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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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Conservatism is a philosophy of sex and death That’s an actual quote from Danny Kruger’s book Covenant: The New Politics of Home, Neighbourhood and Nation (2023) and it makes sense in context. I read this book because I think it’s healthy to sometimes read from different perspectives to your own. Kruger wrote it to argue…
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Last September, Britain’s embattled centre-left government announced they would introduce a compulsory digital ID. Although polls in the last few years had found public opinion more open to a government ID system, the initial public reaction was far more divided. Opposition surged and a petition against the proposal soon drew millions of signatures in just…
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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 few weekends ago, I went on a walking tour of central with Bella Roberts from Antiparty, a group dedicated to envisioning democracy without the party system of today – something I have independently concluded myself. They are particularly interested in sortition, deliberative democracy and giving power to local communities. As they put it: We…
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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…
Assembly Project 