Citizens' assemblies: centrism's quest for panacea
Labour floated and are now backing away from using citizens' assemblies to tackle difficult policy areas, but they are at heart fraudulent and founded on myth
Introduction
Citizens’ assemblies or juries are enormously popular with people who think of themselves as moderate, rational, centrist, reasonable types, who venerate evidence-based policymaking as the One True God and for whom argument is distasteful in proportion to the commitment of those on either side. A citizens’ assembly is a collection of “ordinary” people, drawn from the population in order to be representative of the whole, a kind of political synecdoche. They are usually large enough to allow for various types of diversity—typically anything from 50 to 200 or more—and are chosen by sortition. The idea is that these groups, who are specifically not chosen on any idoelogical basis, will examine a given issue or problem open-mindedly and rationally; they will listen to expert advice and scrutinise evidence, embodying what James Madison called “the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest”.
Citizens’ assemblies in Ireland
The Republic of Ireland, which, improbably enough, given its history, has emerged in recent decades as an acme of sweet reasonableness for progressives, has made significant use of this method of policy-making. In 2011, an initiative called We The Citizens was created to attempt to deal with a number of profound political challenges in the wake of the global financial crisis. The following year, the government established the Convention on the Constitution, a panel of 66 citizens, 33 legislators and a chairman, Tom Arnold, an economist and doyen of public policy deliberation, and was initially tasked with considering eight questions:
reducing the term of the Irish presidency to five years
whether to reduce the voting age for citizens to 17
electoral reform for the Dáil
the right for citizens outside the state to vote in presidential elections
marriage equality and provision of same-sex marriage
the role of women in the Constitution, especially Article 41.2 on women in the home
the participation of women in politics and public life
removing the offence of blasphemy from the Constitution
The convention worked from January 2013 to February 2014. Arnold described its procedure in the Irish Times:
The Convention met over 10 weekends of a day and a half. Each meeting had three components: presentation by experts of papers which had been circulated in advance; debate between groups advocating on either side of an issue; and roundtable discussions involving facilitators and notetakers. On Sunday morning the members considered again the discussions of the previous day and voted on a ballot paper which reflected the details of the debate.
He defined the principles of its working as “openness, fairness, equality of voice, efficiency and collegiality”, which are hard to dispute. It received 2,500 submissions from the public and presented its recommendations to the government. Some were accepted, some rejected, some referred to other bodies for further consideration, but the headlines from the government’s responses were a 2015 referendum which allowed for the legalisation of same-sex marriage and a 2018 poll on removing the offence of blasphemy.
The weight of opinion seemed to regard the convention as an effective and consensual way of dealing with knotty, sometimes moral and ethical issues, and after the general election in February 2016, the minority Fine Gael administration led by Enda Kenny and supported by a number of independents included in its programme for government a commitment to repeat the process. It pledged to establish:
A Citizens’ Assembly, within six months, and without participation by politicians, and with a mandate to look at a limited number of key issues over an extended time period. These issues will not be limited to those directly pertaining to the constitution and may include issues such as, for example how we, as a nation, best respond to the challenges and opportunities of an ageing population. That said, we will ask the Citizens’ Assembly to make recommendations to the Dáil on further constitutional changes, including on the Eighth Amendment [which recognised “the equal right to life of the pregnant woman and the unborn”], on fixed term parliaments and on the manner in which referenda are held.
The Citizens’ Assembly first met in October 2016. It consisted of 99 members of the public chosen by polling company Red C Research (99 alternates were also selected) and was chaired by Mary Laffoy, a judge of the Supreme Court. The Houses of the Oireachtas had agreed that it should consider:
the Eighth Amendment on the life of the unborn child
the challenges and opportunities of an ageing population
the referendum process
addressing climate change
The assembly reported on these issues between June 2017 and June 2018. The outcomes included the extensive legalisation of abortion, a series of government initiatives on ageing and a healthy population and the publication of a climate action plan. There have been subsequent assemblies on gender equality, the government of Dublin and biodiversity loss.
In 2018, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar addressed the Seanad Éireann and paid tribute to the work of the 2016-18 assembly and the idea of citizens’ assemblies in general. He told senators that the convention and the assembly has been:
bold and innovative exercises in deliberative democracy, even though at the time they were dismissed by some as talking shops, or as a means to long-finger decisions. As it turned out, both allowed representative groups of everyday citizens to consider important issues facing society. Their work has help helped inform and shape our political decisions. Often, they proved to be ahead of us. We got an invaluable insight into what really matters to people and the conclusions they would come to, when given all of the facts, and the time to consider them.
