David Rickard: The Power 2010 deliberative poll is no test of an English parliament

Well, I suppose I would say that, wouldn’t I? The results of last weekend’s deliberative poll of 200 ordinary UK citizens chosen ‘scientifically’ by the YouGov opinion-polling organisation, together with Professor James Fishkin of Stanford University (an expert in such exercises), were published today.

Basically, the gathering was considering a long list of 57 proposals for political and constitutional reform that represented the most popular out of 4,000 ideas sent to Power 2010 by the public. As English Parliament Online has already documented, the most popular out of these 57 proposals by a long chalk was holding a referendum on the creation of an English parliament, followed by a referendum on a proportional voting system and a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.

In the deliberative assembly, before starting the discussions, the 200 attendees were asked to indicate their support for each of the 57 proposals. Then again after the discussions – which included seminar-style direction and guidance from a panel of ‘independent’ constitutional and legal experts – the citizens were asked to write down the degree to which they supported each proposal. This resulted in ‘before and after’ rankings. The top-29 proposals are now being submitted to a nationwide voting process to whittle them down to a list of five ideas that candidates at the general election will be asked to commit to.

As the press release states, in somewhat self-congratulatory tone: “In a surprising twist, populist reforms such as a fully elected House of Lords and lowering the voting age to 16 came relatively low down the priority list - with open primaries to select Parliamentary Candidates and a referendum on English devolution not even making the cut of options to be put to the public vote”.

Well, some of us don’t find that so surprising! In summary, the re-rankings that are of most interest to supporters of an English parliament are:

Yes, funny, isn’t it, how ‘populist’ proposals such as an English parliament, independence referendums in each of Great Britain’s nations, a referendum on a better devolution settlement and a referendum on Britain’s EU membership all got demoted as an effect of the deliberative process!

And strange that only one idea that recognises England’s democratic deficit – effectively, a version of English votes on English laws – made ‘the final cut’ of the top-29: precisely, a suggestion that preserves the present Union parliament intact and resists the creation of an English parliament in which MPs would be accountable to English voters and parties, not to a British mandate and British parties! Too much of a coincidence to be a mere accident, in my view.

But before I set out why I think that the results of the Power 2010 deliberation have no relevance for the case in favour of an English parliament, I want first to ask the following question: what exactly does Power 2010 mean by ‘populist’, here? Does that just mean ‘popular’, because there’s no doubt that an English parliament is an extremely popular idea. As Paul Senior – one of the 200 citizens – puts it in Power 2010’s press release, the proposal to ‘devolve England’ obtained the support of 51.7% of those who voted before the deliberation, falling to only 26.2% afterwards.

It seems to me that ‘populist’ does mean ‘popular’ but is a term intended to denigrate certain popular ideas that don’t sit comfortably with the liberal establishment. Indeed, the whole Power 2010 deliberative exercise is itself an explicitly anti-populist process: designed to take a set of raw, unthought-through ideas – including ‘extreme’ proposals that command mass support – and to refine, moderate and channel them in ways that are open to the reasoning and qualification of better educated, professional people who are experts and practitioners in the areas affected by the deliberation, i.e. politics and law. In other words, it’s a way of reintroducing disruptive ideas and politically alienated individuals into the established order and ways of doing things in order to counteract their revolutionary potential.

As a result, major constitutional-reform proposals tend to get demoted through the process of deliberation while relatively minor ones – even some that appear almost trivial – are promoted. This is because few ‘reasonable’ people, working together in a process that is intended to advance agreement and consensus, could object to certain ideas, especially if they are relatively easy to implement. Hence, ‘strengthening select committees’ came out at number one (promoted from number three pre-deliberation), followed by: ‘allowing voters to vote for “none of the above” on ballot papers’ [big deal: letting people abstain!]; and ‘increasing the number of issues [in Parliament] decided by free votes’. Well, these things are hardly earth-shattering or controversial, which is why everyone agrees about them!

By contrast, the discussion on an English parliament will undoubtedly have brought home to people some of the problems – real or imaginary – that an EP might present (and definitely would present to the political establishment) that they may not have thought about before. We know this is so because Power 2010 prepared a checklist of pros and cons on each idea for the delegates to read before the event, and the cons against an English parliament outnumbered the somewhat lukewarm pros in a way that has been fiercely criticised elsewhere. Accordingly, it’s hardly surprising that fewer people supported an EP after the deliberation than before.

