Why democracy is failing | Paddy Ashdown | TEDxBrussels

that actually I'm grateful for the introduction I was on my way here as a little man came up to me and said here he said yeah didn't you used to be Paddy Ashdown but it turns out I still AM that's very helpful for me last time I was here one of these great talks couple years ago I was talking about how I thought the international scene would change in the years ahead now I want to come a little closer to home I shall start with a piece of poetry and I shall end with one because it's a passion of mine and the poem I want to start with is a line couple of three lines from my countryman WB Yeats great poem the second coming and it begins turning and turning on the widening gyre the Falcon cannot hear the falconer all spins outward the center cannot hold the good lack all conviction and the bad burn with a fiery intensity it's very difficult for me to listen to think of those lines which echo through my head a good deal these days and not think of the decay and dissolution which I think we all sense is taking place in our political structures and in our governments and when I say our I mean our in the Western world you know these are dangerous times because politics all around us it seems to me is failing at least conventional politics the politics that succeeding is the politics of simple solutions for complex times the politics of the demagogue I don't think I can remember in rather a long career in politics any time when governments have been so distrusted when politicians have been so disrespected when the political dialogue which ought to be about a rational approach to part has been so sublimated so diverted by those who fill the space where rational dialogue should be mmm with the raucous shouts of the demagogue well maybe maybe this is just the misanthropy of an old man and saying as old men so often do things are not as good as they were in my day but I think there's more to it than that I mean take a look at all our Western democracies and what you see is the rise of the right or the left in some cases pushing its way through and establishing itself on the basis not of rational politics but of a fear and the anger which they play off in our populations now maybe that's just a convulsion maybe it'll go away but maybe it won't those of us with long memories may well recall that a terrible series of events took place not long ago in Europe which began with political failure I mean let me make these two propositions to you the progress of progressive politics for the last hundred and fifty years let's say since the middle of the 19th century has really been about the process of two central ideas one is to win public support in favor of a proposition for the common good that you win support amongst the people for a proposition that says we must suppress vested interests if they stand against the progress towards common values and the common weal I put to you today that it is almost impossible to do that in current politics because any proposition for the common good in these last decade or so has been almost immediately torn down by the vociferous arguments and raucous calls of vested interest the very basis of our progressive politics now seems to be undermined this vociferous call that can be put together almost in a flash using the systems of the social network that will appear on the streets and disappear that you know the great the great arguments that have dominated our politics in the past the arguments of isms communism capitalism socialism on which P for which people died are now been replaced by this sort of flash demonstration about a single issue genetically modified foods hunting whales whatever it is which I think is now had a profound impact on the nature of our political debate and I worry simply for the process of the continuation of a rational part X in complex times the second issue which strikes me and undermines the basis for progressive politics is right since those early days the middle of the 19th century the proposition that was put to us which could always win support was about unity it was about standing together it was about standing together across the classes across the colors it was about ignoring racism it was about our common humanity it was about our unities the unities of our countries and the unities of Europe and yet the voices that you hear that are winning support in the public debate these days are not the voices for unity it is the dialogue of division nowadays which dominates our public discourse in our country in my country in England it nearly tore the nation apart as the Scots said we want to wait get away from them and underpinning that whole debate what are the top and at the bottom there were violently nationalist forces you know I'm a patriot I love my country but my love of my country is not based on having to hate someone else's I've seen destructive patriotism nationalism I've seen it in Northern Ireland I've seen it in Bosnia and Herzegovina I've seen it elsewhere I fought against it all my life and here was that dialogue beginning to develop the politics of division and in my country the United Kingdom Independence Party now proposes exactly that it believes in only three things it believes in a hate of Brussels and foreigners by the way a distrust and I hate for Westminster and a police can we return to the 1950s those are the three things that believe in now if you imagine that I'm targeting you keep I'm not not much anyway because you'll find the same thing in marine lepen in France and the fauna so now you'll find the same thing in the new right in Germany and Denmark in Holland and of course in the new left it doesn't have to be right or left in those difficult economic situations that occur for instance in Greece and elsewhere very difficult to make a proposition about our unity and our common humanity today now I say all this not because I think politicians have not been guilty of the mistakes that have created this situation I mean we behave badly politicians have abandoned the space where like great debate of principle should be and reduced ourselves back to the politics of managerialism never mind the principles no buying the creeds it's an error or the death of Creed's and the dissolution of institutions never mind those the fact of the matter is you can be accept us as a government just if we manage things better if we deliver more of the goodies to you you can be satisfied that's what's happened so who should be surprised that the space where the great clash of principle should be which is at the heart of politics if it's a vacuum nation nature abhors a vacuum it's going to be filled by the press with a conspiracy to be obsessed with the petty if it isn't filled by us with a clash of ideas it can be filled not by those who in the pursuit of progressive politics seek to appeal to the better angels of our nature but those who sing the devil's song so much of the fault lies with us but I think there's something more fun mental at the heart of this and this is what I want to get on to now I begin to wonder whether the politics of the classic nation-state created in the 19th century largely here in Europe has reached the end of its utility at least as a monopoly system for governments