Better to choose, or be chosen?
It’s hard to avoid thinking about politicians right now, unless you close your mind to anything but football. They’re all out there, vying for our attention, seeking our support, and protesting their innocence when caught committing a foul.
I still feel bad about my brief encounter with Keir Starmer. I wasn’t among those stretching out their hands to touch or be touched by him, a way of establishing contact with celebrity that goes back far beyond the age of pop stars. He grasped my hand - his touch was cold, but there was a chill wind - and afterwards I thought, this is something to joke about in the pub. But how much prouder I would have been if I’d told him, quietly and politely (there were security men with hidden guns), that if he wanted to restore trust in politics, he really should set up an Office of Accountability when he’s in power, an independent regulator that would monitor the delivery of politicians’ promises, and penalize those judged to have failed to honour their pledges.
ITV’s political editor Robert Peston was also hanging around. Why didn’t I go up to him and suggest he put the idea of an Office of Accountability to Keir in his interview? Because I was too shy, obviously - but I can still entertain the fantasy of the question being asked, and Keir taking it seriously, and promising to do something about it, all thanks to my modest proposal. The right word in the right ear at the right time can change history!
OK, so history lumbers on because I failed to speak out. But then I thought about the impossible burden of expectation we put on our politicians, and the extravagant disappointment we express when they fail. We all think how much better we could do, if only we had the time and the inclination - rather like the people who, when they hear you’re a writer, say they could write a bestselling novel, if only they could spare some time from making a living.
Anyone who does sit down to try and write something knows what a grind it can be, just as anyone who has ever attended political committee meetings knows how turning a brilliant idea into a practical policy can be absolutely soul-destroying. You only do it - writing and politics - if you have a passion that won’t ease up until you’ve achieved something you can be proud of.
We all know that politics is a machine that grinds principles to powder. What if we changed the gears and, instead of voting for people who then let us down, we made everyone liable to take a turn at running things? Sortition - the random choosing of people that represent their community - works for citizens’ assemblies now and worked for ancient Athens.
Just as everyone is liable for jury service, everyone could be liable to serve for a period in Parliament. There is plenty of evidence to show that a diversity of views from a variety of perspectives leads to better, more efficient, more compassionate decisions than those arrived at by party loyalists.
A citizens’ assembly hears evidence from competing experts and arrives at a decision that everyone can agree with. It works because these people are from the community they are legislating for, not outsiders who believe being elected miraculously makes them know better than everyone else.
I realize this sounds like airy-fairy utopianism. I once dramatized for BBC Radio G K Chesterton’s novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill, in which the King is chosen by lot and proceeds to break London up into its ancient boroughs and insists they behave like feuding medieval barons. It all ended in tears - but aren’t many of us near to tears when we contemplate the wreckage of our own political landscape? Isn’t it at least possible that an element of sortition, of randomly choosing some of the people who decide how we behave, might be an improvement? At the very least, it would give those who are picked an idea, an experience, of how the machinery works - and when it goes wrong, they might even have the confidence to suggest a way of fixing it.
We’re all agreed we can’t go on as we are, but we’re still prepared to leave it to those with the stamina to stand for election. Maybe the injection of some random elements would have the same evolutionary effect as the introduction of different genes has on human development. We might all be surprised - me, and Keir Starmer.