turns out it’s a really well designed system and we shouldn’t just throw that away. We should limit the power of it’s Members though because they now serve themselves more than they serve us. We can finally grant that power to all the people through our technology; BobsApp!

I hope you enjoyed this article! Please leave a comment and I’ll reply to you 🙂