Where should politics happen? For most MPs, accustomed to the Palace of Westminster’s inward-looking spaces and rituals, the answer is obvious. In parliament and its associated offices, corridors, committee rooms, bars and tea rooms; in Downing Street and its surrounding maze of ministries; and in the parts of the media that mould political opinion.
This country is supposed to be a representative democracy. Except for very occasional referendums, periodic elections, voxpops and opinion polls, or perhaps the odd exchange with their MP, voters are not meant to be directly involved. A sign of a healthy political system, we are often told, is one where most people get on with their lives and leave politics to the professionals.
But Britain doesn’t feel like that kind of place now. Political professionals – whether MPs, ministers or party functionaries – are regarded by many voters with contempt: as incompetent, corrupt, uninspiring, or a combination of all three. Meanwhile the public spaces of Westminster and the centres of other cities are busier with protests than they have been for years. Gaza, the climate crisis, cuts to public services, the crisis in farming and other huge and urgent causes compete for attention, week after week. At weekends, much of central London in particular has changed from a place dominated by consumerism, tourism and statues of dead politicians to a place of banners, placards, chants, speeches, blocked roads and activists climbing lamp-posts, with coloured smoke gushing from protesters’ flares and police helicopters endlessly throbbing overhead.
For some politicians, many but not all of........