Tom Harris is being silenced. At least according to his latest blog post, entitled ‘Silence those who dare to disagree with us!’. He has taken exception to an advert in the Guardian, posted by constitutional reform activists Power 2010, which attacks 6 MPs for opposing electoral reform. And Tom is deeply aggrieved to be on the recieving end of such opposition. “Hang on”, he writes,

I actually oppose PR because I think it’s A Bad Thing. I believe it would be bad for our country and bad for democracy. Disagree with me by all means, argue against me, but allow me to have my own opinion. Do Power2010 believe that I should vote for something, support it in public, even against my better judgment, just because they disagree with me? Is that what constitutional reform has come down to – silencing parliamentarians with whom you disagree?

Except nobody is attempting to silence Tom. What they are in fact doing is attacking him for the positions he has chosen to express. It seems pretty obvious that this is how democracy is meant to work: Tom Harris, as a parliamentarian, has the right vote and speak as he wishes, and groups of citizens have the right to oppose him for how he votes and what he says.

What Tom Harris seems to want is not simply the “right to express his opinion”. Rather he wants the right to advocate what he wants without being held to account, or politically attacked by those who disagree with him. Perhaps he would be more at home in another parliament… I’m thinking North Korea.

After 4,500 submissions and 100,000 votes, the POWER 2010 pledge has finally been revealed.

1. Introduce a proportional voting system.

2. Scrap ID cards and roll back the database state.

3. Replace the House of Lords with an elected chamber.

4. Allow only English MPs to vote on English laws.

5. Draw up a written constitution.

I, and others writing for this site, have drawn some criticism for our broad support for the deliberative process of the POWER2010 campaign. However, for me, this moment was always going to be crunch time. Can I comfortably put my name to POWER2010’s finalised pledge as chosen by members of the British public? Well, let’s go through each in turn.

1. Introduce a proportional voting system: By far the most popular suggestion. Indeed it formed the core of my idea for POWER2010. Any democratic reform has to start with proportional representation. A two-party state is only twice as democratic as a dictatorship, after all, and if we are to see a new kind of politics in this country, it has to include new voices from across the political spectrum. There are those who would argue that proportional representation will only let the extremists in. But curtailing democracy to keep the likes of the BNP out is not the correct answer to their challenge. Rather it is part of the problem as people feel increasingly alienated from the political process when forced to choose between two parties whose policies often appear indistinguishable. Red, blue and yellow just won’t cut it anymore. I want to see a rainbow Parliament and in this, I fully support POWER2010’s aim.

2. Scrap ID cards and roll back the database state: Whilst not so much a reform of the political system, this is still, in my view, a very necessary demand. At best ID cards are a pointless expense. At worst they are part and parcel of New Labour’s systematic erosion of civil liberties and human rights. Together with DNA databases retaining the records of thousands of people never convicted of any crime, anti-terror laws, detention without trial and an explosion of CCTV, they represent an alarming trend. I am not paranoid enough to suggest that they amount to a police state, or even that in and of themselves ID cards will curtail the everyday freedoms of the British public. However, in a democratic society, it is important to resist these small steps towards the removal of basic freedoms while we can. Because once they’re all gone, it’s too late to speak out. For this objective, POWER2010 gets another tick from me.

3. Replace the House of Lords with an elected chamber: It is a startlingly anachronistic aberration that in a democratic society with a bicameral Parliament, we can have an upper house that is unaccountable to the people. The second step to mending Britain’s broken political system, I have always argued, is to have a directly elected upper house and I am behind POWER2010 all the way on this point.

4. Allow only English MPs to vote on English laws: Devolution has done wonders for the Scottish and the Welsh. However it has left the largest part of the United Kingdom without its own legislative body. Banning non-English MPs from voting on English laws, however, has always seemed to me a messy and incomplete answer to the problem. Moreover, it sends the message that the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is primarily the Parliament of England. It would be better, in my opinion, to have a separate English Parliament, or to devolve powers regionally. In any case, this issue has never been high up on my list of priorities. I was surprised by the number of votes the suggestion received, but mine certainly wasn’t among them.

5. Draw up a written constitution: Always a tricky issue if one’s not sure exactly what would be in this written constitution. Historical example, however, and in particular the American case, tends to show that written constitutions are more a means to constrain democracy rather than enable it. Often used to prevent the ‘tyranny of the majority’, written constitutions, with a few notable exceptions, reign in the power of far-reaching reform. In any case, I do not believe that the problem with British politics, and the public’s engagement with it, is our lack of a written constitution and I would be tempted to say, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Well, that’s my humble opinion on the POWER2010 pledge. And to paraphrase Meatloaf, three out of five ain’t bad. I have, therefore, decided to support the POWER2010 pledge, with a few caveats. None of these reforms will come easy, however. Unless we see a hung parliament with Labour desperate to court the Lib Dems, it may well take more than one election to see the most important democratic reforms through. And the true test of POWER2010’s effectiveness will be in its staying power after the General Election. It cannot afford to be another Make Poverty History, or a flash in the pan playing with people’s expectations. In politics as in sex, no one likes a quick finisher.

