Is the Social Contract broken? The fight for the soul of democracy
In association with:
‘We’ve had enough’… ‘The government’s incompetence makes my blood boil’… ‘If the police won’t protect us, we’ll do it ourselves’… ‘I’m tearing my hair out in frustration’… ‘The status quo cannot hold’… ‘Why does nothing work in this country?’ All these phrases are familiar laments describing a crisis at the heart of society – a collapse of trust in the British state.
Meanwhile, the extraordinary symbolic referendum in an Oxford village, in which 92 per cent of Piddington’s 358 citizens voted to become independent from the United Kingdom, seems a telling sign of growing alienation from the British state. Plans to house 1,250 young male asylum seekers in nearby Bicester garrison elicited a common response: state action is exposing residents to danger and putting their safety, security and freedoms under threat.
The sentiment that state policies are indifferent to public safety is not confined to leafy villages. It is felt in towns and cities across the country, and not only over asylum policy or the apparent inability to control the nation’s borders. There also seems an inability to control welfare spending or crime. Worries run from the early-release scheme and politicised two-tier policing to maternity-care scandals and decades of grooming-gang cover-ups. Law-abiding citizens feel they are becoming the unfair victims of the simultaneous collapse of state bodies, whether house-building and health services or defence and energy policy.
A growing number of people believe the foundational bargain between state and citizens is failing. Research for the UK Extremism and Democratic Resilience Centre’s report Britain Under Strain shows that 61 per cent think the social contract – the stabilising web of reciprocal obligations that holds society together – is broken. Only 23 per cent think it still works. Official attempts to present this mistrust as cynical populist exploitation of economic grievance among the less well-off miss the point: the loss of confidence transcends economic circumstances and includes the ‘very financially comfortable’.
What follows when a growing share of the public believes the state is in breach of contract? That bargain rests on mutual consent. A democratic state depends on a reciprocal relationship in which the public confers legitimacy, gives permission to govern. We accept laws, taxes and civic obligations in exchange for security, functioning institutions, public services and the protection of rights. If reciprocity breaks down, consent can be withdrawn. Public commitment to state-imposed rules, procedures and even the rule of law itself – now seen as having betrayed its impartiality – appears to be collapsing.
There’s the emergence of new forms vigilantism. It is not only the more sinister, pseudo-paramilitary masked men trying to repel small-boat landings. If the police will not deal with shoplifters, the public surmise they must take the law into their own hands. ‘Have-a-go heroes’ who physically stop mass pilfering are lauded.
Elsewhere, Reform UK’s Essex County Council has launched Operation Vanguard: private security patrols in Braintree, Colchester and Chelmsford, said to be in response to concerns – especially from women and girls – about gatherings of male asylum seekers, alleged intimidation and anti-social behaviour. Are such DIY self-protection initiatives imaginative forms of social solidarity and an assertion of agency in a vacuum left by state incompetence? Or do they represent a dangerous counsel of despair that creates fertile ground for malign actors?
Negative, doom-filled feelings of despair and distrust are not healthy for democracy. Can Andy Burnham’s message of hope counter the dark mood? After years of stonewalling and gaslighting, the Public Office (Accountability) Bill – the ‘Hillsborough Law’ – appears to show politicians are now listening. A legally mandated duty of candour compelling officials to tell the truth about state wrongdoing seems positive. Or is it merely more technocratic regulation substituting for the harder work of rewiring the state and earning trust?
The prime minister’s UN speech, announcing a National Centre for Information Defence, may have been presented as a way of protecting democracy, yet it implied that public concerns arise from an ‘industrial-scale’ amplification of the ‘narrative of decline’ by hostile states, chiefly Russia. However, if the state presumes the public mood of unrest is artificially whipped up by external actors, does that let domestic politicians off the hook and breed complacency about their own culpability? If the solution is information management, and legitimate criticisms are recast as security threats, merely the parroting of foreign disinformation, does that not reveal a profound top-down mistrust of the demos – the very people on whom democracy depends for renewal?
If we are to avoid descending into anarchy, will hectoring critics to dial down their fury really allow the state to rebuild trust? Who should we trust to renew hope in democratic renewal – or is this the real DIY task that we need to take on as citizens?
