It's a debate, innit? Tracking the reaction to Labour’s UK Citizens' Assemblies initiative
A look at the spirited discussion so far, plus our view of where to go from here
One month ago, there was a sudden burst of headlines in the UK: Labour party officials, it was reported, were interested in using Citizens’ Assemblies to make progress on major political issues.
At DemocracyNext, we welcomed the initial announcement because, after all, these officials merely said they were considering Assemblies as a future option. Not everyone was enthused, however. Within one day, some reports described Labour as “backtracking” on the idea.
Now that some of the dust has settled, it’s unclear what will happen.
This lack of clarity could prove to be a problem, because for Assemblies to be successful, they need to be launched and operated in a transparent manner, with broad buy-in from the political system and the public.
It could be useful to clear the air. Below, we’ve put together a timeline and breakdown of who has said what, exactly, so far. Then, below, we’ll give our view of where we are and how to move forward.
Timeline
February 18: Everything kicked off at 11 p.m. on a Sunday in February with an article which appeared in The Times by political reporter Oliver Wright. According to Wright, Labour Leader Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff, Sue Gray, told Tom Baldwin, author of a new biography of Starmer, that “Labour wanted to take a new approach to government by directly consulting with voters on some of the most vexed questions on Britain’s future.”
That’s a momentous statement, but the article bore the hallmarks of a mini-scoop which caught Labour slightly by surprise, rather than the official announcement of a fully-developed plan hatched by an opposition party that could soon take power. Wright, the reporter, had keyed in on a newsworthy bit from an advance copy of Baldwin’s book, before it was released to the public. However, Wright’s framing somewhat confused things by describing Gray’s comments in the book as an “announcement.”
We bought a copy of Baldwin’s book to see the primary source material for ourselves.
The basis for Wright’s article is a passage of three paragraphs in the last chapter of the 448-page biography of Starmer. Sue Gray “mentions” to Baldwin that Labour is “looking at” Ireland’s innovative use of Citizens’ Assemblies as an example to follow.
"Starmer's team have begun work on how to use them to get agreement on constitutional questions such as further devolution to the UK nations and regions, strengthening the powers of big city mayors, or building consensus for regional development plans including housebuilding which are sometimes blocked by institutional inertia,” Baldwin writes.
Then, there is a juicy-sounding quote from Gray that “Whitehall will not like this because they will have no control.” Baldwin notes that former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s 2022 Commission had recommended using Citizens’ Assemblies to determine what kind of chamber should replace the House of Lords.
The Times article about these passages makes much of Gray’s comment about Whitehall. But the article does not mention that two pages earlier in the book, Gray says she “bears no grudge” against Whitehall and government bureaucrats. “It’s really important for me to say loud and clear that I love the civil service,” Gray tells Baldwin.
Aside from Chief of Staff Gray, what does Starmer himself say? In the book, Baldwin paraphrases Starmer’s view of Assemblies, as follows: “The Labour leader himself says Camden Council in his constituency tried a similar scheme with community groups and police to tackle knife crime, but he is reluctant to present models such as citizens' assemblies as a panacea that will fix everything. 'They've worked in some areas, not in others,' he says."
February 19: The next day, a reporter from the BBC asked Labour’s shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting about this news. Streeting made no concrete commitments or announcements, but indicated he agreed with the sentiment, saying, “Big debates like assisted dying… Thinking about how you can involve the public in a really thoughtful and meaningful way so that citizens don't feel disconnected from Parliament but feel like Parliament is actively listening to the voice of the people and not just at election time.”
The BBC gave these comments by Streeting the following headline: “Citizens' assemblies could propose assisted dying laws, says Labour.”
To us, this framing again suggests a more official announcement by the Labour party than actually occurred.
February 19: The following headline, “Labour backtracks over Sue Gray’s announcement on citizen assemblies that will bypass Whitehall” appeared in the right-leaning Daily Telegraph, written by Nick Gutteridge, the paper’s Whitehall Correspondent.
“The Telegraph has been told,” the article goes on to say, “the creation of citizens’ assemblies is not an official party policy and there are currently no plans related to their potential use.” Notably, this statement is not attributed to any individual by name.
The article does go on to quote Luke Akehurst of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee as saying bluntly, “Citizens’ assemblies are a stupid idea.” Akehurst voices a common objection from skeptics (answered in detail here): “We already have elected politicians who are put there by the public to take tough decisions.”
The article concludes with a quote apiece, both echoing Akehurst’s same objection, from two conservative Tory MPs. It also adds this bit of innuendo, questioning why “Ms Gray, a member of staff, was announcing [the assemblies] rather than Sir Keir,” even though Starmer is quoted in Baldwin’s book discussing the idea and saying they’ve worked in many ways.
Josh Self at Politics.co.uk also analysed the news, delving into Sue Gray’s role in particular inside Labour.
