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It is usually the proviso of Christmas Day snacking or visits to your nans. But in New Zealand a country with a penchant for on-the-fly problem-solving the humble biscuit tin has become a mainstay of parliamentary democracy.

There, as in Britain, members bills are a chance for MPs to have laws that they have proposed debated in the house.

But unlike in Westminster, in Wellington those bills are represented by plastic bingo counters in a 30-year-old biscuit tin. A curled, yellowing paper label taped to the front helpfully proclaims: Members Bills.

Each plastic counter represents a bill, and when there is space on parliaments order paper for a fresh round of proposed laws, a member of the parliamentary service digs into the tin for a lucky dip.

It was what was available at the time, Trevor Mallard, the Speaker of New Zealands parliament said of the tin, adding that it had initially contained a mixed selection of biscuits.

The tin was introduced after parliamentary reforms in the 1980s that changed an earlier method for keeping track of members bills a list to a ballot draw.

It was just a convenient thing to use

This was a method of randomising and keeping the ability for relatively current issues to have their chance of being selected, Mallard said. The list, he said, had been inefficient; most bills on it were never reached.

I think 30 years ago, random number-generating computers were probably a bit rarer than they are now, and it was just a convenient thing to use, he said.

The tin came to international prominence this week when the team behind the BBC TV show QI tweeted about it.

Finally! Our sophisticated randomisation apparatus gets the international recognition it deserves, tweeted the official New Zealand Parliament account.

The official receptacle is stored in an office at New Zealands parliament, Mallard said. Its not in a place where it has enormous public access but its not in a safe or anything.

New Zealand is known for its socially progressive legislation, often passing bills on hotly contested issues ahead of other western countries. Some of those matters had become law only after their random selection from the biscuit tin, Mallard said.

Among them were marriage equality, legalised in 2013, and assisted dying, which will go to New Zealanders for a referendum in 2020.

Governments often have a reluctance to lead on social change but often there are members who are prepared to stick their necks out and do what they think is right in this sort of area, Mallard said. This probably provides just a bit more opportunity for them to do it.

While the tin looks a little worse for wear, Mallard does not anticipate needing to replace it.

This was designed to keep biscuits fresh and I cant see the counters going off in the next hundred years, he said.

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Biscuit tin democracy: the humble start of New Zealand's most progressive laws - The Guardian

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen

University of Birmingham experts are leading a 1 million drive to understand the rise of populism across Europe as the threat posed by right-wing political parties encourages mounting opposition to immigration and Euroscepticism.

With rising populism often portrayed as one of the most pressing challenges for the future of national and EU democracies, researchers will explore the roots of populism by examining political, economic and sociological factors.

Challenges for Europe" is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and will explore the socio-economic and cultural roots of European populism. Experts at five European universities will analyse existing data and new survey results across 10 European countries during national elections occurring before the 2024 EU elections.

Researchers at Birmingham join counterparts at the Universities of Mnster (consortium coordinator) and Exeter, as well as VU Amsterdam and La Sapienza (Italy) to explore the political landscape in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain, Romania, France, Sweden, Hungary and Poland.

Project lead Dr. Lorenza Antonucci commented: Our project links socio-economic explanations such as labour and financial insecurity to cultural reasons like the rise of authoritarian values and disappearance of cultural norms that underpin populisms rise.

We will look beyond the grievances of globalisation and capture the widespread socio-economic malaise affecting the squeezed middle, whilst investigating the role of welfare state reforms and labour market policies. We aim to identify factors that push and pull individuals towards and away from populist voting.

The project includes a number of high-impact initiatives to help EU institutions and European states address populist demands, guided by the research questions such as:

The interdisciplinary cross-national team will isolate single issues and responses to help create an EU policy toolkit that will inform policy work around insecurity and work conditions of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR).

Research will be cutting-edge - analysing existing probability data from the European Social Survey and the International Social Survey Programme alongside new primary data that will be collected through Voting Advice Applications (VAA) - online information tools that will help researchers understand how voters respond to political parties positions.