You may have noticed that the POWER2010 campaign and its supporters have been given a fair amount of air time on The Third Estate. The response from readers and other bloggers has been mixed. Some have argued that the organisation is correct to thow open the question of fixing Britain’s broken democracy to its people. Others have made the case that its aims and objectives are irrelevant to the greater struggles we face. As for myself, I have always been a cautiously optimistic supporter of POWER2010. By this, I mean that I have been keen to help promote the campaign’s premise and to encourage people to take part in the process of formulating its pledge for the coming election. Whether or not I choose to back the pledge, however, depends entirely on what that pledge turns out to be. As such, I support POWER2010′s means, but not necessarily its ends. With POWER2010′s five fully ratified goals now sitting in my inbox, I am finally ready to make the decision. Unfortunately for all of you out there waiting with bated breath on the edges of your seats, there’s an embargo on revealing the pledge until one minute past midnight. Which means you’ll have to wait until then for my decision on whether to support it or not. Yes or no? Keep your eyes on the chimney and see if the smoke’s red or blue…

Guest post by Oli Henman

How do we decide about democracy? What are the major changes that would lead to transparent politics?

Last weekend people from across the UK were given that chance- this was the moment when the key ideas that have been brought together from across the country on the POWER 2010 website were put before a cross-section of people to pull out the main areas for the next stage of the campaign. Supported by the Joseph Rowntree Trust, this Deliberative Poll was part of a broader campaign that is running in the build-up to the next General Election. I went to check it out…

People from all walks of life were chosen as a representative sample, to work together over 2 days to develop their own thinking on tough choices like voting rules, House of Lords reform, local government and civil rights. These might sound like complex issues but following the recent expenses scandal and in the midst of a new Inquiry into the Iraq War, people were extremely active in putting their views across. In fact people were so active in their involvement that it often felt that time was too short, as from over 4,000 suggestions on the website this poll had to pull out only 30 major recommendations to be shared with supporters around the country.

The Deliberative Poll method was developed by Professor James Fishkin at Stanford University and it focuses on a rigourous sociological process to ensure a highly detailed body of recommendations. One major part of the analysis revolves around comparing the views of participants at the start and at the end of the process, this way the transformative effect of the deliberative process can be measured. So the participants themselves shape and develop the recommendations, with an opportunity to throw questions at specialists and to draw on background information on the subject matter. This leads to an exciting situation whereby the method reflects the basis of democratic debate and leads to very open conclusions.

But this is only one step along the way for POWER 2010. We’ll see what this group developed, and the recommendations it made to the British public, very soon and in the next stage everyone has a say in defining which issues will be on the final list for the election… what’s your choice?

David Cameron and Nick Clegg have already written off this year’s Queen’s Speech as pointless political posturing, filled with legislation that will never see the light of day before the next general election. The implication being, neither men expect Gordon Brown to be residing at the same address this time next year. Of course, as they say, it ain’t over till it’s over and we here at The Third Estate have never been ones to shy away from a bit of in-depth political analysis. But why should we have all the fun? Brown’s just such a riveting, dazzling, charismatic, exciting and wholly interesting figure, that it would seem selfish of us to analyse his new policies all by ourselves. So, I’d like to point you to Power2010′s new little tool, allowing you to grade Gordon on his promises to introduce a new kind of politics. Win, or epic fail? You decide!

So, Power2010 has been criticised on the grounds that it won’t have the massive reach and appeal that it’s aiming for. This seems likely to be true, but how much does it matter? I don’t think that in order to revive mass popular interest in our political system it’s necessary to have a campaign which itself has mass popular support. That seems to be demanding the impossible; if only a small unrepresentative minority is currently interested in parliamentary politics (which I would argue is indeed the case, even if there is widespread interest in politics as it impinges on people’s everyday lives), and if we want that to change, then unfortunately it’s up to that small unrepresentative minority to re-engage everyone else.

In order to do this, I suggest that getting rid of the First Past the Post system has to be the first step. Salman already covered electoral reform in his post on this, but in my view it’s a far more important issue than any of the others under discussion. A written constitution, resolving the West Lothian question, reforming the Lords …yes, these are all important changes that need to be made. But I don’t think any of them are going to re-engage people’s interest in politics. There are two (related) reasons why electoral reform would do this where other changes wouldn’t.

First, every vote cast in an election would actually matter, and every voter’s views would have to be taken into account in an election campaign. As things stand, party manifestoes are targeted at a tiny group of voters – centrist swing voters in marginal seats – hence all the drivel spouted every election cycle about Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman. This is why the parliamentary parties have all moved so far into the centre, and why so much parliamentary debate  just reduces to bickering over who thought of a policy first (cf. the squabbles over inheritance tax and points-based immigration systems).

