Like you, I’m interested in quite a lot of stuff. Tea, football, flowery cushions etc. I think it’s rather healthy to remind ourselves of that when we fall into the default mode of communications channel planning robot.

So, with that in mind, I thought it fun to explore a non media / digital / advertising / technology topic. Something like, I dunno, reforming the House of Lords?

Why not, eh.

Firstly, a few caveats:

1. This is definitely not an answer, just a collection of thoughts to be built upon, rubbished and amended.
2. The foundation of this argument is based upon how social media enables people to connect and therefore behave in very different ways to before.
3. There should be no political bias or persuasion on show. This is simply a theoretical point of view on how technology could enable a vastly different, and I’d argue, vastly more effective upper house

I’ll deal with the obvious question first. IE, what is the actual purpose of the House of Lords. My view is relatively simple. You can certainly disagree, but I stick with this definition throughout the implementation aspects. So go with it.

While unrepresentative, our political process is pragmatic and practical. ‘First past the post’ cements ideological consensus, while our constitution promotes executive dominance. It’s a system which broadly lets us get things done, without too many conflicting minority philosophies causing paralysis.

The Lords is different. Indeed it needs to be, as it is the one place that can reconcile the fact that a multitude of different perspectives, view points, interests and ideologies are wholly unrepresented within the House of Commons.

A key objective, in my opinion, is for the new upper house to represent the interests of the disenfranchised – whether geniuses or crackpots.
Again, this is only my perspective, but the ideal upper house would be one in which every member of the UK population felt as if there was at least one person who explicitly represented, and as such viewed every pieces of lower house legislation through the lens of, their predominant personal interest area or ideological identifier.

In short an assortment of singularly defined lobbyists who collectively represent every major ideological or professional interest within the UK and scrutinise all legislation through their respective specialities.

With this in mind, I’m going to attack four key themes of this new upper house of mine – all of which are enabled by technology.

Our new upper house should:

Represent interests rather than regions

In a web enabled networked society the role of geography is increasingly irrelevant. Within the Lower House an MP’s constituency provides a direct link to voters creating least an illusion of accountability. Such a link is purely historic, and in truth, outdated and ineffective for our new upper house.

Such a link can just as easily exist through ‘interest’. Online social communities are in themselves direct relationships defined through common interests rather than (and often despite of) locality. It is around, for example, a shared love of Japanese cooking or Buddhism which communities develop.

Hence rather than representing the interest of a locality, each member of an upper house should instead represent a key singular interest or ideological stand point as defined by and supported by people.

This would lead to an upper house in which a vast range of different ideologies, interests, beliefs and experience are represented – for example, Islam, Sustainability, Mental Health. The level of influence each of these interests would have in the new upper house would be defined by and held directly accountable by the size of the interest based ‘community’ that develops around it. In short, if hundreds of thousands of people connect around the interest of sustainability, than this interest would achieve a proportionately high level of representation (through number of representatives) and, therefore, influence (with defined mandate) within the new upper house.

Arguably, this would also increase accountability between representative and voter. Far from the mixed objectives of party vs. constituency loyalty, each representative would have a mandate to solely represent the interest group for whom they’ve been selected by their respective interest based community.

Replace party stranglehold with people power

They key to making upper house members representative of interests is through harnessing the power of the social web. The model above is, I agree, simply proportional representation without any constituency connection. But the key to creating a house filled with specially mandated interests unattached to party allegiances is to lower the barriers to achieving representation.

What if, then, anyone could set up a simple interest ‘group’ on a specially created ‘Upper House’ social community website where you set out what your special area of interest or belief. A threshold of ‘supporters’ would be needed to be included on the overall upper house ballot. (Support can be shown through a click of the button – not dissimilar to Facebook’s ‘I Like’)

It would be as simple as creating a profile on Facebook – and as easy for Germaine Greer as it would be for a homeless shelter charity.
Hence, if a group dedicated to community volunteerism achieved the adequate level of support, they would then be allowed to place a number of candidates up for election to the house – as per a PR List system. Elections would then occur, again online, on a PR basis.

The threshold would remove overly niche interests as well as encouraging co-operation between similar or shared interest groups while, of course, broadening the range of ideologies represented.
The role of the internet, in short, is to democratise the whole system.
It enfranchises and empowers all through interest representation, and lowers the barriers to political representation. It also, most importantly, crushes the party stranglehold. No doubt, traditional party groups will exist within the mix for the upper house (with well supported ‘groups’), but this system encourages the rewarding and supporting of specific or single interest groups in a way completely unfeasible in traditional party politics.

This would hugely benefit charities and volunteer groups.

Promotes ideological diversity over hegemony

Encouraging ideological ‘interest’ based diversity would do two hugely beneficial things. It would, as mentioned, enfranchise the many. Whatever you believe in, whether ideological, religious, philosophical or professional, a group exists for you to engage with.

Secondly, it broadens the ideological lens focussed upon legislation. Unrepresented groups within the House of Commons will now be able to add expertise and perspective on the often unintended consequences of poorly drafted legislation from legislators who may, quite simply, have no real perspective or understanding of what life is like for the homeless, the mentally ill, the defenceless. It would also broaden the pool of specialists available for consultation across all factors of policy.

There is certainly an argument that successful groups within the upper house in this system would skew towards those with a special interest in supporting those less able to defend themselves, backed by the many who want to add a moral or ethical balance to the policy juggernaut.

Allow for fluid allegiances

It is, of course, inevitable that many interest groups would have shared values in which unofficial allegiances would grow. But where each interest group and their representatives have such clear mandate, allegiances would be much more fluid depending on the potential outtake of a specific piece of legislation.

Hence the CBI Group may align with the CND on one piece of policy, and then with the Trade Unionists the next depending on the potential outcome for their members. Such fluidity will be a symptom of the clear mandate afforded by the ‘interest’ system. Each elected individual will be accountable depending on how well they pursue their supporter’s objectives, rather than being hamstrung into collective agreement or consensus typical of party allegiances.

As already mention, I am in no way implying this is the perfect system. But there’s something in this. The simple fact is that technology empowers people – simply look at the hundreds of social media enabled cause movements, crowd funding projects, or transparency movements. When we talk about democracy, this is what we mean: people, fully engaged fully involved, and genuinely making a difference. And they do it because they believe in it, because they want to.

Regardless of whether the above is utter nonsense, or simply garbled crap – using the wonders of technology to connect peoples’ desire to make a difference with the UK political system seems a no brainer.
And the new upper house seems quite a sensible place to start

Image: The Sinister Penguin

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