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Birmingham leads 1 million analysis of rising populist threat to democracy - University of Birmingham

Coverage of elections, including this one, inevitably depicts them as a popularity contest between the party leaders focused on fluctuations in opinion polls and satisfaction ratings. Even where issues rather than personalities seemed to occupy the agenda with Brexit in the case of Conservatives and the NHS in the case of Labour the analysis remained concentrated on the respective leaders handling of these questions. We focus on individuals rather than institutions, on leaders rather than movements.

Consider the disproportionate attention given to leadership debates and the criteria used to assess them. Which of the candidates won the debate? Did Boris Johnson convince people he is fit for office? Did Jeremy Corbyn look prime ministerial?

Democracy is in trouble when the image of the messenger is more important than the content of the message. And yet the former seems to have been the question that has preoccupied commentators. Yes, we were told, the Labour party manifesto is its most radical ever, but is the leader going to enjoy the job of being PM?

It shouldnt need to be said, but enjoying office is not essential to responsibly exercising political duties. Our representatives dont need to have more passion, more expertise, more charisma, better looks, more ordered lives than the ordinary citizens they represent.

If a polity were ruled by good people, Plato wrote in The Republic, people would try as hard to avoid office as they currently try to obtain it. Politics is a duty, it is not a vocation. The more fond politicians are of their jobs, the more likely they are to cling to office. The greater dexterity they have in exercising power, the higher the risk that they will abuse it one day.

The celebration of expertise in politics belongs to an anti-democratic tradition, one that has often been deployed to undermine the power of the masses

The modern professionalisation of politics is grounded on an implicit asymmetry between those who rule through their greater skills and expert knowledge, and the ordinary citizens that make up the rest of the body politic. Political leaders are praised for possessing the right talents combined with the right experience, a set of qualities that is thought to enable them to make appropriate judgment under increasingly complex circumstances. This is the politics of virtue, a very different one from the politics of justice.

The celebration of expertise in politics belongs to an anti-democratic tradition, one that has often been deployed to undermine the power of the masses to dismiss rule by the many (democracy) in favour of rule by the best (aristocracy). Where only the best people rule, so the argument goes, political institutions are more stable; the more experienced and skilled the leaders, the less vulnerable the political community.

The division of labour across society and the differing skills required for different jobs is often invoked to explain why politics needs expertise. In increasingly complex societies, marked by the specialisation of tasks and requirements of efficient performance, it is not hard to see why. Representing your peers in parliament or leading a government is a job like any other, like being a doctor or a plumber, some would argue. One individual has the task to fix broken societies, just as another helps fix broken legs, while another repairs broken sinks.

Yet it is a mistake to think of politics as a task on a par with all these others. When elected representatives are authorised by us, ordinary citizens, it is not because they have special charisma or skills or a claim to know better. If they do, we should be wary. Elected representatives are entitled to act on our behalf because they share our beliefs and commitments. If they dont, we have a duty to ask for change.

When we vote for a party that reflects our principles, we articulate a judgment on how we want society to be, and choose individuals that endorse that view on our behalf. They dont need to be better than us ordinary citizens. In fact, they ought to be like us, because one day we may be in their place.

Democratic legitimacy is not served by perfect leaders it is endangered by them. Charisma can undermine proper scrutiny if the arguments of the many are silenced by the rhetoric of one. When democratic institutions are strong, one does not need to rely on the power of single individuals.

This is not to deny that certain conditions must be in place for citizens to exercise that power adequately. It is also not to deny that a degree of familiarity with how institutions work is bound to be of help. Clearly, in contemporary liberal societies these conditions are met by only a select few.

But if a certain set of knowledge and skills is required to be active in politics, surely the right response is to educate all citizens so as to spread competence equally, to seek to distribute these skills and assets more widely, and to collectively build the political capacity to achieve that goal. It is definitely not to celebrate the virtues of those who possess leadership skills compared to those who do not.