Second, the reason why parties’ high commands know they can get away with this is that it’s nigh-on impossible to break the two-party deadlock under the present system. It tends to be strongly majoritarian, disproportionately favouring large parties over smaller ones. (Though it also has random quirks, such as favouring small parties with concentrated support in one area, like the SNP and Plaid Cymru, and occasionally gifting a parliamentary majority to a party that comes second in the popular vote, like the Tories in 1951). In the entire history of the British Parliament, the second and third parties in British politics have only changed places once – when the Liberals were superseded by Labour in the 1920s – and that took a much-disputed combination of a World War, the Liberal Party literally tearing itself apart with infighting and the introduction of universal suffrage. The upshot of this is that as things stand the most likely effect of supporting a small leftwing party rather than Labour is that the Tories will get stronger. It’s worth noting that while Labour were busy overtaking the Liberals in the 1920s, the Tories were in government almost continuously for decades; they were in power either absolutely or in Tory-dominated ‘National Governments’ for all but three years between 1918 and 1945.

I’m still undecided as to which specific voting system would be the best replacement – though dusting off the findings of the Jenkins Commission wouldn’t be a bad idea – but pretty much anything would be better than the current setup. No more FPTP would mean that parties would have to take into account everyone’s views, not just a few geographically fortunate waverers. It would, as Salman so eloquently put it, turn the House of Commons from a tricolour into a rainbow. Yes, it’s a top-down reform that only cared about by a few geeks with an unhealthy interest in politics. But it’s one we desperately need.

The Third Estate is brought to you today by the letters DEMOCRACY and the number 2010. In just one month the Power2010 campaign has received over 2000 ideas to reform our political system. To highlight their launch, I invited Guy Aitchison to set out the campaign’s stall in a piece that was met with mixed reactions, and some head banging from Dave Semple who has just written a detailed rebuttal of the campaign’s approach, alongside a picture of Wolfie Smith praying for the glorious day. Last week, Guy returned the favour by tagging me in his new meme to encourage bloggers to post their own suggestions for Power2010. I would have responded to it sooner had I not been writing up my interview with Nick Clegg who, amongst the usual policy platitudes, said: “One of the great things about Power2010 is that it’s asking for your ideas, from people well beyond the bubble at Westminster. I’m really looking forward to reading what people come up with after November 30th. Politicians don’t know it all, and we have to ask people directly if we’re to know what they want.” That’s how big it’s got.

Do I think Power2010 is the answer to the millions of British people who are rightly disenfranchised with a broken political system? I don’t know. But then, I didn’t really think we were going to stop the war either and I gave that my best shot too. So here goes, my grand plan come that glorious day!

When I am king, you will be first against the wall

The Lords have got to go. Almost a century has passed since the Parliament Act and we still have an unelected upper house. No serious approach to democratic reform can begin without addressing the Lords.

What do we want? Democracy! When do we want it? Erm. Now!

The crucial stumbling block for leaders trying to reconnect people with politics is the first-past-the-post method, which essentially leads to a system based on voters choosing the major party they dislike the least. When, as in the last decade, the difference between the two main parties appears to have evaporated faster than Gordon Brown’s popularity, people begin to believe that their vote won’t make a difference. That’s why they stay at home. That’s why Nick Griffin ends up on Question Time. The answer to both problems is, quite simply, to introduce proportional representation. Not only will it ensure that people can vote for who they want to run the country, rather than just voting against who they don’t want to run the country, but it will turn the House of Commons from a tricolour into a rainbow, giving people a genuine choice and reconnecting politics with ideology.

Please sir, I want some more lollipop ladies outside my school

The biggest potential drawback to proportional representation is that it might remove one of the most popular elements of British democracy: the local MP who hears the concerns of their constituents, represents them to Parliament and faces losing their seat if they fail to do so. This is where the Lords come in. I propose an upper house composed of constituency politicians directly elected by the alternative vote system to sit alongside a lower house that proportionately represents the wider passions of the people. All neatly tied up? I think so. Why am I not Prime Minister yet?

For some strange reason I can’t quite fathom, other people have different (some might even say better) ideas for democratic reform. So I’d like to tag a few of them. Some may be sympathetic to Power2010’s aims and objectives. Others may prefer to bang their heads. It’s their choice. That’s democracy.

Jim Jepps – The Daily (Maybe)

Andy Newman – Socialist Unity

Phil BC – A Very Public Sociologist

Derek Wall – Another Green World

Carl Packman – Raincoat Optimism

Left Outside

Guest post by Guy Aitchison

It is time for those who want a new politics to work together for change

With the party conferences over and MPs returning to Westminster today following their 82-day break, now seems like a good moment to reflect on the crisis that engulfed the political class during the early summer months and how they have responded.

