Democracy, and especially elections, can sometimes seem rather dry and serious. Whilst it’s certainly important to vote, maybe there is also a place for a little humour towards making our politics more friendly and digestible? What do you think?

Following two seismic by-elections this year, firstly in Gorton and Denton, won by Hannah Spencer (through a surprise expression of tactical voting) and then Andy Burnham’s recent win in Makerfield (against some pollster’s expectations)… we now have a third. This time in the seaside town of Clacton, following Nigel Farage’s shock resignation (and immediate re-standing for election). 

Reform are hoping it will see Farage re-elected, and at the same time put to bed questions about some sizeable financial gifts (without declaring them). Will it work? It’s a gamble, though possibly a sure-fire thing that he will win. But the odds are shortening. He appears to have a significant challenger… the irrepressible Count Binface.

Lets not take our politics too seriously?

• Like many populists, he uses an appeal to nostalgia to justify a retreat from progress, such as his manifesto pledge to “bring back Ceefax“. This seems to echo many backward looking policies of our mainstream parties. Which appeal to a return to cultural values that many of our younger citizens of the 21st century have left behind, or never signed up to. 

• At the same time, his commitment for pensions to be “double-locked, with an extra little chain on the side” highlights just how incomprehensible technocratic politics often feels.

As we found in our Nest Pensions Members Deliberation, whilst ordinary people do care and can make serious recommendations about complex issues, you need to make policies, and their implications for everyday citizens, really clear and relevant, and go beyond sound-bites.

But what about the man behind the bin? 

Whilst the Count doesn’t like being unmasked too often, as that can spoil the joke, comedian, classicist, and alter ego of Count Binface, Jon Harvey, in his satirical critique of modern politics is able to draw on his somewhat surprising knowledge of Ancient Athenian democracy:

“For the Ancient Athenians, elections were anti-democratic […] the Athenians injected an element of chance into their democratic system, and every citizen had the same chance of being involved”

Could he be onto something?

So, what might happen if we used random selection, or sortition, as we do in jury service, instead?

• Candidates would no longer be imposed from above on their constituency by a political party. Instead, we’d have politics driven by people rooted in a local place.

• Elections could no longer be won on slogans and soundbites, and we would have to make policies genuinely understandable for people of all backgrounds and levels of education.

• Deliberation between old and young people, bringing their diverse perspectives, could help us to move beyond appeals to populism and nostalgia towards exploring more positive visions of the future.

We think it is well worth a listen to some of Harvey’s short podcast series on Could an Ancient Athenian Fix Britain, made back in 2019. Each episode is no longer than 15 minutes.  

Vote for Froglet

If nostalgia really is your thing, you could go further back than 2019, to an episode of the iconic Clangers children’s TV series, made by Oliver Postgate in 1974. Where the Clangers were encouraged to ‘Vote for Froglet’, or instead, choose Soup Dragon policy. 

After quickly descending into bad tempers and arbitrary rules to deny Froglets any free soup, the day was rescued by the calm, deliberative culture of the Clangers. As Postgate voiced at the end of his 7 minute short: 

“It’s alright for Clangers to sit down together and settle their arguments, but people can’t do that!“

Before admitting, on being challenged by Mother Clanger, that:

“As individuals, people can be as loving and generous and tolerant as Clangers… but political parties can’t …. Party politics is a question of power… hey… are you listening to me?”

Could the Count win? Probably not

Count Binface may not offer up the solutions to our democratic woes, but what if they’ve been in front of us all along? Like standing citizens assemblies, filled by lot, to work alongside voting.

If you want a better understanding of what’s gone wrong with democracy, and how we might do things differently, it’s as good a place as any to start. 

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Listen to Jon Harvey (AKA Count Binface) talk about Athenian Democracy

Re-live your childhood with ‘Vote for Froglet‘, and The Clangers