Hello, I'm Catherine Carr, the producer of Talking Politics. This extra episode is another

recent talk by David. It's on the subject of how to fix British democracy and he gave

it to the annual general meeting of the electoral reform society a few weeks ago. Like all

big meetings at the moment, it had to be a virtual one. The question he considered was

what can we change about our democracy and more to the point how?

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via the URL lrb.me slash talk. That's lrb.me slash talk. Talking Politics in partnership

with the London reviewer books. Like many people, I think I assume that the how to question

my instinct is that it must be a what question. That is, we're being asked what the fix is,

what electoral reform, what constitutional reform, what institutional change, what adjustment

to the rules of the game would make it work better. We would rectify, I think we will recognize

the many, the manifold, unfairnesses, injustices, inefficiencies in British democracy, particularly

at the moment as it grinds its way through a whole series of crises. And yet, actually,

I think that the how question is the real one, not the what question, for the simple reason,

that if we knew the answer, if we could agree among ourselves and maybe we could what to

do, if we came up with the ideal solution, the reform that we thought would obviously rectify

the injustices and inefficiencies, we still wouldn't answer the really difficult question,

which is how would it be adopted, how would we get a system that is not working to reform

...