Lea Ypi is a professor in political theory in the government department at the London School of Economics

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Johnson or Corbyn? Democracy is in trouble when were obsessed with leaders - The Guardian

So now we know. Now we know what happens when you declare war on democracy. Now we know the consequences of demeaning the largest democratic vote in a nations history. Now we know what becomes of a political class that sneers at voters, silences their democratic voice, and libels them as racist, xenophobic know-nothings who cannot be trusted with stewardship of the nation. You get punished. You get rebelled against. You get replaced. Last night, in those extraordinary election results, we witnessed the revenge of democracy.

You dont have to be a fan of Boris Johnson or his withdrawal treaty to appreciate the significance and even brilliance of yesterdays events. The results are striking, historically so. Labour suffering one of its worst results in decades, the Tories winning a powerful majority which, in the final days of the campaign anyway, not many people were predicting. Most striking of all has been the corrosion, collapse in fact, of Labours red wall that historic terrain of red constituencies stretching from North Wales through northern England. Well, its not red anymore: brick by brick it has fallen, with vast swathes of people who have voted Labour for decades turning to the Tories this time.

Stockton South, Darlington, Wrexham all Tory seats. Even saying that sounds strange. Bolsover, held by Dennis Skinner since 1970, now has a 5,000+ Tory majority. Former mining towns that have long loathed the Tories Bishop Auckland, Sedgefield have turned blue. Bishop Aucklands Tory MP 25-year-old Hull-educated Dehenna Davison is the first its had in its 134-year history. Don Valley is gone, too, despite MP Caroline Flints best efforts to warn her party that its betrayal of its working-class, Brexit-backing voters would cost it dear. The wall hasnt only been breached its been torn down.

The red wall collapse is the most significant, telling event in this election because it speaks, clearly and profoundly, to the revolt-like nature of yesterdays ballot-box rejection of the Remainer elites. These working-class communities were at the sharp end of the elites seething contempt for Brexit voters. When you heard liberal-elite EU lovers or the performative radicals of the bourgeois Corbynista movement bemoaning the low-information, demagogue-swayed sections of society who had apparently been misled into backing Brexit, this is who they were talking about. The good people of Blackpool South, of the Vale of Clwyd, of Workington all Tory seats this morning. That poisonous contempt was aimed most directly at these people. And now these people have responded. They have returned the contempt that has been heaped so heavily on them these past three-and-a-half years.

The red-wall revolt against Labour feels era-defining. This is working people rejecting that foul old idea that they would vote for a donkey so long as it was wearing a red rosette. This is ordinary people rebelling against the neo-aristocracy of the woke identitarian middle classes who have hijacked the party their forefathers founded. And this is an uprising against anti-democracy. For more than three years the political class has agitated against the largest democratic vote in our history. They have used every legal and parliamentary trick in the book to thwart or delay Brexit. And now the people have passed their judgement on this disgraceful behaviour. Democracys payback.

Just consider the ridiculous, authoritarian figure of Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson. Shes lost her seat. She said bollocks to Brexit, the people said bollocks to her. Just as they have to many Remoaner MPs who tried to stymie democracy. Guess what? People take their vote seriously. They know it was hard fought for. They know people struggled and even died for this every-now-and-then piece of paper that allows every free adult citizen to determine the shape and nature of government. They do not take kindly to its being undermined, whether by the EU or our own anti-democratic elites here in the UK.

Already leftist elitists are demeaning this mass vote against anti-democrats as the work of racist idiots. These stupid voters remain in the intellectual stranglehold of evil tabloids and populist demagogues, they claim. They will never learn. This is precisely the kind of contempt that made people turn against the aloof left and technocratic elites. More importantly, yesterdays election shows the opposite of what these anti-democrats claim. It shows that people can think and decide for themselves. For three years people have been bombarded with overblown threats and hysterical warnings about the dangers of Brexit and the vulnerability of our economy and public services if we go down the populist route. Well look after you by stopping Brexit and doing the right thing, politicians assured them. The people rejected all of this paternalistic guff. They thought for themselves and said, Nope. This was an act of an independent people.

