Is More Democracy Necessarily Better Democracy?

Our home, mine and my family's, is in London’s suburbs. We get to vote at multiple levels. We get to choose 3 elected members - Councillors - in our ward once every 4 years. Those members sit on the Local Authority - the local Council - which is effectively a parliamentary system whereby the party with the most members (it’s invariably the Conservatives) choose the leader, the leader or their party choose the cabinet and everyone else scrutinises their policies & priorities.

Regionally we have the London Assembly. It oversees the Greater London Authority which is run by London’s Mayor. That’s a very different system whereby we elect members to a scrutiny body and, separately but at the same time, elect a mayor who chooses their own team (nobody seems clear on why, when they’re portfolio holders, they’re not called a cabinet) from wherever they like, though unsurprisingly it’s normally members of the same party.

The City of London has a Lord Mayor as well, but they’re elected solely by the Aldermen of the city, the square mile, the financial district, so whilst that role shares the name “London” with us it has zero impact on us, apart from, rather bizarrely, maintenance of a local park apparently. That particular democratic wrinkle need not trouble us here.

Once every five years or so we get to vote in a general election too, sending an MP to parliament who, if they’re part of the majority party, confirms the Prime Minister, who then picks their own cabinet.

We also used to elect Members of the European Parliament too of course, for a continent-wide parliament, but that time has passed.

Looked at like that, it’s certainly not beyond understanding. A three (once four) tier system, but we have two fundamental problems here.

For the first of those problems let’s look at roads. Something we all use, on foot, two wheels, four or in a bus. It seems daft but bear with me.

The road our house sits on is a Local Authority road. Its upkeep & maintenance are very sensibly the responsibility of the closest tier of democratic accountability, the local Council. The road it runs into is a regional road and it is therefore the responsibility of the Greater London Authority. The road that runs into is a national highway, and as such comes under the supervision of the Highways Agency, operating for the Department for Transport, in other words, central government.

Almost nobody using these three roads thinks of this, why on earth would they. But when they can’t get their kids on the bus because the road is up or the bin van can’t reach them because of rubbish parking enforcement, the problem becomes immediately incomprehensible because of overlapping responsibilities. This creates a huge de-linkage in the mind of the electorate, where are the consequences between voting & outcomes when who-does-what is, effectively, utterly impenetrable?
And that impenetrability courses across every single discipline of our democracy except defence and foreign affairs. Everything else is split, usually relatively sensibly, but with no obvious guidance. And if it is impenetrable here, in the leafy suburbs, among the bankers, retired intelligence officers and the IT wizards who make commerce & finance work, among the modestly-over-achieving, you can be absolutely certain it is everywhere.

That, by the way, is how populist politicians can get away with referring to diligent civil servants as “the blob”, and it leads us to the second problem.

The UK seems almost unique in that even the basic tiers of government described above are only explained at school in the most perfunctory way imaginable. If you’re not sure about that, ask your friends or, better still, your friends’ kids.

Let’s imagine that you and I were pure evil, that we wanted to design a system that looked to all intents and purposes like a fully functioning democracy but wanted none of it to offer any actual authority to the electorate. Isn’t this what we’d do; have all the trappings; the splendid institutions, the well intentioned rules, the closely guarded ballot boxes and all, but routinely avoid explaining any of it (except at very posh schools of course) and view anyone with the vaguest wish to understand it as above themselves?

I don’t wish to be cynical and I’m certainly not trying to be chippy, but with this level of confusion the British political system really looks like it was designed to exclude…well…the British.

So those are the two key flaws I see in our tiers of government but it’s worth closing by highlighting that the three tiers that apply to us, here, locally in our oh-so comfortable well-shrubbed suburb are to some extent mirrored in other areas across the country too, but not everywhere and not equally. 

There are Parish Councils, Town Councils, District Councils, Unitary Authorities, Combined Authorities, national Parliaments and a national Assembly… So be quite sure; once you’ve gotten to grips with how it works in your particular postcode, you only need to move a handful of miles down the road and once again, it’ll all be every bit as clear as mud.

So, bearing in mind that an appreciable minority of the electorate don’t even know there are multiple tiers, are three levels of democracy better? Honestly, it’s probably about right. But because complication drives confusion it’s okay only, ONLY, ONLY if it comes with a user guide!

Authored by Stephen Gosling, Unlock Democracy, Vice Chair