Our democracy is broken. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone by now. Looking back on it, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone in the first place. But c’est la vie, as we soon won’t be allowed to say for fear of deportation.

Unusually, I’ve been almost lost for words. I’ve wanted to write about it but I’ve found it hard to muster the willpower. And really, we’re so far into theatre of the absurd now – where would I even begin?

For the first time in my life, I’ve started to question whether I even want to engage in politics. Some days I think I should get involved directly in some way. Others, I think voting is just a Pavlovian response to seeing a polling booth. My options are all bad or irrelevant.

We live in a two-party state, which is really a one-party state with very polite revolutions every decade or so. Labour or Conservative, take your pick and then resign yourself to years of buyer’s remorse.

But Brexit has made it all so much more obviously awful. The conduct of parliament in general and the Conservative Party in particular has left me torn between shame and despair. I cannot – and will not – vote for a party which has behaved as the Conservatives have over the past several years. Not now, not ever.

But do I want to vote for Jeremy Corbyn, who may go down in history as the only British party leader worse than Theresa May? To empower John McDonnell, who outright scares me? No, I do not. They’re fighting 40 years in the past, oblivious to the modern world and its economic realities. The Labour Party in its current state may mean the demise of our political system.

However, at this point that could be our only route to progress. I feel like that our politics is so rotten and toxic, pushing it to breaking point might be the only way forward. It cannot be saved. All prolonging its existence will do is magnify the damage it inflicts. 

Whips & Chains

I don’t see any other way to escape a system where extremists can manipulate the party system to such an extent. Jacob Rees-Mogg and Bill Cash, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell; these people should never be able to hold this much influence. They’re relics of history, a waning generation that refuses to let go of the issues of its youth. And in doing so, they become unable to deal with those of the present and future.

The reason they do have this sway is the party system. So long as people act out of party interest, the tail will be able to wag the dog. And a large enabler of this is the party whip. Because when we get down to it, every vote should be a free vote. The people who elect an MP do not do so just to have their votes voided by those of the party leadership’s constituents. In what way is that a representative or democratic?

So the whip must go. Parties must be free to let histrionic ideologues throw their toys – and, hopefully, themselves – from the parliamentary pram. Which means a small majority must not be something so valuable as to be worth protecting at all costs. On which note, a quick segue: isn’t protection of party above all other concerns a defining tenant of communism and totalitarianism? All hail Theresa Mao. 

To fix this Sisyphean limbo of cyclical one-party-state-ism, we need to get used to the idea of cooperation and coalition. The best way to ensure this would be vote reform. Proportional Representation would deliver this model of government as the norm.

But the barrier to this is like getting turkeys to vote for Christmas: why would either party give up the reasonable expectation of near-absolute power of governance? How about: because the also give up the risk of near-absolute powerlessness in the process. Even when out of power, they would have something of a say.

No representation without representation

As things currently stand, we don’t even live in a tyranny of the majority; it’s a tyranny of the minority. Proportional Representation would go a long way towards addressing this. Ending the whip system would ensure there was a straighter line between the ballot box and the dispatch box.

Arguments would be won through evidence, argument and negotiation. Legislation would be enacted through compromise. This way it would better represent the many and varied interests that make up our rich social fabric.

If we are going to talk about voter enfranchisement, why not address it by making sure the vast majority of people who didn’t vote for the current government are also represented? Indeed, it would address what seems – from the outside at least – like creeping disenfranchisement within Westminster itself, on the opposition and back benches.

And finally – for now, at least – it would make room for accountability. Each MP could be held responsible for their actions by their constituents, as those actions will have been freely chosen. Parties will be expected to compromise or they will find themselves outside of the coalition selection pool, deemed too intransigent and dogmatic to work with. These are the structural changes we need to escape this downward spiral of farce.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Those are what I see as the bare minimum changes. They’re a tiny fraction of what’s needed, but they seem like a good place to start. But they won’t resolve the current bugger’s muddle.

The reason we can’t resolve this Brexit catastrophe is because we don’t have the tools to do so. The hooting from the fringes carries far more weight than the reasoned debate and genuine willingness to compromise of the cross-party majority. We’ve mixed a broken version of Direct Democracy with a broken version of Parliamentary Democracy.

And we asked a question that, at a semantic level, was “Do you want things to stay exactly as they are now or be literally any option other than that?”. We then treated votes for the latter as a homogeneous mandate for self-destructive humiliation and widespread impoverishment.

Unsurprisingly, this hasn’t gone brilliantly. 10% of parliament is convinced that 25% of the country voted unanimously to press the big red button. A further 10% of MPs think the votes probably weren’t for quite that, but are worried what will happen to democracy if we admit we aren’t a functioning one.

The remainder of parliament seem to have fairly reasonable positions across the rest of the remain-leave spectrum. But they’re being ignored because the Tory party is a neurotic mess and Corbyn couldn’t mount a rocking horse, much less an effective opposition.

Perhaps the only person to really benefit from it all is Mark Francois, who has somehow oozed his way into the limelight. I guess plummeting standards and competitive idiocy have carried him to heights that being a ghastly little prick who looks like a cheap cocktail sausage never could.

A new politics

The point is, we’re in a chicken/egg situation. I think the only way we can escape it is as follows.

First, we revoke Article 50 but with legislation passed to have another referendum in 5 years. Ahead of this, there will be commitments to implement Proportional Representation and then have a General Election using it. The whip system will be abolished and all parliamentary business following that election would be free votes on every issue.

And then parliament can debate what the question opposite ‘remain’ should be. It can then have definition, born of compromise, in an environment that is representative and accountable for its actions.

At which point, I almost wouldn’t care what the result was. Because we’d have achieved something even more valuable: we’d have fixed our political system and made it fit to resolve the challenges of a modern democracy.