It was rather warm for February 17th. I was lost looking around the many exits of St James’ Park tube station. I was after Dr. Ken Ritchie, the former CEO of the Electoral Reform Society. Graham Smith, the CEO of Republic had given him my details originally to help The Reform Foundation (which he chairs) get a website. This escalated quickly when a few weeks later I found myself voted in as a trustee during a meeting of the other trustees.
The Reform Foundation has a board to be envious of, formed out of Republic, as an organisation to promote wider democratic reform, it consists of a wide range of academics from various political backgrounds; from Professor Stephen Haseler, who was the former deputy mayor of London on the GLC and a founding member of the SDP, to Alexandra Runswick, who is the director of Unlock Democracy. The Foundation has a simple aim; to build a better democracy, passing power to the people. In order to do this we would seek to promote popular debate about democracy, emancipating people through providing resources for advocates of political reform.
Of course, I quickly learned the reality was much different. Recently I edited a paper written by Graham Allen MP (the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee in the House of Commons). We were able to sell out of copies of the book at the John Campbell lecture organised by the Federal Union and Republic. However, I was disappointed by the lack of engagement in our organisation amongst those I have known within the Liberal Democrats. If we, by calling ourselves the Liberal Democrats, accept that democracy is the best process of collective decision-making that we, humanity, have arrived at, it must follow that we should seek to enhance it. When it is the case that more than half of all voters in the last General Election voted against their winning MP (their votes were wasted), we have a completely unelected upper House in our Parliament (which contains unelected religious clerics and people there by hereditary right) and we have an unelected Head of State, it is clear this ‘democratic’ system is not fit for purpose.
To those in our party who say this is a secondary issue I say that while our democracy is cut with dirt, any decision that derives from it cannot truly be clean. I am not involved in democratic reform because I am obsessed with details of electoral systems. I am involved in democratic reform because I believe that if we liberate our democracy and give the British people the right to a say in the type of constitutional nation we are, then we will be collectively stronger as a nation. When the Liberal Democrats rightly (in my opinion) opposed the Iraq war, it was and remains the case that their elected Members of Parliament did not have the right to vote on whether we went to war, the Prime Minister just had to be gracious enough to provide one on that occasion.
It is clear we need to battle these ideas out, and we must follow through with the longstanding Liberal Democrat call for a constitutional convention.
* Junade Ali is a trustee of The Reform Foundation and has campaigned at a local level insde the Liberal Democrats. A computer programmer by profession, Junade has run a number of computer businesses, including multiple free speech ISPs.