Varadkar claimed that the process had allowed debate which was “respectful of all sides and all strands of opinion”.
In 2019, an editorial in The Irish Times gave a more nuanced view. It acknowledged that the process had enabled real movement on extremely controversial issues.
The last Citizens’ Assembly and the Constitutional Convention that preceded it were a great success. They paved the way for the resolution of potentially contentious social issues of marriage equality and abortion. The deliberations of the assemblies were a vital step on the road to generating support for constitutional change on both issues.
It also argued that “their record in generating consensus on big divisive social issues has been good”. However, the newspaper pointed out that some less contentious, more mundane issues referred to the institutions had not found consensus for change. More importantly, the whole process was to some extent a way for politicians to pass the buck:
An over-reliance on citizens’ assemblies will absolve politicians from making the decisions they are elected to take. There is a danger our democracy will be eroded and TDs will focus even more on the messenger-boy aspects of their work to the detriment of serious legislation.
It concluded with a point at which many will no doubt have scoffed as old-fashioned and obsolete but which is, in my view, a fundamental principle of the way parliamentary democracies function: “Under the Constitution, there is one Citizens’ Assembly above all others on which our democracy rests. It is called Dáil Éireann.”
The Labour Party and Sue Gray
The idea of citizens’ assemblies has been warmly nurtured in think tanks and policy groups over the past decade in the UK. It has come to the fore recently, however, because of remarks made by Sue Gray, chief of staff to the leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, in a new biography of the Labour leader. Gray, of course, is a former Whitehall permanent secretary, an extremely experienced civil service insider, and has been giving a great deal of consideration to the way in which a potential Labour government will operate.
Reported in The Times, Gray paid tribute to Ireland’s “transformational” experience of citizens’ assemblies and said that she was working on plans to use a similar process to deal with issues like constitutional reform, devolution and housing. It would, she claimed, overcome a degree of institutional inertia “by involving communities at an early stage” and allow an incoming government to “walk in and start delivering”. This would be vital not merely to get things done but also to work towards re-election in the late 2020s.
If we win, we’ve also got to have a plan for the first day, for the first hundred days and for the first year of the first term, if we’re going to have any chance of getting a second term. He [Starmer] doesn’t want us to forget about what we’ve got to do if we get to walk up that road in Downing Street.
However, Gray was clear that some of her former colleagues would not find the involvement of citizens’ assemblies and outside experts comfortable. “Whitehall will not like this because they have no control.”
There is a whiff of performance in this. Gray wants the opposition to look fresh, dynamic and willing to be disruptive and determined in achieving its policies, but she wants to avoid, and allow Labour to criticise, the perceived attitude of the Conservative Party of crude and partisan antagonism towards the civil service “Blob”. The cabinet secretary, Simon Case, has been critical of Conservative politicians who sought to “weaponise” Gray’s appointment to work for Starmer: the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments did not object to the move, though it stressed that its advice was not an “endorsement”, but the Cabinet Office minister, Jeremy Quin, said in a written statement to the House of Commons last July that “the Civil Service Code was prima facie broken as a result of the undeclared contact between Ms Gray and the Leader of the Opposition”. He added that the circumstances were “deeply unfortunate” but said he remained “confident in the impartiality of our Civil Service… it is the responsibility of everyone in this House to preserve and support this impartiality”.
I wrote about Gray’s switch to the Labour Party last May. Re-reading what I said, I stand by it, in general: I tried to disaggregate the specific circumstances of her departure from the civil service and appointment to the Leader of the Opposition’s Office on the one hands, and the more general issue of impartial public servants later taking on explicitly party political roles. They are distinct questions, and I continue to believe that the latter should not be impossible or even regarded as somehow dishonest or disreputable. On the former, Gray’s allies accused ministers of treating her unfairly and making public capital out of the issue. In all honesty, I think there were some excessively vehement arguments made by those who thought they were defending her, while Starmer’s spokesperson produced the truly emetic contribution “We’re looking forward to Sue Gray joining us this September as we continue to show the country that only Labour can build a better Britain”.
