Please tell me which of these arguments do you disagree with?
1) Democracy is where the best-achievable consensus among the populace get the governance that they actually want to have over a period of time.
2) Electoral politics (with a few caveats in a good representative democracy) is where we all get the government that that the voters (often a minority) *say* they want on one particular day. It’s not exactly the same thing as “democracy”.
Here, I’m interviewed by Ros Taylor and Dorian Lynksley with a few interjections from Ian Dunt (segment starting 42 mins and 45 seconds in).
My latest, in The Independent today.
https://twitter.com/Paul0Evans1/status/942701312919195648
Yesterday, in what was a big milestone for me, I handed in the final copy of the text of my book, which is provisionally titled ‘Save Democracy – Abolish Voting’.
It will be published at some point over the next month or so (date tbc) by The Democratic Society. It’s their first publication in a series entitled “Ideas of Democracy”, and I hope, the first of many.
In advance of the launch (you will be able to buy it in print or as an e-book), I’ll be posting a few samples here, but in the meantime, here’s the draft blurb from the back cover to give you a flavour of what to expect:
I’ve just published this:
“There is a direct link between [the failure of representative democracy] and the degree to which plebiscitary democracy is seen as being an acceptable option. The popularity of referendums is a symptom more than it is the cause of our current problems.”
It’s here:
https://twitter.com/Paul0Evans1/status/809049015870521344
In this post, from 2007, I forecast that New Labour were in danger of begetting the current catastrophe. The article also predicted that the Lib-Dems would probably not go into coalition with Labour (and why), and readers may want to note the identity of the nightmare ‘back seat driver‘ that a mandated parliamentary party would be forced to take direction from….
https://twitter.com/paul0evans1/status/752074496694247424
If I could make a pitch to the whole of the centre-left on what I believe its future direction should be, this would be it.
We must rebuild democracy for the 21st century. Here's how we do it. https://t.co/hGIoUJ31KF pic.twitter.com/BtBIDfTFYu
— littleatoms (@littleatoms) July 7, 2016
I published this on Medium earlier today.
https://twitter.com/Paul0Evans1/status/750831965289508864
Very grim times for The Labour Party. Is this the endgame?
https://twitter.com/Paul0Evans1/status/749361205521809408
I’m re-posting a portion of an older, longer post here because it is important that we all understand how any attempt to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party will play out.
It isn’t very comfortable reading, I’m afraid. Sorry.