At the height of the Great Expenses Scandal party leaders made a great show of telling us how they knew exactly what was wrong with our political system and how to fix it, competing to outdo each other with ever-more radical constitutional solutions to voters’ loss of trust in the system.

Gordon Brown promised far-reaching democratic reform, informing us that he was a long-time fan of constitutional campaign group Charter 88 and making noises about a “a written constitution”. David Cameron called for giving “power to the powerless” and talked of fixed term parliaments and new powers for constituents to recall MPs. Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, pointed out that he had long distinguished himself with calls for reform of a “rotten” Westminster system and demanded that an urgent list of constitutional changes be made in “100 days”.

At the time, some in the commentariat were asking what on earth constitutional reform has to do with abuse of expenses. But the impulse to respond to public anger with proposals to re-distribute power was the correct one. It involved the recognition that anger over expenses was about more than simply duck houses, moats, dry rot, and other abuses, however petty or extravagant: it was symptomatic of a much deeper disconnect between the public and politicians that has been building for years.

For a long time, people in the UK have been switching off from formal politics. Voter turnout at the last two general elections in 2001 and 2005 was at a historic low of around 60%. This disengagement doesn’t arise from apathy or satisfaction with the status quo, as the Power Inquiry, which carried out the largest ever investigation into people’s attitudes to British democracy several years ago, concluded. It arises from feelings of powerlessness and a sense that parties and politicians are all the same.

Public outrage reflects a much deeper sense that our political system is dysfunctional and in crisis and that our insular and self-serving political class just don’t give a damn. How else to explain disastrous decisions like the Iraq war executed with total contempt for popular opinion, the vicious attacks on our civil liberties, the pathetic surrender to the banking system, and the total failure to face up to the challenge of catastrophic climate change? The disjuncture between what needs to happen on the big challenges we face and what our closed political system will permit is massive.

What is to be done?

Several months on from this crisis, as we enter a new parliamentary term with a general election in sight, any small hope there briefly was that the managers of our stale two-party system would bring about change has been disappointed. The political class are once again hoping that voters’ anger and disgust will give way to disillusionment and resignation allowing them to keep the whole sorry show on the road a while longer.

I was at the Labour and Tory party conferences, in the main hall and at the party fringes, and you could almost hear the sound of brush strokes sweeping the crisis and the earlier promises of change under the carpet.

Brown’s speech to the Labour conference offered a cowardly mixture of fudges and half-measures that will please no one. The Prime Minister promised a referendum on electoral reform – but not until after the next election and even then only on the Alternative Vote system which wouldn’t move Parliament any closer to being proportional. He talked of a new right for constituents to recall errant MPs – but only when voters are given permission from their political masters on high. And one hundred years after Parliament decided to reform the Lords, Brown committed to “remove the hereditary principle” from the second chamber, re-stating Labour’s position in their manifesto of twelve years ago.

David Cameron’s speech to the Tory party conference was a master class of rhetoric promising a lot but offering little of substance. He clearly wants people to think that he “gets it” when he says that the expenses crisis “reflected something deeper…the sense that people have been left powerless by big government”. Spot on! But apart from some vague references to “decentralisation”, “transparency”, and “accountability” there was nothing on how he plans to reform a political system which, by his own admission, is “broken”.

These paltry offers to the electorate confirm that we simply can’t trust politicians to deliver the reform that’s needed. With less than a year until the next election, all of us who want a new politics should focus our efforts on ensuring that the next Parliament is a reforming one.

This will not be easy. It’s almost a law of nature that once politicians take power they are reluctant to give it away.

We need an intelligent and demanding citizens’ movement organising outside the parties and the formal structures of political power, calling for change and holding politicians to their promises.

It is with this goal in mind that the Rowntree Trusts have launched Power2010, a unique campaign that will give everyone a chance to have a say in how this country should be run.

In the first phase of the campaign, Power2010 is asking the public for their ideas for how we change politics. Everyone is encouraged to get involved and contribute their own ideas by going to the website at www.power2010.org.uk.

All the ideas submitted will then be considered by a panel of randomly selected citizens drawn from across the UK who will decide a list of options to be put to the public vote.

The five ideas that receive the most votes will become the Power2010 Pledge, which candidates of all parties will be asked to commit to at the next election – in public meetings, on the door step, by email and letter; as often as possible by as many people as possible.

It is time for those who want a new politics, one that is open, honest, and responsive to the needs and interests of the public, to work together for change. If we join forces and act now we could get a reforming parliament and a new politics out of the next election.

Guy Aitchison works for the Power2010 campaign. Before that he was deputy director of the Convention on Modern Liberty. He blogs at openDemocracy’s UK blog, OurKingdom.