Why X factor is best

Voting won’t always bring perfect results but the alternatives stink

KEN Livingstone once wrote a book entitled If Voting Changed Anything They’d Abolish It.

It was published nearly thirty years ago and while I’ve never thought of the former London mayor as a reliable soothsayer he might have been on to something.

We’ve just had a referendum which changed everything, and now politicians are trying to abolish the result.

Labour leadership challenger Owen Smith wants a second referendum to reconsider the decision made by the first.

And Lib Dem leader Tim Farron will turn the next General Election into a poll on whether to stay in the EU.

Postwar Labour PM Clem Attlee did not much like referendums, nor did Tory PM Margaret Thatcher.

They saw them as devices used by fascists. Hitler held four of them.

Meeting

In other democracy news Labour is trying stitch up the vote to stop Jeremy Corbyn being reelected leader.

And the Belgian historian David Van Reybrouck has just written a controversial book saying political leaders should be chosen at random like jurors.

With the popularity of Donald Chump in America and far right parties across Europe I’ve had a few doubts about democracy myself.

Yet deciding ticklish issues by majority verdict does seem ingrained in our natures.

Channel 4 began a new reality show last week called Eden. It involves marooning 23 strangers on a remote and rugged Scottish peninsula for a year.

There’s no contact with the outside world – so the contestants don’t know they’re leaving the EU or that Theresa May rules.

The characters are not interesting enough for me to stay the course with this series, but one thing struck me in the first episode. Before the pioneers sorted out food sources or permanent shelter they instinctively built a teepee as a meeting hut – a sort of parliament for castaways.

When there was no agreement they decided their priorities by secret ballot, scribbled on bits of paper just as in polling stations at election time.

Ken Livingstone wasn’t much of a fortune teller after all. We’re just too attached to voting to abandon it.

Short of putting tanks on the streets, i t’s the most effective way we’ve found to change things.