We have a job of work making sure Boris doesnt sell out Brexit. Well get to that. For the time being lets recognise and celebrate what this election reminds us of: that democracy remains the greatest corrective to elitism and tyranny that mankind has ever invented.

Brendan ONeill is editor of spiked and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan ONeill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy

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The revenge of democracy - Spiked

One of the most striking findings in the Australian National Universitys Australian Election Study the survey of voters the university has undertaken after every federal election since 1987 are the results on satisfaction with democracy.

The survey tells us that back in 2007, Australians were sanguine. Kevin Rudd had won the federal election, and politics was hovering on the brink of a decade of profound disruption. At the tail end of the revolving door of prime ministers, and the failure of our parliament to achieve a durable consensus on important issues like climate change, only 59% of us are satisfied with democracy, and trust has reached its lowest level on record, with just 25% believing people in government can be trusted.

Loss of faith, given the experience post-2007, is to be expected. But the striking bit for me in the latest AES was the rate of decline in satisfaction with democracy. The faceplant in Australia has been steeper than the experience in the United Kingdom after the 2016 Brexit referendum and in the United States following Donald Trumps 2016 election win. Just roll that small insight around in your head for a minute. Politics in the US and the UK has completely jumped the shark yet our citizens are hitting the screw-this button faster than the citizens of America and Britain.

Assuming this insight is correct, thats really quite something. It tallies with the despair I encounter among the community of politically engaged people on social media, day in and day out, heaving and crashing. My inbox is studded with it. Progressives, engaged folks, are clearly angry, frustrated, thwarted.

Some of this roiling is currently trained in Labors direction. Anthony Albanese has copped a hiding on social media and elsewhere this week for visiting coal communities during the bushfires the visit seen as a portent of capitulation by Labor on climate policy. I want to work through the points Im going to make about this reaction, step by step, just so we are clear.

This first thing to say is Im minutely interested in where Labor ultimately ends up on climate policy. If Labor does ultimately capitulate on climate action, producing an execrable policy for the next federal election, then I will be the first one lining up with the rhetorical baseball bat. I will be taking no prisoners.

But rather than fly off in a rage because Albanese went to Emerald, or looked sideways at a coalminer while Sydney choked in smoke, right now Im content to wait and watch. Im content to wait and watch not because Im a naturally patient person, or a trusting person, or a generous person, but because Im a student of history.

Its worth laying out the recent history just so its clear, because right now the debate feels a bit untethered, and things that can be known and proved (as opposed to being speculated about) are a bit obscured in the thicket of fail hashtags.

History tells us that Labor has made mistakes on climate policy, significant errors of hubris, fear and poor judgment that have set back the cause of progress.

But history also tells us this political party shows up on climate action. It is the only party of government in Australia that does, election cycle after election cycle. That basic fact seems a bit lost in the wash in some of the current emoting and hectoring.

The other lesson of history that may not be obvious is this. Labor has lost two elections on climate change 2013 and 2019.

Climate change wasnt the only negative factor in these contests. Labor lost predominantly in 2013 because it was more interested in conducting a civil war at taxpayer expense than serving Australian voters, but Labor also lost because Tony Abbott was successful in weaponising climate change. It was diabolical, what Abbott did, but it was a precision, partisan, demolition.

A backlash against climate action in regional Queensland was also part of the story of Labors election loss in May. I dont think a lot of progressive people have really grasped this basic fact, because they prefer to think climate change switched votes Labors way in 2019, because thats a more comforting story.

I cant fathom, given what the science says, why climate change goes on being Australias Brexit.

