More A Way Of Life… Look, this is just between you and me

We, The People

There's an ad in today's Independent, and I assume in other papers, headed "Fellow Citizens".  This alone is the kind of opening that tends to have me expecting a rant about immigration and the decline of Britishness.  My eye trailed to the bottom expecting it to be signed by Robert Kilroy Silk or similar.

But no.  This ad is a production of The Power Inquiry (I'm one of those who favours 'enquiry' myself, but horses for courses), and is signed by an almost bewildering array of individuals and organisations.  Academics from the LSA and my old alma mater Manchester University sit alongside organisations such as The Black Londoners' Forum and Church Action on Poverty.  The Peepal Centre Leicester (no, I've no idea either) shares the platform with Claire Rayner and Miriam Margolyes (OBEs both) in calling for, well, I can do no better than to use their own words:

"... a full deliberative process, like a People's assembly or convertion, which engages people from across the country.  Given time and resources we are confident that together we will make the compromises to shape the renewal of our democracy."

The point is that they believe, as they say in their opening line, that there is a problem with British democracy.  Phrases such as "a growing sense of a failure of government and a deepening public distrust in politics" also appear early on.

Essentially, they think that it's time for a change, and are hanging off the back of Gordon Brown's promise to renew our constitution to make the point that they want this to mean real change and not just some tweaking around the edges based on decisions made without consultation or involvement.

It all sounds very laudable, but it also sounds a bit like they're resigned to failure from the outset.  They make the point that they have a wide variety of divergent opinion themselves on many issues, such as electoral reform, decentralisation of power an the constitution of an elected upper chamber.  And obviously if they're talking about involving 'the people' in the process then the range of opinion will just get wider and wider.  Which would suggest that the 'deliberative process' could be very challenging indeed, and almost certainly to the point of paralysis.  Let's face it, this is a campaign which has set itself the objective of achieving compromise.  Granted that most big political debates end up at that point anyway, it's not exactly inspirational stuff to say that's where you want to be before you've even started, is it?

Anyway - for those interested:  makeitanissue.org.uk