Citizens’ assemblies are a dreadful idea

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party is a government-in-waiting desperately searching for ideas. It says much about the leader of the opposition that arguably the biggest proposal he’s put forward comes not from him but from his chief of staff, Sue Gray. She, it seems, is enthused about the idea of citizens’ assemblies, and wants more of them to look into issues such as constitutional reform, devolution and housing. That is one step on from Tony Blair’s focus groups, with randomly selected members of the public placed one step closer to power and adopting the role of government advisers.

Gray points to Ireland as a model, but a citizens’ assembly has in fact been tried before in Britain. In 2019 one was set up by parliamentary committee as a sop to the protest group Extinction Rebellion, which had demanded a citizens’ assembly on climate justice. The hundred members were lectured to by David Attenborough and a number of academics and asked to respond to the loaded question: how should the UK meet its commitment to reach net zero by 2050? They were not consulted on whether this was a sensible target, and neither were any members of the public – the policy itself had already been set into law after being nodded through the Commons without a vote.

When the assembly produced its report the following year, Extinction Rebellion was far from happy. The randomly selected members, it turned out, were not all environmental activists, even if they were keen for the government to take action on climate change. They didn’t want restrictions on car use or any curtailment of their lifestyles – save for a tax on frequent flyers. Rather, they wanted technology to help. Not that the assembly could help anyone solve the multiple technological issues which the net-zero target raised.