Imagine for a second that under pressure from a coalition led by Compassion in Politics Keir Starmer’s Government suddenly, and surprisingly, backed a bill to ban lying and deception by politicians. 

Imagine that this decision followed the lead of the Welsh Government, who themselves had already committed to introduce legislation to prevent deliberate factual deception by politicians and candidates. Breaches would lead to disqualification from, or barring from standing for, elected office.

This measure had widespread public support – over 200,000 people had signed a petition calling for its introduction at Westminster and polling by Opinium shows that 72% of the public support it.  

From then on something just seemed to click as the sentiment of our political lives switched from deceit to truth.  All of a sudden, the best in our politicians could find its voice, not to win by destroying your opponent but by demonstrating a vision of realistic hope. People could still debate and disagree strongly but not in ways that polarised and shrunk the space to listen, learn, adapt and grow. 

The law to stop politicians lying had a knock on effect on the media, both old and new.  From then on, with the space to breathe, we started to enjoy a public debate in which dialogue was seen and felt to be the means by which society could negotiate a better future rather than have someone else’s future imposed on us.

As the public’s muscles of debate began to strengthen, the push for wider democratic voice became unstoppable.  The long bubbling and brewing campaign for proportional representation, which had seen the vast majority of Labour Party members and trade unions back reform, finally swept away the control freaks and bureaucrats at the top of the party. 

As soon as everyone’s vote counted equally the distorting impact of a few media moguls, mega rich party donors and a few swing voters in a few swing seats was lost for good.  

Gone with it went the centralising control of Number Ten and the Treasury, as power and money started to flow down not just to regions and councils but to communities.  Instead of just an endless life on the consumer treadmill, ironically with less and less money to actually buy stuff, people saw themselves and each other as active citizens, not just picking and choosing what they wore but how their streets and communities operated. And the thirst for collective voice couldn’t just be contained in the public realm but soon seeped into companies and enterprises, who reaped the rewards of collaboration and innovation. 

On this new level political playing field, ideas like a universal basic income and a four-day week soon took hold. Investment to retrofit every house in the country to the highest possible insulation standards created hundreds of thousands of good well-paid jobs, dramatically lowered energy bills and took the country a huge way towards a net zero future. More time and more security fed the appetite for further reforms and a nation that was finding his voice and its way towards a good society – one which by definition, as the late Zygmunt Bauman wrote “knows it is never good enough”. 

In a week that sees the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America for the second time, we need to know something different and better is possible.

If we want to stop the lurch to the populist right here, then we must provide the levels of security and freedom people crave. 

The above scenario may appear to be a fantasy but it is far from impossible. The Welsh parliament has already committed to passing a bill banning politicians from lying and polling shows the public back it.  The Labour Party and the trade unions have been converted to proportional representation and therefore the plural politics that goes with it.  Companies around the world are finding that a four-day week leads to greater productivity and happier workers.

Universal income is being trialled, and the results show the people don’t do less but so much more in terms of volunteering, training, education and care. 

Small strategic steps can unlock big and bold change. What we need is a political class who see that their job isn’t to deliver to us but to allow the conditions for us liberate ourselves and change the world together.  A political class whose abiding motto is ‘do today so that tomorrow you can do what you can’t do today’. 

This is politics not done to people but by them. This is politics as pragmatic in the best sense of the word, sure about the direction it is heading but open to the route and always convinced that building the power of citizens and democracy is the only way to both navigate that route and overcome the obstacles and the people that don’t want us to be free and secure.  

Any country can become a beacon to the world, so why not ours? It just takes the first step. As Raymond William, the Welsh cultural theorist wrote so beautifully “the test of a true radical is to make hope possible, not despair convincing”.

This article first appeared in the Byline Times on Wednesday the 22nd of January 2025.