The old politics is dying on its feet - for very good reasons

Why the political establishment has reacted so sourly to Russell Brand’s call for people not to vote and to think about revolution instead, should surprise no one. The comedian touched a raw nerve because the old politics is dying on its feet.   

The repercussions are enormous. When a system of government endorsed by the vast majority for nearly 150 years loses the support of key sections in society, the political class has a right to be worried and angry with people like Brand who point this out.

His fiery exchange with Jeremy Paxman on BBC2’s Newsnight has had getting on for 10 million views on YouTube. Many of those are undoubtedly by a generation switched off from mainstream politics already. Brand was kicking at an open door.

A new survey confirms the worst fears of Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Miliband. Some 46% of under-30s say they will not consider voting for any parties, including smaller organisations like the Greens or non-mainstream groups like Ukip. For this generation it’s “none of the above”.

The response wasn’t much better for the electorate as a whole, with four out of ten people saying they were “alienated” from Britain's political parties and say they will not consider voting for any of them at an election.

This research for the Committee on Standards in Public Life tallies with the latest monthly ComRes poll for The Independent, which shows that only with the 45-54 age group do you get a majority who say they are certain to vote at the 2015 election. Two-thirds of the 18-24 age group say they are absolutely certain about not voting next time round. Andrew Hawkins of ComRes, said: "The evidence all points to people being turned off by the traditional party system.”   

The Committee on Standards in Public Life, an advisory body to the government, was set up in 1994 in response to sleaze at Westminster. It has seen disconnection with politics grow ever since. Commenting on its latest poll, the committee says 40% "hold sceptical or deeply sceptical perceptions of standards and do not trust those in public life" and that “an entrenched political disenchantment…appears to have acquired a growing foothold in the British public".

None of the surveys in recent years say that people are indifferent to what goes in society. It’s just that for many, they simply have no effective say or influence, whoever they vote for. And they’re right in that key respect.

Politics at one level can be understood as a mean to achieving organised control  over a complex system of ruling a community or society – aka the state. Accelerating disengagement from this kind of politics coincides with how the relationship between state and citizen has changed.

The transition from a welfare state – which provided affordable housing, free education, support when unemployed or disabled, comprehensive health care, pensions, energy and public transport – to a ruthless market state is the story of our times. Some call it a corporatocracy – rule through and on behalf of the corporations.

A market state does what it says on the packet – make key services and provision subject to market and commercial considerations first. Politics, in this context, is reduced to managerialism, to adjusting markets, to reducing state provision even further. The parties have coalesced around this purpose, and in the process have dissolved existing politics. How is anyone supposed to relate to this?

The standards committee is deeply concerned and wants further research into whether the poll findings harbour “the potential for rejection of the system of representative democracy and for democratic norms”. With respect, the two don’t go together.

We want a democracy that serves the majority, not a system that actually undermines “democratic norms”. The present system of representation has outlived its usefulness and is now a plaything of powerful economic and financial forces.

Moving democracy on, extending it to areas like the workplace, replacing shareholder control with community democracy around a system of people’s assemblies is a model to consider. We should support the initiative launched by John McDonnell, one of a handful of Labour MPs who champion democracy, for a People’s Parliament to discuss where we go from here.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Wanted: Real Utopias and real democracy

“Democracy has recently become extremely important and the key issue in politics.” You can count the political figures who say and mean that on the fingers of one hand. But that was the uncompromising message delivered by John McDonnell to Occupy London activists.

McDonnell is a rare breed in the shape of a Labour MP with principles and perspective. He had been invited to kick off a debate on democracy as part of the New Putney Debates, developing themes from the original debates in 1647 during the English Revolution.

This particular event, organised by the Real Democracy working group, had McDonnell pouring scorn on those who have claimed that the slow evolution of liberal democracy and its economic counterpart – capitalism - had culminated in the “end of history”, with the present system deemed the optimal form of the political voice of society. His alternative view is worth reflecting on:

“But then along came the economic crisis of capitalism. People woke up realising that they have no control over their lives and that governments cannot control the economic system and cannot supply the basic necessities of life. Unemployment and insecurity is on a scale not seen for a long time. My constituency office is now organising food packages for local people.

“We are at quite a crucial moment in our history. The idea of a system which is perfecting itself has failed. The debate now becomes fundamentally relevant to people as it did in the English civil war. People realised they had an opportunity to question and re-shape everything. Virtually every element of the establishment is now seen as exposed and corrupt. People are searching for alternatives and answers.

“It is a time to start envisaging real utopias, based on democracy.  We need to address the state and the economy and the links between the two. People have lost confidence in the state system we have and the politicians within it. Representative democracy is not the last word.”

A leading supporter of Occupy London responded that the last 30 years had led to a “society without power”. There was something fundamentally wrong and the problem was to animate people to do something about it.

Another raised the issue of globalisation and how it dominated economics and politics: can institutions such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation and the United Nations democratised or do alternative international institutions need to be created?

The irreconcilable conflict that led to the original Putney Debates was powerfully brought to life in a performance at St Mary’s church, Putney on the exact day and venue that they took place 365 years ago.

Actors Damian LeBas as Leveller and senior military figure Thomas Rainborough, Michael Edwards as Henry Ireton (Cromwell’s son-in-law)  and Dominic Golding as John Wildman (civilian and probably the author of the Agreement of the People) were outstanding in an 11-strong cast, directed by Natasha Langridge in a rehearsed reading of Caryl Churchill’s play, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire.

Earlier, speakers had brought out the inspirational significance of the English revolution, which, said one person, “everything in our political culture today tells us – ignore it, forget about it, it never really happened, and if it did it was only a minor insignificant event”.

Leveller demands in the Agreement of the People, seen as the basis for a new constitution, were far beyond their time and were rejected by the army grandees. But the fundamental thrust of their arguments about suffrage and natural rights were to re-emerge in centuries to come.

A contribution from A World to Win proposed a contemporary form of the Agreement to open up “a new page in democracy that would have to go hand and hand with a social revolution in terms of ownership and control of land, the economy and finance.”

The New Putney Debates have opened the doors for a wide discussion on different approaches: “make and mend”, regulation within the existing institutions or a revolutionary change. The Revolution Will be Networked assembly on November 17 will take up this challenge.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win