Gray was approached about the chief of staff role in October 2022, and discussed the possibility by telephone. She disclosed this to the Cabinet Office only in March 2023 when it became public knowledge and she might consider accepting. She had returned to Whitehall in May 2021 after three years in Northern Ireland (her husband is from County Down) and had rapidly been pitched uncomfortably into the glare of publicity in December that year when she had been forced to take over the internal “Partygate” inquiry from Simon Case (who recused himself). It was also rumoured, I suspect with some foundation, that Case and Gray did not have a good personal relationship, and that Gray had come to understand, rightly or wrongly, that she would not be promoted to a major permanent secretary post. All of this means that when the contact came from Sir Keir Starmer, she may well have been dissatisfied with her position.
Nevertheless, Gray had conducted an investigation which had contributed to the downfall of Boris Johnson as prime minister, and she enjoyed a shadowy but impressive reputation as “the most powerful woman in Britain”. Oliver Letwin, a minister in the Cabinet Office from 2010 to 2016, had only been half-joking when he had told Liberal Democrat colleague David Laws, “Our great United Kingdom is actually entirely run by a lady called Sue Gray”. Journalist Chris Cook called her “the most powerful civil servant you’ve never heard of”. Under these circumstances, her decision not to disclose her contact with the Labour Party was extremely risky and, I think, unwise. After all, the Civil Service Code addresses perception as well as reality: civil servants are required to “act in a way which deserves and retains the confidence of ministers”, must not “deceive or knowingly mislead ministers” (which I would argue could encompass omission as well as commission) and have an obligation to be “truthful and open”. I don’t think Gray can argue that her five-month silence on being approached by the Leader of the Opposition’s Office about potentially accepting a very senior appointment was wholly consistent with those strictures.
I have spent some time on Gray’s personal circumstances both because she has been the one to make these comments on citizens’ assemblies (and has to some extent personalised them by reference to her past career), and because they are part of the relationship between ministers and the civil service, and must be seen in that context. The Labour Party, understandably, is trying to ride a number of currents simultaneously. It is aware that public trust in politicians is at historic lows: 78 per cent are dissatisfied with the way that the government is running the country, 66 per cent are unhappy with Rishi Sunak’s performance as prime minister, but 37 per cent do not think Sir Keir Starmer is ready for the premiership while only 35 per cent think he is. Every statistic seems dismal: 46 per cent think politicians are lazy, 69 per cent think they are self-interested, 45 per cent think the Labour Party is not ready for government.
At the same time, Labour has spent so much time and energy attacking the Conservatives for its relationship with the civil service that it must somehow seem open and constructive, willing to be responsible and mature rather than reflexively partisan. So citizens’ assemblies must seem an attractive via media. For example, Wes Streeting, the shadow health and social care secretary, who combines genuine thoughtfulness on his brief with a shrewd centrist nuance in terms of his public image, spoke of a “real shortage of trust” in public life, and the need to “reconnect democracy with the public”. He mentioned euthanasia as a deeply controversial issue which might benefit from this approach.
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.
It seems, however, that some comrades did not get the memo. Within 12 hours of the publication of Gray’s statements, The Daily Telegraph was briefed by the Labour Party that “the creation of citizens’ assemblies is not an official party policy and there are currently no plans related to their potential use”. Luke Akehurst, a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee and secretary of Labour First, a “network for Labour’s moderates”, was public and blunt on social media.
Citizens’ assemblies are a stupid idea. We already have elected politicians who are put there by the public to take tough decisions, it is an abdication of responsibility to farm these out to potentially unrepresentative panels of people w no specific knowledge or accountability.
When challenged on this interpretation of citizens’ assemblies, Akehurst fought back.
Funding random members of the public to become temporary experts on something they are not the decision makers on. We should just get on with implementing any manifesto we are elected on.
The gap which Labour initially seemed to be trying to bridge was neatly identified by Josh Self, editor of Politics.co.uk. He pointed out that it was odd for any kind of proposal to emerge by this circuitous route, a newspaper publishing excerpts from a book which contain the views of an unelected adviser, which he ascribes to the “significant dynamics at play in the Labour Party’s policy laboratory, of which Gray—who is in charge of the party’s preparations for government—acts as a lead scientist”. His analysis is persuasive.
A policy like “citizens’ assemblies”, simply, is designed to square this circle. It is intended to signal “change” while triggering limited consternation in the shadow Treasury… Gray’s “citizens’ assemblies” comments amount to a tell, don’t show approach to politics. It does not feature in any broader strategy, nor join-up different aspects of Starmer’s operation; it could reasonably be characterised as a sop to those who criticise Labour for not living up to its own mantle of “change”.
