Say no to Labour’s citizens’ assembly

A spectre is haunting Westminster – the spectre of the citizens’ assembly. This unkillable bad idea is making the headlines again because of the suggestion that, when Labour comes to power, citizens’ assemblies could be used to develop new policy proposals to put before Parliament. Fittingly, given its essentially anti-political and anti-democratic nature, this idea has been mooted by Sue Gray, Keir Starmer’s ‘chief of staff’, a woman who has wielded enormous power but who holds no elected office and has never offered herself for any public vote, rather than by Starmer or any of his frontbenchers.

Creating such assemblies may not be official Labour policy. It appears that Gray was either freelancing, or had agreed to float a trial balloon on behalf of the Labour leadership, when she put forward the ‘transformational’ plan; by the end of Monday, citizens’ assemblies were already being briefed against by Labour’s National Executive Committee.