Transcriber: Maria Pericleous Reviewer: Denise RQ
Today I've got a teeny-weeny little topic to talk to you about.
I thought I'd go for something nice and small, get it in in 10 minutes:
"The problem with democracy."
(Laughter)
How did I ever come up with that title?
50 years ago Bernard Crick, a British political scientist,
wrote a book called "In defence of politics",
and it talked about democratic politics
and it's magic!
He described it like a lover everybody wanted,
part of this concept to share its values, its magic.
50 years later, it seems fairly obvious
that democracy and politics has lost some of its magic.
Αnd I wanted to just try and unpick why that is the case.
Αnd even the title of my talk is a problem.
"The problem with Democracy".
There is no problem with democracy
there are problems, in the plural.
And those are multi-layered,
multi-leveled, they're complex, they're challenging.
But they will define our lives.
The whole notion of a problem with democracy
also accepts that a problem exists.
And what I want to dare to try and suggest to you today
is that maybe,
some of the problems with democracy,
or what we interpret as problems,
are actually the great beauty, that magic of democracy
that we've forgotten about, that we no longer understand.
Maybe democratic politics isn't failing us,
maybe we are failing it.
Here is my naughty little idea,
my little thought that I want you to think about,
and I feel at this point,
and I haven't got any slides, or jokes, or music, or videos.
I've only got this bottle which I am going to try and hide behind.
Could the problem with democracy be
that we have too much democracy rather than too little?
Could it be that actually we have too much of the wrong type of democracy,
and too little of the right kind?
That's my hook, that's it, I can go now.
Leave it in your mind.
But let me just give you my simple ABC.
That A is for Apples, attack and the Amazon.
B is for Bananas - I added the fruit to make it sound good, by the way,
I'm not talking about apples and bananas -
but the B is for Bananas, and benefits and butchery.
And the C is for cucumbers, for calming the storm,
and for compromise.
Taken together, that ABC allows me to introduce this idea,
this naughty idea in my head.
That maybe we have too much, not too little democracy today.
So let me start:
that A is for Attack.
What we have today is attack politics.
It is shallow. It's aggressive.
It's deconstructive.
The role of governments is rarely to govern; it is to survive.
The role of opposition isn't to question.
It is to attack.
Is it any wonder we all turn away in increasing numbers,
and don't want to play that game?
But it's too obvious to say attack politics, because we know that.
There's a deeper issue going on,
and this is what I call Amazonian politics.
Amazonian politics has nothing to do
with tribes, or trees, or jungles.
It has to do with the nature of politics.
It's Amazonian because more more people seem to think
that politics is about click and collect.
It's retail politics.
You're not a citizen, you're a customer.
They think you go to the ballot box, you do your "X"
and wait for the goodies to arrive the next day.
Politics was never defined, it was never supposed to work that way.
It isn't about you, or me, it's about us.
And them.
But we've lost it.
This Amazonian politics this thing, this shallow, this destructive model
it leaves a bad taste in our mouth.
It's like the political equivalent of fast food: it doesn't nourish you.
It might fill, satisfy you for a short time,
but overall, you feel cheated.
But this Amazonian politics is saying dig down, dig down, dig down.
The Amazonian politics is dangerous, because it creates gaps.
The rise of the populist parties today,
the extreme parties of the right and the left.
They thrive on this Amazonian politics,
and the gaps and the cracks it leaves.
The answer that they give is too simple:
if we could only get rid of those terrible politicians
and their politics, everything would be fine.
Vote for me.
Well, I'm sorry.
I know we all love democracy and hate politics.
But you can't have democracy without politics,
you can't have politics without politicians.
The response is not to vote for the populist;
it's to re-engage.
To move from Amazonian politics
to a deeper, thicker, richer model.
I'm getting quite carried away, aren't I? Blimey! Oof!
So let me move from my A to my B.
To my bananas. To my benefits.
The benefits of democracy are often thought to be the problems.
Democratic politics is slow, and it's messy,
and it can be hard to understand.
It doesn't always deliver the right answers
because there are no right answers to complex problems.
It's messy because life is messy.
And what's really interesting
- and this is why we need to re-engage and redefine our politics -
it's because the challenges we all face together
do not abide by the traditional political boundaries.