you see it seems to me that the nation-state depends on two great lies and those lies are these the first is that the nation-state Brussels Berlin Paris London Washington is supremely sovereign and supremely powerful and we when we ask for your vote can beg for it on the basis that we can vote me into power I will solve any everything but in fact the advent of international power power on the global stage has meant that the nation-state can no longer do that there's no domestic issue that does not have an international quotient in fact the governor a government a chancellor of the exchequer and Minister of Finance does not have full sovereignty because he has to do what the markets say and so it is with crime and so it is with security and so it is with environmental cleanliness to save our planet for to save us from poisoning our very living space so all of those things that the nation-state says please vote for me actually it can't deliver so who should be surprised if people are disappointed I spoke about this last time and I concluded but insofar as there is power huge amounts of it's now on the global stage we must now begin to build the systems of global governance we in Europe have made the first step towards that by creating a supranational institution in which we share sovereignty for the benefit of our citizens at home although that is offensive to many in our countries it is the in a global world it is the only way we're that citizens benefit can be adequately delivered but the way I want to talk about in the minutes left to me now is a rather different one I am particularly struck by the massive mismatch between the way that people live their ordinary lives and the way they are governed you see you live your ordinary lives designing your own future you're given freedom never had before by the internet by the systems of new technologies you heard so much about them before you are treated as king in the marketplace it's your choice that is met by those who wish to succeed your every action every purchase is measured by them and the difference between the powerful citizen at home the powerful citizen in their private life and the citizen the citizen governed by this distant institution miles away that doesn't understand our problems speaks ill a language that is alien to us and won't respond to our needs is I think one of the things that smashing up confidence in the system of governance in our country in our countries you see here's the thought but actually the nation-state this great cosmic black hole has now sucked so much power into it that it has itself become dysfunctional it seeks to govern everything it seeks to interfere in everything it has become impossible even for a good government to manage the pirate has now received and my view is that if we want to try and rely on our democracy we have to take that power and hand it back to citizens to determine their own decisions to make that connection between the taxes they pay in the services they enjoy because so long as we launder that taxation through our national capital it becomes their money not ours so I think we now need to have democracy as one thousand two thousand five hundred years old and we've developed it all the way through those years since Pericles in Russian Athens fight at 500 BC and it hasn't changed so now we need to think about whether or not the powers in it residing in the nation-state state needs to be redistributed and I think it does sum up words to those supranational institutions that we need but a lot downwards you see if our states if our London's our Washington's our Berlin's our Paris's dealt with only those things that a state has to deal with if they did less could they not do it better if they dealt with national defense our national foreign policy our national economic policy our national transport infrastructure and all of those things which delivered services to the citizen health education welfare were devolved so they were closer to citizens to make their own decisions it's up to the state to decide what standards should be achieved but maybe how you do Chiva should be achieved should be decided by you so that you can get engaged in that process and if in this area they want to choose one mechanism to have for their health and their education and their welfare and in that area another so be it that's democracy in action we need to begin to re-engage the citizen and the only way we can do that ladies and gentlemen is to change the balance of power to take the power now residing in our national state capitals and put them down closer to community so people get engaged in the decisions that affect their lives and how their taxes are used and only if we do that can we begin to Rhian live on our democracy can we begin to fight back against those who would see the negative rather than the positive in the ways forward there's something very important and Paul do Giada mentioned it earlier on today when he said how do we get ourselves away from the me and back to the we back to the us how do we move away from the concept of selfishness see the two parts of our beings one is the me and the other is us one is my selfishness what I won't but the other is what we hold together in common as a community and we're in danger of losing the second it seems to me that the art of that requires a new political framework but it also requires a new political attitude I look around this hall and what I see is diversity and it would be a tragedy for us all if that were to be lost we have to find the way to get back to the point where we value diversity again where we see immigration as an advantage not a disadvantage and here I think I want to propose for you a motto for our time it comes from a remarkable poem written actually in 1904 by a man called an Indian called rabindranath tagore and I I just believe that if we want to struggle away out of a very dangerous world or something better hear the words we might hold in our mind and to go wrote this in 1904 we are all the more one because we are many for we have left an ample space for love in the gap where we were sundered our unlike nests shines with the radiance of a common creation like mountain peaks in the Morning Sun you just know he has the Himalayas in mind like mountain peaks in the Morning Sun it seems to me that it is not our sameness it's not our divisions it's not our uniqueness that defines that is the greatest revelation of the divine if whatever divine you happen to believe in or indeed the greatest revelation of our humanity it is our differences and if we can begin to value those if we can begin to create a political structure which gives power not to the state but to the empowered citizen if we begin to realize that it is our diversity that is the greatest gift we have and the greatest expression of humanity then whatever confronts us now in terms of dissolution fracture and threat I feel certain it can be cemented thank you very much you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 103,688

Keywords: Belgium, ted talk, tedx talks, ted, tedx, ted talks, ted x, tedx talk, English, Global Issues, International Affairs, Public Policy, TEDxTalks

Id: TABVtTnBQA8

Length: 17min 33sec (1053 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 06 2014