AMONG those sitting around the oval table are Mary, a retired social worker; Julian, geography teacher; Antonio, health and safety assessor; Noni, NHS nurse; Dilip, pharmacist; Sivya, charity worker; and Sherie, librarian. The latter is transgender, so he is wearing a badge stating ‘she/her’. This fictitious but all too realistic citizens’ assembly sits to discuss and make recommendations on the council’s proposals for 15-minute neighbourhoods, in pursuit of Net Zero targets. The outcome of their deliberations will be given prominent media coverage, and although the assembly’s verdict will not be binding, the council will be expected to follow in its lead.
As faith in government and institutions declines, citizens’ assemblies are pushed as the solution to the perceived democratic deficit. According to the UK parliament website, ‘a citizens’ assembly is a group of people who are brought together to learn about and discuss an issue or issues, and reach conclusions about what they think should happen.’ Defined in such benign, layperson’s language, what could possibly go wrong?
The UK is far from first to deploy citizens’ assemblies, and the concept can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. The modern version is a form of ‘deliberative democracy’, as defined in 1980 by American professor Joseph M Bessette in his book Deliberative Democracy: The Majority Principle in Republican Government. Citizens’ power is not limited to voting, but continual engagement in decision-making. The UK parliament website explains:
‘Governments and parliaments around the world are increasingly using citizens’ assemblies in their work. The assemblies enable decision-makers to understand people’s informed and considered preferences on issues that are complex, controversial, moral or constitutional.’
Note the term ‘using’ here, because as we shall see, citizens’ assemblies have become part of the political system, giving the authorities contrived legitimacy. The British parliament commissioned its first citizens’ assembly, on social care, in 2018. The House of Commons contracted three organisations (Involve, Sortition Foundation and mySociety) to run Climate Assembly UK on its behalf. According to the Sortition website, this is the process (quoted verbatim):
- Select a broadly representative bunch of people by lottery.
- Bring them together in an assembly, typically at small tables or groups, and let everyone have their say.
- Have those most knowledgeable about, or affected by, the issue address the assembly, bringing in diverse viewpoints and proposals.
- Get the participants to discuss, listen and talk to each other – and give reasons for their opinions.
- Decide! On what is the best way forward.
Call me a cynic, but I suspect manipulation at each of these stages. Membership is meant to be representative of the wider population, like juries, but this is unrealistic – and undesirable for the political commissioners. Lottery winners are not obliged to participate, and anyone with the wrong attitudes will find that their face doesn’t fit. Someone ‘having their say’ on the Great Reset, for example, is likely to be told that this is not the right assembly for them. The learning stage, although it supposedly considers different ideas, may acknowledge dissenting views such as ‘some people do not accept the science of climate change’, thereby subtly invalidating that stance. The group will be nudged by chosen experts or ‘stakeholders’ towards a predictable, narrow range of outcomes.
The biggest deployment of citizens’ assemblies is on the climate agenda, because there is widespread public disbelief in the declared emergency and resistance to Net Zero constraints on livelihood and liberty. As described by Eva Talmadge in the Guardian, Climate Assembly UK had 108 members selected through a process of ‘sortition’, who met over six weekends in 2020. According to Talmadge, ‘the members heard balanced, accurate and comprehensive information on how the UK could reach its net zero target by 2050’.
You can see why citizens’ assemblies are promoted by ‘green’ zealots Extinction Rebellion, who gleefully reported the outcome of Climate Assembly UK. I don’t know about where you live, but if the assembly was a genuine representation from my town in Sussex, Net Zero would probably have been cursed and the project abandoned at stage one. There is always the danger that if you ask people what they think, they might tell you.
Last year, the momentum for citizens’ assemblies had a setback in Ireland, with the Guardian suggesting a ‘failed experiment’. While the report noted that ‘a citizens’ assembly on climate in France resulted in an ambitious climate bill that promised to reduce the country’s carbon emissions by 40 per cent’, the Irish put a spanner in the works by rejecting a proposed change to the country’s 1937 constitution.
When Ireland broke from its Catholic social conservatism to pass a referendum on same-sex marriage in 2015 and another referendum on abortion in 2018, citizens’ assemblies were credited as a key influence. Ireland was lauded in progressive spheres as a model of deliberative democracy to tackle difficult and divisive problems.
After two failed referendums, however, leader Leo Varadkar was throwing his toys out of the pram, blaming citizens’ assemblies for the dramatic reversal to the cultural revolution. Voters overwhelmingly rejected one proposal to widen the definition of family to include ‘durable relationships’, and another to replace a reference to women in the home with generic ‘carers’. Citizens’ assemblies had recommended the referendums.
‘There is a danger that citizens’ assemblies have now become a part of the policymaking system in Ireland that supports the various agendas of lobby groups’, said Eoin O’Malley, a politics professor at Dublin City University who had helped to create We the Citizens, a precursor to citizens’ assemblies, but he feared capture by campaigning organisations.
For the Establishment, it’s all right for NGOs funded by George Soros to busy themselves in manipulating public engagement, but not when Christian traditionalists get involved. What chance of a local assembly, as in my introduction, of recommending that the council remove roadblocks and put local residents’ needs before the climate cult?
As described by Mat Brown on TCW, citizens’ assemblies are an element of performative democracy, which also includes devolution to regions. The Labour administration is working on what amounts to a radical transformation of national and local authority, as proposed by Gordon Brown’s 2022 report A New Britain: Renewing our Democracy and Building our Economy. Sue Gray, a proponent of citizens’ assemblies, is tasked with making this happen.
Citizens’ assemblies are not representative, and they are not intended to be. Instead, they give false legitimacy to unpopular policies, as willing members of the public make decisions where locally elected politicians might fear to tread (if they want to keep their seat). This is not boosting democracy but bypassing it. We have seen enough already to conclude that the citizens’ assembly is another instrument in the authoritarian toolkit.