Our challenges are becoming more complex:
from climate change, to obesity, to mental health.
These are challenges that we cannot respond to
as individuals, but only together.
But the benefits of democracy, that slowness, that listening,
that emphasis on compromise,
is not a failure of democracy,
it's the beauty of democracy.
And let me turn it round and twist it one little bit:
could it be that if politics has a problem or if it's failing,
that it's too easy to blame the politicians?
Could it be that, actually, the public are to blame?
Because I can't help but think, sometimes,
the public are fickle:
they want pain-free solutions to complex problems, when none exist.
They don't want politicians, they want supermen and superwomen,
who will come and find that magic wand, that technological fix,
pain-free solutions to the problems we all face, when none exist.
The challenges are great,
but we'll only get there if we re-define and understand
what politics is about.
And if you think of the benefits, the benefits of politics are massive.
It's everyday politics: it's electricity, it's clean water, it's living,
it's police, it's healthcare.
I once got into terrible trouble
for suggesting that, in some parts of the world,
the public had become decadent.
They no longer understood, or realised, or valued,
what democracy gave them.
And I have a D with my A B and C,
and my D is about Default.
I am not arguing to keep what we have, and shouldn't we all be grateful,
quite the opposite:
I'm arguing for a re-definition of how we live our lives,
but one that understands what we have and how to move forward.
Rather than the risks that we all move towards,
an anti-political, the fashion-at-the-moment,
just get rid of the politics, get rid of the politicians
and things will be fine.
The benefits of democracy are all around, they are not perfect,
but every day,
hundreds and thousand of people risk their lives and die crossing boundaries,
in order to try to get to those democratic regimes.
And that brings me to the B of Butchery.
That if you've ever been to a country that is not a democracy,
and see what people have to live through and put up with:
the butchery, the barbarism, the fear society,
when you come back,
you sometimes have a different understanding of what we have,
and that democracy is possibly more fragile than we understand.
And another thing, a broad thing, a global thing:
that globally democracy is the exception rather than the rule.
Most people in the world do not enjoy the benefits of democracy.
The whole idea of coverage brings me to my C.
The attack politics, the Amazonian politics,
creates a perpetual swirl of emotion.
We need to somehow calm the storm.
We need to understand that the way to rebuild democracy
is about commitment and compromise.
I even wonder, and this takes me back to hyper-democracy,
the idea that maybe we have too much rather than too less.
One of the founding fathers uses the term energy, governing energy.
That actually, if you elect somebody into office
you have to give them the capacity to make decisions and rule.
Democracy is about a balance
between holding people to account and letting them get on with governing.
I sometimes worry, I know it's a terrible thought,
that maybe the hyper-democracy in which we live
the rise of the watchdogs, the scrutineers,
24/7 media,
the increasing role of the courts, freedom of information.
Has anybody noticed that at a time when we have more democracy
than we've ever had before,
there are more discontented democrats
than satisfied democrats?
I'm not arguing in favour
of an insensitive political system
but could it be that politicians have become too sensitive,
hyper-sensitive, to trying to listen to the demands of the people?
To attune to the latest Twitter feed or tweets,
the front page of the Australian or the Washington Post?
Too scared to make those decisions
that actually need to be made?
Have we lost, as it were, a degree of balance?
Which brings me back to my D, my Default.
That I am not arguing to accept what we've got,
but I am arguing for a re-definition of politics.
That brings me to the E which is the End, I have no time,
but the E is for Engagement,
that we need people to understand that voting matters,
because it is a form of public pressure.
Not 'the' form, not the only form,
but you can engage in a whole range of varieties.
The problem we face around the world today
is that large parts of society, the poor, and the young,
are disengaging, they're not engaging and I can understand that.
My argument is, though, even if you're not interested in politics,
politics is interested in you.
It will define your life.
That's my nasty little thought, my nasty little idea.
Maybe the problem with democracy, as we live it today,
is not that we have too little democracy, but actually we have too much.
Too much of the shallow, adversarial, cosmetic, nothingness politics,
and too little of the deeper, richer forms of politics
that we can really accept and drive forward in the future.
That brings me to my final E and to the End.
(Applause)