We are living through exceptionally turbulent times. The climate crisis continues to worsen after 38 years of political inaction. The AI crisis driven by reckless individuals in the tech industry threatens to upend society. And these issues feed into the wider polycrisis, which includes the conflicts igniting around the world.
What do these issues have in common? Many have been created by politicians (like the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East), and all of these issues have failed to be addressed by politicians – the very people whose job it is to tackle them.
Can things change? Yes, absolutely. Will they change? I’m not so sure after reading Ian Dunt’s brilliant book, How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t. At least, I don’t see widespread improvements coming from representative democracy in its current guise, which is something I’ll discuss more at the end of the blog.
As the title of this book implies, it explores the political system in the UK. I was shocked at just how flawed and backwards things are. As a political journalist, Dunt goes behind the scenes and explains how the whole system works (or in this case – how it doesn’t!) It’s an extremely well researched book, and one that makes me lose hope that the meaningful structural changes we desperately need will come from politicians. Please note that this review contains spoilers.
Our Broken Political System
“They do not know what they are doing. They do not even attempt to know what they are doing. And then, when things go wrong, they do not learn from what happened.”
This quote encapsulates much of what we thought we knew about politics, but Dunt goes into detail about just how unfit for the job many elected politicians are.
During the selection process within political parties, people are selected to become potential MPs. But, these individuals often have little to no relevant expertise or knowledge. Perhaps this happens because the person has good connections within the party, or maybe it’s because the party anticipates that the selected individual will tow the party line. As Dunt explains, “The bigger problem, which far exceeds that of the talent pool, is about a fundamental lack of seriousness in the appointments. Expertise is not just an irrelevance. It is often considered a handicap, because a minister who knows the subject matter will be harder to subjugate to the prime minister’s will.”
Once an MP is elected, they are told how to vote on bills. Dunt says there have been cases where the whips have physically pushed MPs through the doors to vote a certain way (walking through one door signals assent, the other dissent). MPs aren’t often allowed to vote the way they want to, and if they do vote against the will of the whips, they face the possibility of being removed from their party.
Some MPs are selected to become Ministers within the government’s cabinet. Their goal isn’t necessarily to make a positive difference for the people of the country, but rather to try make a name for themselves to aid their career progression. This often has disastrous consequences like that of Chris Grayling’s probation reforms, which Dunt covers in all its depressing detail.
In our bicameral legislature (meaning that we have two chambers of decision-making with MPs in the House of Commons, and Lords in the House of Lords), legislation needs to be approved by both houses before it can become law. The House of Commons is where deep meaningful debate should take place. But, Dunt shows this doesn’t happen in the way we hope it might. MPs often lack the expertise in the subject areas to properly understand what’s being proposed, on top of which bills are written in archaic language (the fewer MPs that understand what’s being proposed, the fewer that will raise concerns against the government’s intentions).
Where some MPs might wish to try find a compromise between parties and work together on a bill, they are often prevented from doing so. Thus, deliberation and meaningful debate on laws which shape our collective futures, doesn’t take place the way it could or should. Another issue is that bills are hastily written, to the extent that they are often incomplete when they’re debated in the House of Commons.
The place where much legislation is amended is, according to Dunt, surprisingly one of the few places that works – the House of Lords.
Once a bill has gone through the Commons, it goes over to the Lords for their review. Dunt says that the Lords value expertise, enabling meaningful debate to finally take place. It’s therefore left to the Lords to correct the legislation and bring it up to scratch. To show just how terribly the House of Commons is performing, Dunt says that in the 2016-17 Parliament alone, around 2,270 successful amendments to bills came from the House of Lords.
Dunt says of our legislature that, “The bits that work are the select committees and the House of Lords.” Outside of these two, the system is in disarray. The civil service, the special advisers (spads), the journalism, the extremely poor layout of the Prime Minister’s residence and the issues this causes for joined up thinking and gate-keeping, and so much more besides, makes one wonder how anything of importance ever gets the proper attention, and deliberation it requires.
It goes a long way towards explaining why many of the most important issues we face today haven’t been addressed.
Why Does This Matter?
On a national level, there are widespread concerns about the state of the NHS, housing, taxation, immigration, education, public transport, the impact of AI on the workforce, defence spending, and many more issues.
On a global level, the climate and ecological crises have the potential to bring civilisation to an end, whilst the rapidly accelerating AI crisis threatens to alter society in ways that we can scarcely begin to understand. Not to forget the conflicts, which some experts warn could spiral into a third world war.
Politicians are the only people who can enact laws to address the national issues we face, and agree the international frameworks to address the structural problems underpinning the polycrisis.
After reading Dunt’s excellent book, I feel that the change we desperately need won’t be coming from politicians, regardless of which party is in charge, due to how broken the system is. This has major implications because it means that our elected policymakers likely won’t pull us back from the brink of chaos – which is something they’ve already failed to do with the climate crisis for 38 years.
It’s not all bad news though; I believe there is a viable tried and tested alternative at our disposal. Currently, we have a representative democracy, where we elect politicians to supposedly represent us (or as often happens – tow the line of their party, which may go against our wishes and interests).
I think a better model exists. It’s called participatory democracy. Participatory democracy involves citizens coming together through processes such as citizens’ assemblies (see my previous posts on assemblies here and here), citizens’ juries, and participatory budgeting. In citizens’ assemblies they listen to experts and stakeholders on individual topics, deliberate together about what they’ve heard, before voting on recommendations. To date, this has been extremely effective as far as the assembly process was concerned. The downside has been that these processes often aren’t legally binding, and as such politicians can ignore the extremely well thought out recommendations.
So, what if we replaced our representative democracy with permanent citizens’ assemblies for example? It’s not as far out an idea as some may imagine. In fact, in Ancient Athens, their democracy was effectively run by a few assemblies and this continued successfully for around 200 years until an invasion brought this era of citizen-led democracy to an end. Even Aristotle said that democracy is based on sortition (randomly choosing citizens to participate in assemblies), but that elections were linked to oligarchy. He may have been onto something there…
This concept needs far greater detail and explanation and I’ll be exploring this topic in much greater detail in my first non-fiction book – stay tuned for more info!
It’s safe to say that we can’t afford to continue with this broken political system, as it won’t shift us away from disaster in time. Dunt’s crucial book should be read to fully understand this.
Meaningful change is possible and an alternative form of democracy exists that we can embrace, should we wish to. This might be one of the few ways we could alter our current trajectory, and build a stronger country and a better world. That’s surely worth taking the time to explore further.
I’ve been writing about the climate emergency since 2016, and the AI crisis since 2023. I write all my own work, without the use of AI. I don’t publish on any other paid platforms, and my blog remains completely free to read. If you’ve found my writing informative and if you’d like to support my work, I’d be really grateful if you did so here. Thank you.
My cli-fi children’s picture book, Nanook and the Melting Arctic is available from Amazon, including Amazon UK and Amazon US. My eco-fiction children’s picture book, Hedgey-A and the Honey Bees about how pesticides affect bees, is available on Amazon’s global stores including Amazon UK and Amazon US.