Even the most dejected Conservative supporter will have found a degree of bleak humour in today’s messy (if ultimately minor) own goal by Labour. It is a classic unforced error: there was no public pressure for today to see an opinion from the leader of the opposition’s chief of staff on citizens’ assemblies, but a single 24-hour news cycle has seen her views reported, a member of the shadow cabinet make broadly sympathetic noises, an NEC member kick back publicly and bluntly and the central party machine say that there are no plans (when Gray said plans were being worked on). None of this—literally, none of it—was even remotely necessary.
The bigger picture: this is not how we do politics
It will be little surprise, I imagine, to many of you that I don’t like the idea of citizens’ assemblies. Actually, I’d go further: I hate them, I think they can be used dishonestly, and I think, so far from rebuilding trust in politics, they continue the current corrosion and undermine our institutions and practices. That doesn’t mean I think our systems are perfect, far from it: but change does not justify itself by its simple nature.
I think Luke Akehurst, and The Irish Times editorial I referred to earlier, make a fundamental and valid point: we have representative institutions in this country, especially the House of Commons. It may not operate to a Platonic ideal, but its purpose is to assemble representatives of the electorate and provide a forum in which they can make decisions about major issues of public policy. That is how politics works: if the community is too big for everyone to have a say, and as the UK’s population is 67 million, that condition applies to us, then in some way or another we must entrust decision-making to a more select group. In that respect, citizens’ assemblies are conceptually no different from parliaments, and certainly no better.
When we give those powers to legislators, however, we also give them responsibility and accountability. Make these decisions for us, we say, and use your judgement as well as what you perceive to be our opinions, but be aware that we will come back and judge your performance. You will be held accountable, and you are therefore well advised to act wisely if you can, but at least correctly, sincerely and straightforwardly.
Some of you will pull on the fashionable mantle of cynicism and say Yes but that’s not how the real world works. Look at MPs, you will sneer, and tell us they are correct, sincere or straightforward. But you are missing the point: I am saying that conceptually citizens’ assemblies have no advantage over a legislature. Parliament may have enormous flaws in practice, and there is a lot we should change, but I don’t think merely moving the decision-making to another forum has any inherent advantage nor is it any guarantee of amelioration.
There is one conceptual difference: citizens’ assemblies are comprised through sortition, while a legislature is generally chosen by some interpretation of popular election. That I concede, up to a point. But when we talk about sortition in this context, often we think we are talking about a pleasingly random process, which has the cool balm of blind fairness, but of course we are not. Remember that the Citizens’ Assembly established in Ireland in 2016 was put together painstakingly by a polling company. The motion which the government put before the Oireachtas blithely contained a statement which is clearly nonsensical, that the assembly should be “randomly selected so as to be broadly representative of Irish society”.
Well, which is it? Either something is “randomly selected” or it is “selected so as to be broadly representative of Irish society”; there is an infinitesimal chance that it will happen to be both, but by accident rather than design. Of course no-one wanted a truly random group of people. What was understood but not articulated was that certain strands of opinion should be fairly represented while others should be disregarded. One basic criterion was that members were chosen only from the electoral roll: perfectly understandable and sound, but already, at that basic level, you have qualified the extent to which the assembly is “representative”.
Then, inevitably, you qualify the notion further. In fact the process was “broadly representative of society as reflected in the Census, including age, gender, social class, regional spread etc.” Even the degree of regional representativeness was qualified: it was not stipulated that each of Ireland’s 26 counties would be represented, but that instead the membership would reflect more generally the “urban-rural divide”.
So what were these categories? Social class was used: this was graded according to occupation, then further divided into seven sub-categories (A, B, C1, C2, D, E and F), and this categorisation was then “double checked by a follow up validation interview”.
Not everyone on the electoral roll was considered. Direct applications for membership were disregarded, interviewers could not assess friends or family, and “members of advocacy groups on the topics to be considered would be excluded from membership”, on the grounds that their views would, or could, be captured by the provision of submissions from the public. Nor did this apply just to current members of advocacy groups, but anyone who “had been, or intended to act in an advocacy role for any interest or lobby group campaigning on any of the issues to be considered”. The methodology used by Red C also had targets for balancing representation by gender and four different age groups.
