Elite

While I'm happy to support the Petition to retain the ban on Capital Punishment, this is a good example of an issue not particularly suited to mass support. I might have a moral aversion to state termination, but with no direct experience with the type of people likely to be executed, their victims or their executioners, I'm just an onlooker. My current outlook could - in theory - be altered by experience. Similarly, the people that wanted "Jeremy Clarkson for Prime Minister” may not have actually met him, or the many thousands that detest him.

The e-petitions site briefly appears to be a welcome introduction to direct democracy:

e-petitions is an easy way for you to influence government policy in the UK. You can create an e-petition about anything that the government is responsible for and if it gets at least 100,000 signatures, it will be eligible for debate in the House of Commons.

Anything? The petitions on view quickly descends into duplication and nonsense. Similar sounding propositions sit next to each other splitting attention. Reasons for rejection are carefully logged, but many of the allowed petitions have little concrete meaning. 

The random nature of the entries (and the proud lack of curation) suggests that it was designed as a participation sport. In short, people want to see their suggestions on a list – to see the process work for them.

A quick look at wikipedia tells you that a set of informed articles does not appear purely because people want to see their words reflected back at them. Mass online participation does not lead to coherent action unless the intention is already there. (According to http://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/2011/09/fixmytransport-yes-please, the Scottish system is tighter)

Direct democracy is about choosing between a set of balanced propositions. Creating the right propositions requires experience not numbers. There is no hypocrisy here - democracy isn't some sort of riposte to conspiracy theorists; not every wild flight of fancy can or should be framed into a valid law. Yes, you need an elite to weigh common opinion.

Parliamentary democracy was a successful implementation of this elite; it has only failed recently because the 600 or so MPs no longer appear to have any role in government decisions. And if they do, their opinions must be filtered through party politics.

 It is quite possible that the immaturity of the e-petition idea is a stick with which to beat and destroy it (again). But it is not a step in any useful direction .

The threshold of 100,000 signatures before a Backbench Business Committee gets to decide whether it should be debated assumes that whimsy cannot happen en masse. But various Twitter and Facebook campaigns have regularly proved this incorrect.

Indeed a web based petition seems to represent a response to events, not a crucible for good law. To quote from an article by Natasha Engel MP:

The petition [to axe looters' benefits] was a reflection of the anger and frustration that people felt after the riots. But we didn't need an arbitrary threshold of 100,000 signatures to tell us that law-abiding people were furious.

None of this diminishes the need for direct democracy to intercede in our presidential government. But this approach isn't progressive.