Britain is broken.
Nothing works. Everyone knows it.
( Although not everyone wants to do something about it. )
But Britain has much to be proud of. Britain has plenty of brilliant people, and could be a brilliant country.
This is how.
Politicians make promises to gain power. Then forget those promises once they are in power. It’s a fact of life.
That’s why Lord Acton famously wrote that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
In other words, we should give politicians as little power as possible. And no one person should ever hold too much power.
Therefore, all governments must seek the explicit approval of the British people before they do anything they did not explicitly promise to do in their election manifesto.
Yes, lots of referendums, a sort of Switzerland on steroids.
And if the Government can’t convince the British people on something, then they shouldn’t be doing it.
Obviously some sort of public-interest threshold will need to apply, we don’t want a referendum on whether the Department of Education should close down its office in Whitehall!
But equally a system will be needed to ensure that a Government does not abuse the spirit of those thresholds.
They should absolutely not be able to override the will of the British people, just because they won power.
The only exception to this rule is matters of genuine national security.
Politicians love to splash taxpayers' cash at various groups of people. They hope it will make those people vote for them.
In reality however, it means they never try to come up with a clever or creative solution to a problem. It's much easier to throw someone else's money at it, then move on to the next photo opportunity.
That’s why Britain is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. We could tip over at any moment.
And that's why we must introduce a public-consent requirement for increases in government spending.
Therefore, before they can increase spending, all governments must seek the explicit approval of those citizens who pay more in tax than they receive in benefits.
For the avoidance of doubt, the receipt of benefits in the above calculation means direct benefit payments from the Government to the citizen, it expressly excludes remuneration paid to public sector employees and the usage of public services.
If those “net contributors” do not approve a spending increase then it doesn’t happen.
We can debate whether the restriction should apply to each department separately, or to Government spending as a whole (allowing the Government to choose how the whole is split between departments).
Incentives matter. If you want something to happen, then create the right incentive and it will happen.
Every business knows this.
You experience it in your everyday shopping when you use a loyalty card that encourages you to come back.
And yes, even Governments know about incentives when they claim that “sin taxes” are only there to improve your health.
So why are there absolutely no incentives in the Civil Service and Government bureaucracy?
No wonder the bureaucracy seems to, first and foremost, always serve itself.
We must therefore move to a model where the Civil Service and all publicly-funded organisations are increasingly paid according to how well they do their job.
That means that all future increases in pay will be bonuses only, there will be no increase in basic pay until at least one half of total remuneration is bonus, and even then must be approved by the "net contributors".
The British people will decide whether each department or organisation deserves its bonus, based on questions set by the Government and covering an appropriate period of time.
Those questions must be fair, take account of the organisation’s responsibilities and circumstances, and avoid rewarding short-term gimmicks at the expense of lasting improvements.
The Government must provide the public with sufficient information to make an informed decision, but the final judgement belongs to the British people, not the organisation being assessed.
Let down the public and they get no bonus.
Do a fantastic job and they get paid handsomely.
Simples.
If the British people are going to be given a say in how they are governed, let’s make it easy for them.
Let’s build a digital voting system to bring us into the 21st Century.
We need a voting system that is better able to resist voter fraud and “family voting”.
We need a voting system that is simple to use and understand, and allows informed decisions.
We need a voting system that will detect and be resilient against foreign “interference”.
We need a voting system that can be independently tested and audited, and is transparent enough for problems to be detected and investigated.
The aim must be to keep the ongoing cost of running elections and referendums as low as possible, with a clear target of no greater overall cost than the existing system, despite the additional votes our new democracy will allow.
Most importantly, we should not allow our new voting system to be built by the Civil Service or established or incumbent government contractors.
Instead, we must launch a staged Challenge Prize generous enough to attract Britain’s best tech talent.
The competition will be open to all technologies, which might include the internet, proprietary networks, dedicated voting booths or other technologies; for the avoidance of doubt, the competition must be allowed to establish whether remote internet voting is safe enough, rather than being required to assume that it is.
Initially open to small teams and individuals keen to build a talented team, we will consider all ideas and then proceed with the best.
For the final assessment, we will establish an independent assurance process involving multiple disciplines to verify the integrity of the process and a realistic plan for handling failures.
This final assessment will include adversarial testing, independent audits and public documentation.
The system must provide independently verifiable evidence that votes have been recorded and counted correctly, while preserving the secrecy of individual ballots.