Can Ukip save our democracy?

The driving force in current British politics is not something new—the rise of smaller parties, resurgent nationalisms or social media—but an absence of something: democracy. The dramatic decline of public faith in the institutions of government, including political parties, is the dominant mood shaping the context of our electoral politics. Commentary on this subject tends to attribute it to the public's failure to appreciate how important politics really is. While the fact that a gap exists between the express wishes of the public and what any mainstream party has offered to do for them, scarcely gets a mention.

The ties that bind people to their polity have frayed and broken as politics has become professionalised and centralised. As a result, it isn’t just that people feel that politicians are out of touch: they are demonstrably implementing a programme which serves interests other than those of their constituents. The Labour Party was once an alliance of organisations and a means by which Trades Unions, non-conformist churches, voluntary societies and various campaign groups (from ramblers to civil rights) were connected to the political system. The Conservative Party was essentially a network of local associations with deep roots in community institutions and local government. In both cases, even when not in power these groups could act separately from central government via local authorities, charitable societies and workplace union branches. That is no longer the case.

That is why all the insurgent parties—Greens, UKIP and the SNP—have, in different ways, achieved success through both a populist appeal and a promise to restore and revive democracy in 21st century Britain.

Beyond this, they all propose radical institutional reforms which, they hope, would help citizens engage with the decision-making process. The parties offer different diagnoses and different remedies. What is striking is that of the three, Ukip is the only one actually making a relatively novel set of institutional proposals. Although the Greens have traditionally argued for radical devolution (not just to regions and councils but to even smaller local units), their current manifesto essentially calls for the same programme of constitutional reform advocated since the 1980s by the Liberal Democrats, the Labour soft left, and bodies such as the Electoral Reform Commission. The SNP’s policy for democratisation is well known, predicating hopes for democratic renewal on the re-founding of Scotland as a Nordic social democracy; the fact that electoral turnout in Denmark and Sweden rarely falls below 85 per cent (the historic peak in the UK, not seen since the 1950s) suggests that this may be a justified strategy. But it is not a new one.

So what of Ukip’s democratic proposals, which are largely based on the ideas of Tory defector Douglas Carswell? These are a set of practices borrowed from several American states, most notably California. For example, take their proposal for a “Citizens Initiative.” In their manifesto it states: “every two years we will allow a national referendum on the issues of greatest importance to the British public, gathered via an approved petition, provided the petition has more than two million signatures.”

It is precisely this model of plebiscite politics which brought California to the brink of bankruptcy during its prolonged budget crisis of 2008-12. To explain the matter simply, for several decades, right-wing lobbies had organised successful referendum campaigns obliging the state government to cut taxes, while public-sector unions had organised successful campaigns mandating them to raise spending on services such as schools. The consequences were predictable. Single-issue plebiscite is no substitute for effective democratic deliberation, involving a whole community, or even for effective political representation; in the long-run it reduces the possibility of any such thing occurring.

Ukip’s other key proposals are a right of recall for all MPs and for open primaries to select party election candidates. Again, these are typically American policies which tend to empower small cadres of highly motivated (and well-funded) lobbyists. Their suggested recall powers would limit the capacity of democratic legislatures to enact the will of the majority, rather than affording expanded opportunities for collective deliberation and decision-making. The more general thrust of their anti-state, limited-government programme would, in the long-term, only continue the process of eroding the power and accountability of democratic institutions. And they have little to say about the great constitutional questions—Scottish and Welsh home rule, for example—which the SNP and the Greens at least engage with.

Sadly, what none of these parties is actually offering is a programme of real experimentation and participation. Local deliberative bodies, citizens juries, participatory budgeting, even the use of online media to enable community discussions, are all tools which could help renew a sense of democratic involvement.

But addressing the crisis of British democracy is not so much a question of finding the right institutional solution as one of acknowledging what the real problem is. It is not untrustworthy politicians or even the lack of proportionality in the electoral system (although this is a crucial issue). It is not our membership of the EU. It is the fact that we have a political system which does not enable citizens to make collective decisions about the issues which affect their lives. Until this is addressed, proposals such as Ukip’s version of “direct democracy” remain part of the problem.