Our Manifesto

The Vision

What We Are Proposing

We are proposing a country in which the fundamental questions of public life - how to allocate a budget, whether to permit a development, how to respond to a crisis - are decided not by politicians or technocrats acting on your behalf, but by you and your neighbours, in deliberative assemblies, with time, with evidence, and with each other.

A Faith Earned, Not Assumed

The political class asks you to trust them. They offer no evidence why you should. We offer a system in which trust is not required. The process is transparent. The reasoning is published. The decision-makers are randomly selected from the population. If the outcome is wrong, it can be revisited. If the process is corrupted, it is visible.

The Assembly

An assembly is a group of people, convened to consider a question of shared concern, given time, evidence, and structured deliberation, and empowered to make a decision.

How Participation Works

At the most local level, an assembly is open. Anyone who lives in the area may attend, speak, and participate. Outreach, accessibility, paid time off, childcare, transport and translation are not optional add-ons; they are the basic conditions that make participation real.

Above the local level, and for specialist work, assemblies are constituted by sortition - stratified random sampling from the population. The sample is balanced for age, gender, geography, education, ethnicity, class and other relevant dimensions. Sortition is not a gimmick. It is the same principle by which we already constitute our juries, scaled up and applied to questions of public policy.

How Deliberation Works

A decision in an assembly is not a snap vote. It is the end of a structured process:

• The question is framed - clearly and neutrally
• The assembly learns - receives balanced expert testimony, written briefings, and the strongest version of opposing arguments
• It hears - listens to those most affected by the question
• It deliberates - in small, facilitated groups, with rotation so that quieter voices are heard
• It drafts - working groups produce concrete proposals
• It decides

Throughout, professional, neutral facilitation ensures that nobody is shouted down, nobody is railroaded, and nobody's voice is privileged. Time is generous - days, weeks or months, whatever the seriousness of the question demands.

The Constitution

A constitution is not a sacred text. It is a machine. Its purpose is to prevent the concentration of power, to protect the vulnerable from the strong, and to establish the rules by which a society can update itself without violence.

The British constitution, such as it exists, has evolved through accident and precedent. It is unwritten, uncodified, and unprotected. It can be rewritten by any government with a parliamentary majority. This is not strength. It is fragility dressed up as tradition.

Participate proposes a written, codified constitution - not to freeze the country in place, but to give it a stable foundation from which to adapt. The constitution would establish:

• The structure of assemblies at every level
• The rights of citizens to participate
• The limits of state power
• The mechanisms by which the constitution itself can be amended

The Digital Commons

Democracy in the twenty-first century requires digital infrastructure that is transparent, accountable, and owned by the public it serves. The Digital Commons would be a public platform for deliberation, decision-making, and civic participation - built with open-source software, auditable algorithms, and robust data protection.

This is not a voting app. It is a space for structured deliberation, information-sharing, and collective decision-making. It would host assembly proceedings, publish evidence and reasoning, enable participation for those who cannot attend in person, and provide a permanent, searchable record of democratic activity.