My last post put forward a specific proposal. This had the benefit of utilising a known and practiced Commons’ procedure towards breaking the Brexit impasse in a way that could provide for an up building, seamless process rather than a fragmenting, patchwork one. But this carries also the burden of being a new idea squeezed into an old form. This may be the best fit, but not the ideal set of clothing for it. It is ‘off the peg’ rather more than ‘tailor made’ for the task whilst nevertheless being the option of choice because it is readily available, relatively well suited and time is of the essence. It is ‘good enough’ for present purposes and therefore should be adopted. But a new idea also needs a new form. What might this look like?
We are blighted by forms which see the solutions to problems coming from an arrangement where the whole range of possible viewpoints is squeezed into two which then do battle with each other to find an eventual winner. The whole thing is based on contest and edges readily into conflict and confrontation in the belief that this can somehow offer, or produce, the best way forward. What an absurd idea. And yet we continue to run with it as if it offered a self evident truth. One thing that Brexit has at least taught us is that this is an approach well past its sell by date: ill suited to our needs and leading us simply into greater difficulties than the solution which we need.
We need to find forums in which all the relevant points of view can be heard. We can expect there to be at least 12 of these (just as there are 12 signs of the Zodiac) and all these need to be represented in any problem solving procedure. However, they need to be present first of all as observations rather than opinions. These observations – individual ‘points of view’ as properly understood – can then be worked with so that out of a bringing them together into an overall picture of the situation at hand a solution can arise out of this picture and the process itself. This is in distinction to something that is conceived more in isolation and then imposed on everyone else (whether by force or rhetorical persuasion), something which could apply also to policies which have been forged out of a one sided perspective.
Only when we have a form that recognises all this, and mobilises it, will we once again have something fit for purpose; something which is truly representative and is actually focused on the problem at hand more than the opinions people have about it and the ambitions bound up with ensuring that a particular argument prevails. For argument can only produce division – and ever deeper division – however it looks on the surface and opinion fragments just as observation builds.
The Westminster Committee which, as proposed, is to take responsibility for Brexit can also be mindful in its workings of all the above and ask how it can strive to give ever greater effect to these things. Then the committee will not only be dealing with Brexit that will also be beginning to fashion a model that can be applied more generally for future benefit.
What could emerge from this is something that would take us from being ‘the laughing stock’ to once more showing the world the way in the field of politics, offering a form of governance truly suited to the times in which we live and the demands arising ever more for reform on a grand scale.
So let’s take the opportunity to show the rest of the world how to do it.
But as a more immediate objective, let’s task Westminster to function in the way outlined and see what they can come up with on our behalf!
The Emporer's New Clothes 