Image by Phil Dolby (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Much has been said about Brexit, in particular about the process of leaving the EU; however, when we look at the plan, at the master strategy once we regain our freedom to make our own rules, we encounter more of the same, namely a bunch of future trade agreements and keep calm and carry on, thank you very much. If that is the plan, we would have missed the biggest chance in generations.

We have a tremendous opportunity ahead of us, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to revisit and change the course of History for our country. Brexit is the perfect excuse to be bold and make ambitious and impactful changes that will put the United Kingdom ahead of the rest or at least give it a big boost in the right direction.

One thing that has become crystal clear during the Brexit process is the incompetence, ineptitude or the lack of actual power of the political class. Democracy in the UK and in the rest of the world is becoming outdated. The truly talented and committed politicians of old are long gone. Nowadays, such people have come to realise that the private sector pays much better and they would rather work for a corporation than for their own country. This leaves us with the current bunch of rich megalomaniacs that run our country because they have nothing else to do. The electorate is then left to choose between equally awful choices. However, there is a secret option…

In ‘The Parallax View’ published in 2010, London-based Slovenian superstar philosopher Slavoj Žižek mentions the case of ‘Bartleby, the scrivener’, a short story written by Herman Melville in 1853. In the story, the narrator gets fascinated by the new clerk he hired to copy legal documents, Bartleby, who after an initial stint of diligent work, starts refusing to do any task by always politely replying: ‘I would prefer not to’. Žižek claims that this is ‘subtraction’ at its purest. Bartleby does not simply oppose or reject the tasks, he just subtracts himself from them. More importantly, in a later chat, Žižek mentions this subtraction as the most radical way of delivering democracy for the people: instead of participating in democracy, voting to equally appalling political parties, the only way to truly force the change needed is by subtracting ourselves from democracy, by not participating in this charade.

And this is precisely what Nobel laureate Jose Saramago described in ‘Seeing’ (‘Ensaio sobre a lucidez’), published in 2004. In it, he describes a local election in a fictitious city where spontaneously, the majority of the people vote blank. The government orders to repeat the election and 83% of the votes are now cast blank, causing violent reactions from the government fuelled by the nervousness of the powers that be, who see this peaceful revolution as a severe threat to the establishment.

Some people might think that this is impossible to replicate but there are social movements already trying to make this a reality. In the UK we have one called None Of The Above (NOTA), which tries to align and organise voters to systematically fill their ballots in a consistent manner as a protest. They have a petition to include ‘None of the above’ as a valid option in UK ballots but this has a very low probability of ever happening.

Then we have the case of ‘Escaños en Blanco’ (EB), a Spanish political party which has a single policy in their manifesto: ‘to include a blank option in Spanish ballots that will translate into empty parliamentary seats’. Once this has been achieved, the party would be automatically dissolved as per their constitution. To prove their honesty and selflessness, EB promise that every one of their successfully elected candidates will not take possession of their seat, therefore not receiving any salaries, benefits or public funding. This effectively means that voting EB will guarantee empty parliamentary seats without the need of passing the aforementioned law.

So the path to follow is clear: the most effective way of exerting the much-needed change is not voting for one party or another, but to vote to kick politicians out of their seats. It is a means to and end, a mechanism to keep them in check and to ensure that they implement their manifestos.

This all sounds like a long-term plan, but we will have the chance to implement it sooner than you think. Once Brexit happens, once the UK leaves the EU, there is a high chance of a general election and then, if a political party such as EB gets formed, imagine what would happen if say, 10 million votes go to such political party. I myself do not know who to vote for in the next general election as I am so angry and disillusioned with how poorly all parties have handled Brexit, but I am sure that I am not alone. I would certainly vote for the UK version of EB and would hope to see many empty seats in Parliament.

So just imagine that we succeed and we have a pretty empty House of Commons. What would happen next? Remember in 2010 and 2011 when the Belgian government could not form for 20 months? During each of those 589 days, the Civil Service took care of everything and the country actually performed better without politicians.

I would like to be bold and take the opportunity of Brexit to seek for a better future for my country. The same way that we got rid of the European MPs, the European Commission and all their related costs, I would like for the people in this country to consider to also close the House of Lords and the House of Commons and let our Civil Service to run the country.

Just imagine a new UK free from the drag of political parties and their own self-interest. Imagine a country that can take decisions quickly, based on the needs and interests of the people, and all of this thanks to a peaceful revolution based on the people taking charge and voting for what they truly need, not somebody’s manifesto.

I propose to implement an online mechanism for society to interact and direct the Government, by telling them what is important to society right now. All these inputs would be collected into what is called a ‘product backlog’ in Agile Scrum methodology. UK society would be the product owners, moving up and down the priority of the product backlog, and the Government would be the Development Team, self-assigning pieces of work from the backlog and implementing them iteratively, doing demos to the public and collecting feedback directly from the people.

Imagine how more modern, efficient and effective such a Government would be. Wouldn’t you be proud of being the first country to implement this? Soon other countries would follow suit.

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Carlos Moreno Serrano is one of Escaños En Blanco’s candidates to the European Parliament