Act Now: Democratic Reform

As the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and many other issues examined within this report demonstrate, our political system produces unhelpful and wholly avoidable outcomes. The current system channels politicians toward unpopular ideological experiments that entrench and exacerbate crisis. We need to understand that transformation of society requires systematic democratic reform. In the report, we set out a set of reforms that enhance the capacity of our political system to produce the outcomes that the vast majority of our society requires. Building on policy development by the Jenkins Commission (1998) and the Brown Commission (2022), we set out forms of electoral and Parliamentary reform that increase competition and the ethos of public service and reduce in-built incentives for careerism and unwillingness to take risks for the public good. We argue that increasing consistency of administrative bodies across the UK while devolving greater powers to nations and regions is essential to making policy that is responsive. The reforms require call for bravery among politicians in upholding the public good against opportunities for corruption and the power of unsustainable special interests.

The recommendations we advance require the traditional view of politics as public service to be enacted. Politicians need to embody the ethos of public service that got Britain through WWII and built the Post-War Consensus and enabled us to survive a pandemic in the absence of competent government. The reforms we recommend call for an end to politics as a lucrative career and for public service to resemble the sombre duty of those who serve on juries or in the Civil Service. Without that public service, serious government is impossible.