This is no test for the merits and legitimacy of an English parliament, nor indeed for the level of popular support it commands, even if – through the insidious conflation of ‘popular’ with ‘populist’ – Power 2010 appears to be insinuating that popular anti-establishment ideas such as this will tend to lose much of their initial support when they are subjected to a reasoned process of weighing up their relative merits, informed by the self-preserving mindset of the liberal establishment and of better informed professionals.

Indeed, so much does the deliberative process promote itself as a ‘representative’ process (i.e. one that authentically embodies the collective will of the ‘nation’) over and above more ‘popular’ forms of democracy (e.g. ones that equate popular sovereignty with simple majorities in a mass poll) that ‘establishing a duty of public consultation on controversial matters through a deliberative process’ is promoted from number nine pre-deliberation to number four post-deliberation, in parity with ‘establishing a duty of public consultation on controversial matters through direct democracy’, e.g. through referendums. In other words, swayed and flattered by being elevated to the status of a citizens’ parliament selected, rather than elected, to deliberate on ‘the nation’s’ political future, the delegates not unnaturally have been moved to consider the deliberative process itself as being literally on a par with a popular referendum as a means to take decisions about matters of major controversy. For me, this appears to be a way in which the Power 2010 deliberation seeks to validate itself as a process that will come up with recommendations that represent the authentic, considered will of the people: one that prospective MPs should, then, duly take note of.

But what, or who, is the ‘nation’ that the Power 2010 delegates are said to ‘scientifically’ represent, making them entitled to vote on the merits of an English parliament? The Power 2010 press release is headlined, “29 ideas to clean up British politics to be put to nation”. So the ‘nation’, for Power 2010, is unambiguously the UK / Britain. The delegates, as the press release puts it, were “scientifically chosen to represent the UK as a whole”. And the broader ‘nationwide’ poll that will now ensue is a UK-wide poll.

Are we supposed to accept that a vote by 200 citizens from all four UK nations on a proposal to hold a referendum (in England only, presumably) on the establishment of an English parliament is just as valid an indication of the merits of, or support for, an English parliament as an actual referendum itself: UK-wide citizens’ deliberation thereby replacing an English popular vote on English governance? No, of course not: only the English people as a whole are qualified to decide whether to create an English parliament or, indeed, whether to hold a referendum on the subject! In short, this UK-wide deliberative exercise reproduces the West Lothian Question in a supposedly more reasoned and open form: non-English people voting on England-only matters.

Power 2010 replicates the West Lothian Question for precisely the same reason as the WLQ itself is sanctioned by Parliament: to preserve the Union parliament, the Union itself and the established order. The very premise behind the Power 2010 process is that the Union parliament is preserved, indeed enhanced, as the cornerstone of ‘British democracy’ and the only valid vehicle through which political and constitutional change should be advanced. It is for this reason that parliamentary candidates are going to be asked whether they are willing to sign up to Power 2010’s top-five proposals: because it’s Westminster MPs that are going to be entrusted with implementing them; and, indeed, the top ones that have emerged so far largely relate to Westminster’s workings themselves!

Such a process, built on such a deeply entrenched unionism and fundamental commitment to the Westminster parliament, could hardly be expected to encourage delegates to endorse an English parliament. And that’s not just because of political bias but because the process itself involves buying in to the established UK-parliamentary way of running ‘the country’, i.e. England.

I’ve previously expressed (e.g. here, here and here) my grave doubts about the legitimacy of the Power 2010 process as a means to promote genuine popular sovereignty – meaning, in relation to English matters, the sovereignty of the English nation – as the principal driver of fundamental political and constitutional reform for England and the UK as a whole. I’ve been rather disappointed at the lack of any response from Power 2010 to my critiques; but then, I shouldn’t be too surprised if my raising of the English Question is met with silence from them. Ultimately, for Power 2010, it seems the ‘nation’ is conflated with the polity (i.e. Britain), with the consequence that there is little scope to allow the nation as the people (England) to take charge of its own affairs in ways that might involve tearing down the edifice of the British state and building up a new English polity on new foundations: those of the will of the people.

It is for these reasons that the opinions of a statistically tiny polling sample of 200 English and non-English UK citizens swayed by the advice of a radically pro-Union panel of experts cannot in any way be taken as an authoritative test on the merits and / or popularity of an English parliament.