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Earlier this month, an MP from Labour’s right factions criticised the Manchester mayor Andy Burnham for planning to go to a conference by Compass. His problem? The conference would include members of the Green Party. Naturally, after reading this, I signed up to go, as did at least one other person I met there. Though…
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Suppose an island appears in the Pacific Ocean. An island that has never existed before. Many people of the world decide to settle it, until it has a similar population and settlement pattern to New Zealand. We can guess that the islanders would want their own government. They would want it to be democratic. And…
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What a fitting cover! The title Against Elections: The Case for Democracy (2013) may sound like a contradiction to most people. It shouldn’t be. In the Western world, we have an ingrained view that “democracy = elections”. But David Van Reybrouck, a Belgian historian and author, makes a provocative but strong case in this book…
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If you fancy a career in politics, watch Zack Polanski and study how he speaks: Who would’ve thought of it, a politician who actually answers the question! Leaders are often overrated in politics. John Bartle and Ivor Crewe once calculated that Tony Blair, an undeniably charismatic leader, improved his party’s vote share by less than…
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A protest against the killing of Renee Good last Wednesday, only hours after it happened. The 2010s saw more people take part in political protests than any decade before. The 2020s are shaping up to be bigger still — on the day I write this, the US is facing another big wave of protests over…
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When confronted with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, John F. Kennedy had on his mind a book that he had recently read. It was The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman’s newly-published and now-classic account of how the European powers blundered into the First World War. Kennedy was impressed by the book and encouraged many…
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Just over a month ago, I helped out at a people’s assembly in Brixton, a neighbourhood of the inner south London at the end of an Underground line, to act as the facilitator of a group discussion. I have been late posting on this, as this post stalled as I struggled to figure out several…
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Frome, a mid-sized town in the English county of Somerset A few of us have predicted that radical assembly-based parties could be The Next Big Thing in politics. But how would one actually work? Assemblies What do we mean by assembly-based? This would partly mean that the party would use the incredible potential of randomly-selected…
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Why am I so prone to bending covers? As the former CEO of Oxfam, the venerable charity for global poverty relief, Danny Sriskandarajah has met with many well-known figures. Among them was Prince Philip: As I began to reply that I had been drawn to an association built on shared values like democracy, Prince Philip…
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When people come together in small groups to discuss what matters to their community. I’ve been reading lately about the French Revolution and seeing so many parallels to politics today, from the fracturing and paralysis of the elites to the weather problems. Are we on the cusp of a revolution? It is hard to say.…
Assembly Project 