So not that random after all. It is certainly a far cry from the ekklesia of ancient Athens, the assembly which comprised all citizens whose rights had not been suspended (this meant it was men-only, as women could not be citizens, did not include slaves or metics—resident aliens—and included only those over 20 who had performed their two years of military training as epheboi). Even the ekklesia, which could number around 6,000, was unwieldy for some administrative tasks, so many matters were conducted instead by the boule, a smaller council chosen by lot. Ah, you think! Finally, something chosen truly at random! Well, no. The pool of candidates for the boule was limited to citizens over 30, who had no criminal convictions and who put themselves forward for selection. Somehow we seem to end up where we began.
My point is not that any of the criteria which Red C used to choose members of the Citizens’ Assembly were wrong, inappropriate or unreasonable; but they were partial, favoured some qualities over others and made a nonsense of any claims of “random” selection. It is random only insofar as it specifically excludes those who might seek to be included, which, notwithstanding the House of Commons’ quaint practice of a new speaker being “dragged to the chair”, seems a slightly odd criterion to prize: to seek only those who have expressed no desire to be involved.
So the underlying principle of a citizens’ assembly is that the members will be in some way “open-minded” or undecided, or, one might more cynically argue, uninformed and uninterested. (It should be noted that in Ireland there was no financial inducement for membership. Red C admitted with an almost audible sigh, “It is acknowledged that this may result in a group that have a stronger civic interest than a truly representative sample”.) In fact what you find is merely an alternative method of choosing members, but this one entrusts most of the work to a polling company as opposed to the electorate, and disqualifies rather than recognises expertise. You can argue that as a superior model, but I don’t subscribe to it.
Expertise will link us neatly to my much wider objection. Proponents of citizens’ assemblies will argue that the members need not have expertise, because their role is to study and assess evidence, including submissions from the public. Moreover they will hear presentations from experts which will inform their deliberations. As an example, the first session of the assembly in Ireland looking at the constitutional status of the unborn child, held in November 2016, saw presentations from a professor of law on the history of abortion law in Ireland, on the operation of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 from a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology and a consultant psychiatrist, a briefing from a funding officer from the HSE Sexual Health & Crisis Pregnancy Programme, on the experiences of family doctors from a general practitioner, and on ethical issues from a research fellow in practical ethics.
The input of those with expertise is always welcome in the legislative process. It is not, however, a radical or revolutionary idea. In Parliament, select committees of both Houses spend most of their time taking evidence from experts and others, it is a standard part of the consideration of legislation by public bill committees in the House of Commons and joint committees, whether scrutinising draft legislation or examining a specific policy area, will do so too. The public can also submit evidence to select committee inquiries, and the House of Commons Petitions Committee assesses issues of public concern, after which it can seek further information, refer the matter elsewhere or recommend it for debate.
So the engagement with expert opinion is hard-wired into the parliamentary process in the United Kingdom. It is not flawless, nor can it be, not least because it is not always possible to agree what constitutes “expert” opinion. Even on highly technical or scientific matters, opinion can vary among those eminent in the field, which leaves the layperson, whether an MP or member of a citizens’ assembly, having to judge several “expert” views. On more subjective matters, however, where does the boundary of expertise lie? To take the eternally thorny and emotive subject of abortion, even if one accepted—and many would not—that medical expertise was particularly privileged, the Irish assembly heard from Dr Mark Sheehan, a highly qualified researcher in public health ethics. Sheehan is a philosopher by discipline, but is there a consensus on the authority of academic philosophy compared to, say, theology? Or the views of a philosopher with firmly held religious views, like (to take an example from my old university) Professor John Haldane?
You are attempting to achieve consensus in part by appeal to expertise, but I would argue it is impossible to achieve consensus even on what that expertise is. Michael Gove is still regularly criticised for dismissing the value of expertise during the Brexit referendum campaign in 2016: even The Financial Times, usually a cautious publication, chose the headline “Britain has had enough of experts, says Gove”, and reported that the then-justice secretary had said “people in this country have had enough of experts”. It is still, eight years later, bandied as some kind of priceless “Gotcha” moment but it is utterly misleading. What Gove said was this:
I think the people in this country have had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.
He was referring specifically to economic forecasters, and his point was actually one which goes to the heart of what I am saying. Experts, by their nature, will seek to present themselves as authoritative, impartial and guided only by evidence. Even of that is generally true—and it is not a universal verity—they will not always reach the same conclusions. Bluntly, not all “expert” opinion is equally valuable, nor is it all equally reliable. So it should feed into the process of making major public policy decisions, and it already does, extensively, but it will rarely be the determining factor.
