Around a hundred people gathered in Winchelsea’s St Thomas’ Church on a wet Friday night to hear Gavin Esler speak about why Britain’s democracy is failing so badly.
Gavin, who’s also chancellor of the University of Kent and has written several insightful books on politics, didn’t hold any punches. Some of the reasons he listed for the UK’s systemic woes are a lack of a written constitution, profound voter apathy, the myth of British exceptionalism and unworthy behaviour by certain politicians — leading to a deep mistrust of our elected representatives.
“We have a failing political system … that creates problems rather than solves them, and distracts us from the reality of how we may solve things,” the former BBC Newsnight presenter felt. Britain once being a great power has created an inhibiting nostalgia, “which prevents us from thinking seriously about our problems today”.
What Gavin described as “truth decay” — feeling overwhelmed by the blizzard of misinformation and unable to separate truth from lies — occurs when those in public life deploy “strategic lies” and embrace “the politics of distraction and weaponised nostalgia”. He singled out the infamous “dead cat tactic”, whereby an extraordinary comment is made — usually to distract from an embarrassing issue. It is the use of disinformation as a deliberate political strategy.
For example, Boris Johnson’s reference to a bizarre hobby making model buses served to distract from the Vote Leave campaign’s false claim on its battle bus that the EU was costing Britain £350 million a week.
While Germany lost 13% of its territory following the first world war, Britain lost 22% after the Republic of Ireland seceded. The British Empire subsequently fell away as nations gained independence, with the perceived loss of status severely affecting the collective British psyche.
The “British paradox” is that the country has had an admirable history and produced high-achieving individuals, but currently appears to be poorly served by its political class — resulting in incompetence and turmoil.
Meanwhile, the uncodified and “mysterious” British constitution seems so arcane that few if any people fully understand it. It may be considered flexible, but this means it can easily become bent, Gavin said. “That can become a problem.”
“Now we are deluged by lies, falsehoods and mistruths. The trouble is that it ruins the very nature of an open democracy… it’s open to all kinds of abuse”.
In the last general election, Labour won about two thirds of seats in the House of Commons with only one third of the votes, but given that 40% of eligible citizens declined to vote, the current government has been elected by only 20% of potential voters. Equally, the present Conservative party leader was chosen by a mere 53,806 party members.
We trust our fellow citizens more than we trust our politicians, Gavin said. Proportional representation would be one way to make politics more representative and increase public confidence, he felt.
In Gavin Esler’s latest book Britain is Better Than This: Why a Great Country is Failing Us All, he asserts that “Decline is not inevitable. Disunion may be averted. A better Britain really is possible”.
After the thought-provoking talk, a member of Winchelsea Literary Society — which organised the event — offered a vote of thanks to the speaker, noting that Gavin had made “a great start to his personal campaign of fluoridation against truth decay”.
Image Credits: David Worwood .