February 20: By this time, NGOs who are supportive of Citizens’ Assemblies were beginning to weigh in.
Calum Green at InvolveUK answered common questions about Assemblies and presciently warned that Assemblies will be helpful “only if they’re done right.” Green cautioned that the political system must commit to taking serious actions in response to Assembly recommendations in a timely manner. He said the topic and question presented to citizens should be carefully chosen, and the Assembly process should be robustly communicated about to the wider public in order to build awareness.
Demos UK called the news “a step forward.”
Here at DemocracyNext, we also welcomed the news, stressing that Assemblies are “meant to empower citizens in non-partisan ways — based upon the best practices of sortition and deliberation.”
At CapX, conservative writer Henry Hill declared that while Labour’s initiative had been withdrawn and was “gone for now,” it would return. Hill laid out a number of objections to assemblies in general. Reacting to the Irish example, Hill argued that its assembly selection processes “naturally selects for the activist minority” and that presentations to the assemblies are biased.
February 22: Frances Foley, Deputy Director of the progressive organisation Compass, pushed back against critics in the left-learning Byline Times with an opinion piece sharply headlined, “Starmer Should Ignore the Westminster Pearl-Clutching: Why Labour is Right to Look at Citizens’ Assemblies.” Foley cited polling of Labour supporters showing substantial support for Citizens’ Assemblies.
Further along the left spectrum, climate activist Roger Hallam described Labour as having made a “U-turn” on the Assemblies, and claimed this shows the party “fears the people.”
February 25: Writing in The Financial Times, liberal think tank Demos CEO Polly Curtis applauded the idea, saying, “Citizens’ assemblies do not replace parliaments — and certainly shouldn’t allow politicians to swerve accountability. But they could help forge a braver politics, in which parliament works with the public to navigate the trickiest questions.”
March 1: Alan Renwick, a Professor of Democratic Politics at UCL and Deputy Director of the Constitution Unit, weighed in with a well-written FAQ about Assemblies because, he said, much of the discussion is based on misunderstandings of how they work.
Just as Starmer himself had remarked to Baldwin, Renwick notes that Assemblies are not a “panacea” that would solve everything. Instead, he writes, “they can enable more thoughtful and more inclusive policy discussion. In this way, they can help politicians and officials do a good job.”
In 2021, Renwick had helped to organise a non-governmental Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK composed of 74 people which met over three months.
March 13: Simon Griffiths, a former Head of Department of British Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London, wrote for The Constitution Society that Gray’s comments had caused “quite a stir.” Griffiths reviewed arguments for and against, emphasizing that “the success of an Assembly depends on how it interacts with other democratic processes.” We agree.
March 16: In the conservative Spectator, sketch writer and theatre critic Lloyd Evans disagrees with the activists from Extinction Rebellion who are advocating for a climate-focused Assembly. He recounted his experience at a neighbourhood Assembly in north-east London, organised in part by Involve UK, which is focused on policing. Evans disliked what he saw, describing the hours he spent there as a pointless “comfort blanket.”
Our take
Citizens’ Assemblies themselves unquestionably work: evidence from the OECD shows that in hundreds of examples, citizens have come together across differences of background and political views to discuss complex policy issues and develop useful solutions.
However, how Assemblies connect to the actual political system matters a great deal. The danger we see for the UK at the moment is that Labour officials hamper them from making positive contributions, or worse, discredit them, by rolling them out in an uncoordinated or overly partisan way.
The characterisations of Gray’s comments as an “announcement” and of the Labour Party as a whole as having already “backtracked” seem overly exaggerated. A more prosaic explanation is that Labour is a big party with many different voices within it; Starmer, Gray and some members had been discussing the potential of Assemblies, but perhaps they had not, by the time of The Times’ report about Baldwin’s book, settled on anything concrete.
We are discouraged to see, at least in this particular news cycle, a predictable back-and-forth beginninng to play out between liberal and conservative voices. We do not want to see a world where Assemblies are supported by liberals and opposed by conservatives, or vice versa, which is why we stressed their non-partisan nature in our response to the initial news. Around the world, Citizens’ Assemblies have been initiated by governments of varying political stripes. They should operate much like juries in the legal system, based on principles of random selection (sortition), fact-finding and deliberation—residing outside of the realm of partisan politics and electoral competition. Assemblies are not about winning parties, losing parties, ratifying pre-determined policies, or ideological labels — they are a break from the dominant paradigm. Within Assemblies themselves, we find that most partisan labels quickly become irrelevant. Assembly Members move on to focus on the meat of the policy questions at hand.
