Hello everyone and thank you so much for coming and to everyone dialing in at home to the

New Statesman debate. Now a staple of the Cambridge Literary Festival calendar whose themes seem

to be getting more and more pressing, or perhaps depressing each year. I'm Anouche

Shekelian, Britain editor of the New Statesman, and I'll be chairing today's debate. Today our

teams will be debating the particularly timely motion. This house believes that we get the leaders

we deserve. In recent years we've witnessed the unlawful propagation of parliament. The government

insisting it would only be breaking international law in a specific and limited way. Try that one

at the local police station. Public health and education debacles, rouse over immigration,

scandals of cronism, wasteful spending and sleaze. And now I can add illegal parties to that list

as well. A list that may get longer as we sit here in the chamber today. But can such failures

be traced back to the way our democracy works? An unwritten constitution, a political system that

rewards ambition over integrity, leaves politicians unchecked, and also voters and the media and others

take the blame for not holding the powerful to account. Is the British electorate the helpless

victim of a breed of brazen post-truth politicians? Or do we simply get the leaders we deserve?

Now putting forward the case for the proposition, I'm delighted to be joined by Steven Bush,

political commentator and associate editor at the Financial Times and former political editor

of the New Statesman. David Runseman, professor of politics at Cambridge University and the author

of several books including How Democracy Ends and Hannah White, deputy director of the institute

for government who's worked in the cabinet office and the House of Commons and whose new book is

called Held in Content, What's Wrong with the House of Commons. And making the case for the opposition,

we have Billy Bragg, the singer-songwriter and activist whose most recent book is The Three Dimensions

of Freedom, Dr. Rachel Clark, an NHS palliative care doctor and best-selling author whose books

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