Here is the real source of my dislike of citizens’ assemblies and similar bodies: they are founded on a proposition which I simply don’t accept. The way assemblies and juries and focus groups and other kinds of bodies designed to try to capture and refine the wisdom of the public, that “mild voice of reason” that Madison talked about in The Federalist Papers, work rests on the assumption that any question, no matter how controversial or difficult or abstruse, will ultimately yield a solution if it is considered for long enough, by enough people, with enough information, in a reasonable, calm, consensual setting. It is like the forcing-house of a jury room: lock away the decision-makers for enough time, the proposition demands, and you can sweat a verdict out of them, one which is eventually reached by agreement.
That in turn demands us to believe that every public policy challenge has one correct answer, the Eldorado we are looking for. But if you consider it in that context, it’s obviously an absurdity. Because we have lived with at least one generation of politicians, perhaps more, which has in the main tried to downplay ideology and principle and belief, seeking to reassure us instead, however implausibly, of their managerial competence to operate the machinery of government, we have gradually bought into this nonsense idea that there are no situations in which two opposing viewpoints may be valid but instead one is, mistakenly or malignly, avoiding the correct answer.
Take Northern Ireland. You can acknowledge all sorts of arguments in terms of economics, trade, industry, defence and other areas which might support Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom or the idea that it should be constitutionally attached to Ireland. Many of those arguments, whether put forward by experts or politicians, will be true, in their own way, and carry some weight. But the principle at the root of both Unionism and Nationalism is one of identity and belief. To which state do you feel you belong, and do you want to belong? You can talk about it for as long as you like—and better that ink is spilled than blood—but there is no “correct” answer which will present itself if we can show enough patience. You may reach a majority view, that view may have impressive support and you may even, if you are exceptionally skilful and lucky, find that the minority accept that the majority view should prevail. Indeed, on less contentious issues, that’s how our political system often works. But there is such a thing as a belief or a political principle into and out of which it is impossible to argue people.
If that is true, and I am am absolutely certain that it is, then the idea, the theology of citizens’ assemblies simply falls apart. You are chasing an end which does not exist, you are using methods which are much less impartial and idealistic than they might appear, and, worst and most corrosive of all, perhaps, you are presenting that system as morally and intellectually superior to an “alternative” which is in fact a variation on the same theme. It has taken me more words than perhaps it should to express that, but that is my central message: it doesn’t do what you claim it does, and its very claim is arrogant and damaging.
If the Labour Party’s panicky and confused reaction to the story in The Times is representative, I may not have to worry too much and we may not be seeing citizens’ assemblies used in this country any time soon. I hope they are not. We would be much better served making the systems which already exist work better: demand parties present us with better candidates, choose them more wisely, hold them to account and, because we are not passive in this, pay more attention to what they are saying and doing. If we really want our democracy to be more engaging and participatory, if we really want more information and expertise in the system, we could all, every one of us, make a positive contribution by our own efforts: learn more, say more, do more. There are 67 million of us. It doesn’t need each of us to do very much for it to make a big difference.
As I’ve come to expect, this is a very full and well argued piece. But it seems to fail on a fairly basic point of argument: even the advocates of citizen assemblies don’t suggest that they are the solution to all political questions. Rather, they are useful for finding ways to offer options to resolve particular problems that parliamentary democracy finds difficult to solve. Importantly, they are assemblies and not legislatures. In that sense, describing parliament as the ultimate citizens’ assembly is misleading.
Unless you think that all of society’s problems are adequately addressed by the current constitutional framework, it seems odd to rule out a means of gleaning useful inputs from the public which are not captured by the current system. It’s unrealistic to expect politicians to tackle certain long term issues such as funding social care without significant changes to other elements of our political process (which I’m not aware that you’re advocating). Simply saying “we need better politicians” isn’t a solution.
On a related point, the logic of your argument would suggest you don’t believe in jury trials. I’d be surprised if that were the case.
Eliot, for once I agree with you! The example of the Citizens' Assembly on Abortion in Ireland is one you should be very wary of. This was managed in such a way that it produced proposals far more extreme than had been considered likely beforehand. The fact that these proposals had been recommended by the Citizens' Assembly was then used to push people into supporting them in the subsequent referendum. The passage of the proposals was further assisted by pledges from the then government as to safeguards which would be included in the legislation to be passed, pledges which are now being abandoned having served their purpose.