End the rigged system that put Boris in power
The new UK Government
The UK is in democratic crisis.
Our systems of government are massively over-centralised, with local authority spending gutted and Westminster overwhelmingly calling the shots. As funding for public services is undermined by successive governments and profiteering companies, the social contract between state and people has been shaken at its foundations.
Our electoral system persistently returns parliaments that neither represent nor respond to the wishes of the people; it focuses political discourse on tactical voting arrangements at the expense of the vital issues affecting all of our futures; its focus on marginal gains in tightly competitive areas generated an unhealthy, exclusive focus on certain, marginal seats - at the expense of millions living outside them.
Millions of others at the margins of society - migrants, the young, and many more - are entirely disenfranchised. Our electoral system ostensibly means 45.3% of votes don't truly count[1] - but many millions don't get a vote in the first place.
Altogether, all these features of our rotten political institutions shape and preserve a deeply unequal system that empowers wealthier people at all our expense and threatens hard-won social progress. We call on the newly formed government to address these deep fault-lines in political life, and commit to a democracy that is deeper and more expansive.
[1] https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/latest-news-and-research/media-centre/press-releases/analysis-millions-of-votes-go-to-waste-as-parties-need-wildly-different-number-of-votes-per-mp/
Sponsored by
To:
The new UK Government
From:
[Your Name]
We the undersigned call on your government to:
- Give 16- and 17-year olds full and equal political rights, including the right to vote - millions of us can leave home, work, be taxed, and even be recruited into the armed forces without any say in our political future.
- Extend full political rights to all those resident in the UK - millions of migrants are unfairly excluded from our democracy despite the outcome of the vote deciding their future.
- Overhaul our electoral system and replace it with a system of proportional representation - our current electoral practices unfairly prioritise the voices of a tiny number in marginal seats and make social progress more precarious.
- Commit to thorough and equal devolution, handing communities the power to determine their own future - communities deserve the space, funding, and support to determine how they invest in their futures. Regional assemblies and increased powers for municipalities must be available to those that want them.
- Introduce citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting, a process for citizens’ initiatives, and other participatory democatic forms - we can only address the disenfranchisement felt by millions if we bring the centres of power closer to people, by empowering people to ‘exercise their democratic muscle’ and govern themselves.
- Introduce rules on media ownership so that no individual or corporation owns more than 20% of a media market - concentration of wealth and power in the media has created a hostile and unequal media that fails to speak truth to power, and we must act to secure plurality of media ownership.