We are curating a thought leadership series about opportunities for participatory and deliberative processes in a shifting political landscape following the 2024 general election.
This will inevitably be a time of change — and we want to take this chance to think about some of the key issues, tensions and arguments that surround deliberative and participatory democracy in the UK and beyond.
📖 Read our sixth blog, titled: ‘To rebuild trust, the Labour government has to start trusting the public to be part of making decisions’, Involve Director of Advocacy and Communications, Calum Green, puts forward that rebuilding trust starts by the government choosing to trust the public.
The recent election of a new Labour Government presents an important opportunity to bolster deliberative democracy across the devolved nations of the United Kingdom. With distinct political landscapes in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, Labour’s approach to enhancing public participation can be a transformative force in reshaping governance.
In Northern Ireland, the challenge lies in addressing a divided society and fragile political institutions, while offering a fresh approach that incorporates citizen dialogue into policymaking.
Scotland, on the other hand, has a history of centralising power, requiring a greater emphasis on local democracy and participatory budgeting to address pressing social issues. Wales, with its long-standing Labour government, offers examples of innovative public participation methods that could serve as a model for broader reforms.
Through targeted initiatives, Labour can empower communities across the UK, ensuring governance is more responsive, effective, and equitable. In this blog, We hear from three commentators about what this might look like in their respective jurisdictions.
First, it’s worth saying — I agree! The collapse of public trust in politics is a big problem. Trust and confidence in Britain’s system of government is at a record low. We feel our participation in political processes is unlikely to bring about change. And, people’s lack of power and trust is not uniform — those furthest from power in Westminster understandably have the least trust in the current system. The recent re-election of Donald Trump shows that when the public loses faith in democracy, it opens the door to authoritarianism. The message for us here in the UK is that failing to address the decline in public trust comes with serious consequences.
The new Labour government has now delivered its first King’s Speech, completed their first 100 days and passed their first Budget — all the major milestones of a new government. So, what have they done to advance this effort, will it work, and what else might they need to do to rebuild public trust and confidence in politics?
What has the Labour government done to start to rebuild and deserve public trust in politics?
First, they’ve committed to simply behave better than previous governments. This includes centering the importance of ‘service’ as a central narrative. It also involves starting to change the rules for politicians, in an attempt to improve the system of checks and balances that hold politicians to a high standard of behaviour. For example, their new ministerial code strengthens key areas, hoping to help ‘restore politics to public service’. There’s also the long awaited Integrity and Ethics Commission that aims to strengthen standards in government and ensure they are properly enforced, but details are still to come out.
Second, they have said they are going to deliver. The months preceding and just after the General Election were filled with statements about the importance of delivering, from the NHS to prisons and beyond.
Will it work? In short, no.
Some of these steps should be welcomed — better behaviour, clear and firmer rules and more effective delivery are all important and should contribute to a long-term effort to build trust. But, put simply, they won’t be enough.
We’ve seen that even if the behaviour of those in the new Government is an improvement on some predecessors, sleaze scandals still happen — the recent coverage of the Prime Minister’s free glasses, suits and Arsenal tickets, for example. New rules may help, but the chances that they’ll lead to substantially different behaviour, or get the cut through required to restore trust amongst the public, is slim. Particularly if the announcement about new rules is buried the day after the U.S. Presidential Election.
We’ve also seen increasing concern about ‘deliverism’ as a political project. The failure of Democrats to win despite objectively having ‘delivered’ on a number of fronts has apparently left key people with the Labour Party questioning this approach alone - as demonstrated by their interest in an article titled ‘The Death of Deliverism’ over the summer.
So, what else do they need to do? Fundamentally, to rebuild trust in politics, politicians have to start by trusting the public to be part of making the big decisions about our future.
To rebuild public trust in politics, politics has to start by trusting the public to help shape our future.
Just last month, Chancellor Rachel Reeves framed the Government’s first budget as one that will ‘begin a decade of national renewal’. The Government has often talked about ‘mission-led government’ too. The big question is whose mission is it, and who is driving the effort for national renewal? If it’s the government alone, it won’t be enough. It needs to be a national effort, felt and driven by communities across all four nations of the UK.
How can the government do this? Well, it’s already being done all over the world. Taiwan shifted to widespread public participation in decision making, such as using digital participation platform Pol.is to inform legislative changes. These changes range from how best to legislate local taxi and Uber services to rules around alcohol sales. This helped public trust in politics increase significantly, with some measures showing it shift from 9% to 91% at the height of the pandemic. In a different context, Ireland has used Citizens’ Assemblies to develop national debates about key issues and form clear recommendations for ways forward on topics from abortion to gay marriage. On abortion, it’s clear the public were more supportive of one way forward knowing that people like them had been part of making it. Studies found that ‘knowledge of the Citizens' Assembly made one significantly more likely to vote yes’ – supporting what fellow citizens had concluded in the Assembly, and other studies of the Assembly found ‘there is a positive and statistically significant effect on the probability of voting yes’.
And, this approach is being taken in parts of the UK at a national, regional and local level all the time. In Scotland, distributed dialogues supported a mass consultation on fracking, which led to the second largest response to a Scottish Government consultation ever at the time, with the Scottish Minister for Business, Innovation and Energy saying the high levels of engagement were a ‘clear validation of our participative approach.’ West Midlands Combined Authority is running a Greener Together Citizens’ Panel, South Yorkshire has run a Citizens’ Assembly on climate, and Greater Manchester used Legislative Theatre to form their Homelessness Prevention Strategy. At the local level, it’s increasingly seen as good practice, whether that’s Camden leading the way on embedding a participatory culture, or Involve supporting 25 communities in all four corners of the UK to play a role in net zero decisions through our Thriving Places project.
When Starmer said that the fight for trust defines our political era, he was right about the scale of the challenge. This will take a generation to sort. And, with the recent re-election of Donald Trump, it’s clear that authoritarian populism is here to stay. A key part of the solution to this is more democracy - for people to have the power to shape their lives, and our collective future. This starts by the government choosing to trust the public. And it will take time to work. So, we need to start now.