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David Cameron’s appointment is a reminder of the UK’s democratic deficit [1]
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Date: 2023-11
This week saw the UK’s unelected prime minister phone a former prime minister, who resigned as an MP seven years ago, to have a conversation that may or may not have gone something like this:
“Hi Dave, you up to much at the moment?”
“Oh, not too much since Greensill Capital went belly up and I lost my £1m salary. Shame you couldn’t sort those Covid loans out for me.”
“Fancy coming back into government?”
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“Not sure. It didn’t go so well last time around. I never really enjoyed being grilled in the Commons.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll stick you in the Lords, you won’t even have to answer any difficult questions from those pesky opposition MPs.”
“But what about basic democratic accountability? I haven’t been elected by the public.”
“Don’t worry, neither have I!”
Of course, none of us was in the room when Rishi Sunak made David Cameron his foreign secretary, but his decision makes clear that democratic accountability is now optional in our political system.
At a time of intense geopolitical turmoil, we have an unelected foreign secretary, who is not accountable to the elected House of Commons.
Cameron’s return to frontline politics is the plot twist nobody wanted in the ongoing Tory psychodrama. The past 13 years have been defined by Conservative Party manoeuvring and infighting, with any meaningful program for government pushed to the bottom of their to-do list.
Boris Johnson’s flagship ‘levelling up’ policy feels more distant than ever to voters, and as for ‘taking back control’, many people would settle for having enough control over their lives to be able to afford to feed their family and keep the heating on.
Just 11% trust the Tories to keep their promises, according to an Ipsos Mori poll from earlier this year. That figure is 21% for Labour. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for either of the two biggest political parties, is it? But it’s hardly surprising given the democratic deficit in this country.
The British public has decisively voted in only two of the past five prime ministers. The rest have been selected by a diminishing number of Tory members and MPs, or had their minority governments propped up by the DUP, in the case of Theresa May. Sunak has a personal mandate of 193 – that’s the total number of people who actively chose him to be our prime minister. You couldn’t win a local council ward election with 193 votes.
I believe in the wisdom of the crowd; the more people you engage in any decision-making process, the better the outcome. You can see the real will of the people only by allowing the electorate to express a nuanced view, not forcing them to make an unwanted binary choice through a ‘first past the post’ voting system, which often leads to tactical voting that distorts the political landscape.
It’s for this reason that I back increased local democracy. I’ve already seen how this can held in the North of Tyne Combined Authority, where I was elected as mayor in 2019. Since then, my team has placed great emphasis on ‘co-design’ – which is a fancy way of saying that we listen to people before designing a policy that will impact their lives.
I’m directly connected to the people and organisations on the ground in the area, and can build trust and relationships in a way that no London-based government department can. This is the real strength of devolution. We’re shortening the distance between people and the decision-making that affects them – building regionally relevant policy as we go.
This is the solution to rebuilding the UK’s democratic deficit – but to be successful, it must be coupled with sound economic policy. In a 2021 paper on Regional Wealth Generation, I argued for further fiscal devolution to ensure more money stays in the regions where it is earned.
One way of doing this is through an ‘earn back’ mechanism, in which, when a new business is founded, the payroll taxes and benefits savings it creates in the first year of trading stay in the region where it’s based, as well as half of the second year’s. The Treasury keeps everything thereafter, likely 70% of payroll taxes over the employment lifetime, plus all other direct and indirect taxes.
It’s a good deal for businesses, and a good deal for the region. A win-win that incentivises the creation of well-paid jobs, with all of the attendant social benefits, and boosts regional investment power.
Empowering regions to innovate and deliver relevant solutions such as this for their communities is the way to a meaningful social contract that delivers change. This has to be a partnership, with ongoing dialogue between local politicians and the diverse groups they serve. And those communities must be able to hold us politicians to account – in a way that they just can’t with those in Westminster, who only think to knock on their door and offer some warm words once every five years.
So, to those in our political system who think themselves unaccountable, we must remember the words of the late Tony Benn: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?”
[END]
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/rishi-sunak-david-cameron-foreign-secretary-democratic-deficit-need-increased-devolution-jamie-driscoll-mayor/
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