Now its true, climate change did help shore up Labors left flank against the Greens, and pushed a number of swing votes Labors way in 2019. But its important to look where those positive swings happened, and they were largely in seats Labor had no prospect of winning.

Any political party will happily bank any positive swing. Its gratifying. It suggests the dial is moving. But obviously it is better if the swings deliver you government rather than just a warm inner glow, and abstract validation.

So what Im trying to convey this weekend is Labor has paid a price electorally for pursuing climate action.

I dont high five this fact. I dont find it comforting. I cant fathom, given what the science says, given the clear evidence that warming is under way, why there is even a debate in this country about what needs to happen, why climate change goes on being Australias Brexit.

But there is a debate, pushed by corporates with vested interests, and culture warriors intent on routing progressivism, whatever the cost; and materialist anxiety is stoked assiduously by poisonous agitprop rags like the Daily Telegraph, and other alleged news outlets in the Murdoch stable that act like sheep dogs rounding up thought criminals, fully resolved to let no good deed go unpunished.

I thought after the defeat in May we would see ignominious surrender from the ALP. I fully expected that to happen, not because its right, but because retreat is not irrational in terms of the electoral calculation.

But the only person Ive heard in Labor saying we need to lower the level of ambition is Joel Fitzgibbon, who got the fright of his life after suffering a huge negative swing in his coal community in the Hunter Valley, and has now embarked on a coal worshipping tour of the country as an act of contrition.

Mark Butler isnt saying lower ambition. Albanese isnt saying it. Penny Wong isnt saying it. Senior New South Wales rightwingers, such as Tony Burke and Chris Bowen, are saying we need to maintain ambition consistent with the science and find a way to do that while reassuring our blue-collar base. Burke and Bowen have floated the New Green Deal, or something like it, as a mechanism that might square the circle.

Maybe Labor will, ultimately, surrender. Its certainly possible. But whats happening now isnt surrender its an attempt to stitch climate action and blue-collar jobs together. Its an attempt to craft a nuance.

Now some progressive people will argue thats impossible, so dont even bother; Labor should just draw a line now and say we are for climate action, no compromises, no redux on the messaging. If you dont like it, vote for someone else.

Thats fine, as long as the people making these arguments understand a couple of basic things.

Labor cant win an election by saying that. Not on current indications.

Perhaps that could change in time, because public sentiment will shift as the evidence and experience of warming grows. The community is clearly mobilising. But right now, Australians are telling pollsters they are increasingly worried about climate change, but a majority is not voting in favour of climate action when push comes to shove. The country remains divided, and rancorously so. Thats the legacy of our busted arse politics, and our busted arse media conversation.

While ever that remains the case, Labor will have to hold its progressive post-material constituency and hold its traditional base, or enough of it to win enough seats to form a government.

If its either/or, Labor loses.

So lets be precise about what that means. It means the only party of government in Australia that is halfway serious about climate action, the only party with the capacity to deliver tangible action, remains out of power, unable to move the dial.

This is less of a problem obviously if the Liberal party can enjoy a Damascene conversion. I remain hopeful that it might happen. But theres not much evidence of that happening currently.

These are just facts. These might be irritating facts, facts disruptive to the flow of feelings, but they are facts.

Lets loop back to despair, which is where we started this weekend. I get despair. I understand why people who care about the fate of the planet are so worried about the failure of our political system, particularly on this issue. I worry about it constantly. I report on it incessantly in the hope that something will change.

I understand the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. I battle these feelings myself. But also know this. Lashing out is a waste of time and energy. Rage in advance of the facts is just more noise. Some of its eloquent noise, but it is just noise.

David Remnick of the New Yorker wrote one of the finest pieces of the year about the challenges of reporting during the age of Donald Trump. He told his readers despair is not an option. Despair is a form of self-indulgence, a dodge.

Remnick is absolutely right. Despair is not an option, particularly in advance of the facts.

The times are just too serious.

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Australias democracy has faceplanted and Labor is staring down some disturbing truths - The Guardian