In fact, some British conservatives are excited by the potential of Citizens’ Assemblies. Ex-Conservative Party Leader William Hague recently wrote an op-ed suggesting the UK ought to impanel more of them. Former Tory MP Rory Stewart has also been a vocal advocate for them on his podcast and in his bestselling new book, Politics on the Edge. In a 2015 analysis by our Founder/CEO Claudia Chwalisz, it was striking that UKIP voters were more likely than voters of any other party to want to participate in Assemblies at all levels of government.
Gathering a broadly representative group of people from across the UK in a process that can garner wide legitimacy could be a breakthrough towards a more democratic future. But it is important not to impose partisan wishes on such an Assembly. Gray seemed to suggest they could give metro mayors more power, for example, but perhaps a Citizens’ Assembly would decide otherwise.
In what’s been reported so far, there are echoes of past failed approaches with citizens’ juries in the UK, where they were often used to legitimate policy decisions already taken, conducted without the rigour seen in best practices in Ireland and elsewhere. They were often one-day affairs that did not create the conditions for people to have a meaningful chance to learn, weigh trade-offs, and come to informed decisions. The mounting criticisms at that time were likely part of why the use of Citizens’ Assemblies and juries were used less frequently in the UK for a long time following the Gordon Brown era.
We believe what is needed today is not just one Citizens' Assembly in one moment in time. What needs to change is how these decisions always get taken. We recently published a new paper outlining Six Ways to Democratise City Planning. If an Assembly is launched to tackle housing, which Gray mentioned, then depending on a city’s context, at least one, if not multiple, of these six proposals is a viable entry point for using Citizens' Assemblies to make structural changes to how planning decisions are made in an ongoing way.
Given that the UK is one of the most centralised countries in the OECD, much of its planning decision-making gets constrained with rules and regulations that are set at a national level. It is one of the few countries where engaging citizens on how those regulations should change would be worthwhile.
Labour officials should not be put off by a few op-ed writers; UK citizens have long been open to Citizens’ Assemblies. Polling suggests they see them as a legitimate democratic institution. In The Populist Signal, Chwalisz found that about half of respondents would participate in a binding constitutional convention that consisted of a randomly selected group of people, stratified to be broadly representative of the wider population. More recently, Cevipof polling has shown that 62% of people in the UK want recommendations from national level Citizens’ Assemblies to be binding.
At a time when democracy and support for it is backsliding across the globe, more Citizens’ Assemblies can help to address the problem at its root cause. People’s growing sense of disillusionment with politics and the system, as well as a lack of voice and agency in decisions affecting their lives, is part of the underlying drivers of polarisation and disengagement. Yet people are open to more constructive forms of political participation, such as Citizens’ Assemblies, if that option is made available to them.
Citizens’ Assemblies, by bringing together diverse groups of people to work together in depth on an issue — often over many months — create the spaces we are missing for people to build trust with one another, grapple with the true complexity of the issues we face, and to find common ground. As pollster James Kanagsooriam has written, the fact that these days we interact with fewer people from different backgrounds and opinions is bad for democracy. Addressing these deficits with more Citizens’ Assemblies is part of the answer.
Do you have questions about Citizens’ Assemblies and how they work?
See if you can find a quick answer to your question in our Assembling an Assembly Guide, and if you need further advice, please drop by our next virtual office hours with DemNext team members!
We’re calling our next session How to Assemble: a free Q&A session on Citizens' Assemblies, taking place on Zoom on Wednesday, 10 April at 16:00 CET with Founding Head of Research and Learning Ieva Česnulaitytė. Save the date!
We are testing interest in and the format of these office hours sessions, which will evolve over time. Questions received during the sessions will also help us develop an online learning program on Citizens’ Assemblies, which we hope to make publicly available towards the end of 2024/early 2025.
📚 What we’re reading:
“Representative Democracy Remains a Popular Ideal, but People Around the World Are Critical of How It’s Working” — that’s according to new polling by Pew. In surveys of 24 countries:
A median of 59% are dissatisfied with how their democracy is functioning.
74% think elected officials don’t care what people like them think.
42% say no political party in their country represents their views.
Our advisory board member Jon Alexander and the team at Apolitical Foundation have released a guide to Circular Power Politics, which refers to politicians and citizens “joining together to create ongoing and reciprocal cycles of communication and collaboration between elections.” It’s fascinating stuff — read the report here.
Gaza needs democracy without elections (and to move closer to a Citizens’ Assembly model), writes Iain Walker for the Jerusalem Post. It’s important to note that this is an extremely sensitive subject from every angle, so we share this piece (as with other links) not to say that we agree with everything in it, but for your consideration.
In a companion piece to Claudia’s post on valuing uncertainty in politics, Harvard’s Kennedy School has published an essay by Claudia adapted from her presentation at the Second Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy, entitled Moving Beyond the Paradigm of “Democracy”: 12 Questions. In it, Claudia is open about what we don’t know about democracy’s future and which areas merit further exploration and discsussion.