Yes, it was satisfying to watch Ed Milliband tear into Boris Johnson last night.
But Johnson still has an 80-seat majority, though only 20.5% of the total population voted for the Conservatives.
Let's not get carried away by small victories when the whole system is crocked.
Our dysfunctional system reduces us to spectators at the theatre for five long years. It might be entertaining, but that's all it is. We have scarcely any means of affecting the decisions the government makes, even if almost all of us opposed them.
This is because our politics is based on presumed consent. Some of you voted for this government, therefore we presume that the nation as a whole consents to everything we do for the next five years.
There is no democratic basis for this presumption.
There are a host of democratic tools that we COULD use to allow us to consent to or dissent from government proposals during the five years in which we currently have no say. But all of them are denied to us.
This is a parody of democracy.
In my column this week, I'll be writing about how a theatrical democracy like ours could be turned into a real one, and the movements that are required to make it happen.
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