The panic of the new falconers

A few weeks after closing the purposeless petition-rejecting facility that used to adorn the Number10 website, the coalition proposes a new petition-rejecting facility via which anyone who can gather enough signatories (rumours say 100k might be "enough") can have it rejected not just by a cabinet functionary but after an Actual Debate in the Commons. It is of course faintly possible that unlike last time one of the petition will coincide with something the government was planning to do anyway and when they leap to enact it we can all bask in the glow of having such enlightened and responsive leaders. In such leaps and bounds does participatory digital democracy progress.

The response of some politicians to the suggestion has been hilariously identical to the response of so many journalists 5-10 years earlier when they began to realise that the internet gave everyone the tools to respond to their articles and even write their own. You can't possibly open this sort of thing up to the general public, said one of the 600-odd people elected by the public and paid by the public to represent the public: 

"This seems to be an attractive idea to those who haven't seen how useless this has been in other parts of the world when it's tried. If you ask people the question 'do you want to pay less tax?', they vote yes...If we get the e-petitions in there will be some asking for Jeremy Clarkson to be prime minister, for Jedi and Darth Vader to be the religions of the country."

(The first suggestion of course a reference to a petition on the old Number10 site which attracted almost exactly half as many votes as it would need to attract a debate; the second a typically other-wordly misunderstanding of popular culture in which the 2000 census joke of registering one's religion as "Jedi" is confused with the character Darth Vader. These guys should really watch the tapes Malcolm Tucker so thoughtfully prepares for them.)

But in a way he's right. It is a dreadful idea. It's not a dreadful idea because it's been tried elsewhere and failed (trial and error is actually a pretty good system for getting things right). It's definitely not a dreadful idea because some people will use it - "fanatically" - to table ideas that enjoy widespread popular support but that the government refuses to consider (I am rather looking forward to Guido's alleged libertarianism tying itself in more knots as he argues in favour of capital punishment). It's not even a dreadful idea because people are stupid enough to really think it anything more than a bit of fun to push for Jedi to be an "official religion" (they'll see it and use it for what, oddly, it obviously is - a cyber-filibustering opportunity to distract the government from passing yet more needless laws).

No, it's a dreadful idea because elected governments already spend far too much time already balancing the loud demands of passionate, unrepresentative interest groups with needs of the country as a whole. It's a dreadful idea because so far, the alleged British government has somehow managed to get away with pretending it's still sovereign and Brussels just a corrupt talking-shop for foreign bureaucrats. (When the first petition that comes up asks for a debate about pulling out of Europe and the debate starts and ends with a timorous "err, we're not actually allowed to" we'll suddenly see a debate that has been scrupulosuly avoided for more than a decade really kick off.)

But mainly it's a dreadful idea because it's the merest nod at the potential for technology to utterly transform a pseudo-democratic process that was concocted when travelling from Bristol to London meant five days on a none-too-safe coach and sending one guy to represent the interests of the city was the best anyone could do. It looks, to this historian, precisely like the amsquerades the monarchies and aristocracies of old Europe went through as they peddled desperately against the democratic tide throughout the whole of the C19th and early C20th. A debating chamber here, a vote there, anything, almost anything, to avoid actually handing over power to the mob.

Well, history repeats itself only as farce, so here we are again, watching the farcical attempts of the Big Society's architects to pretend they really want the involvement of that big society in their power games. Here's what happens when we actually try to involve ourselves in politics - schoolchildren receive dark threats that armed police might (ever so accidentally) shoot them and protestors are kettled every time they turn up. The potential for the digital age to bring about Actual Democracy, the direct involvement of every interested party in every decision that affects them, clearly terrifies politicians just as much as blogging once terrified newsrooms. That's got to be good news for our side. We've seen this game play out before.