MPs pushing for a citizens’ assembly, to try to forge a Brexit consensus, are exploring ways to put the idea to parliament in an amendment next week.
The chief proponents of the idea, the Labour MPs Stella Creasy and Lisa Nandy, have been campaigning for an assembly similar to those held in Ireland and Canada to tackle thorny political topics such as abortion legislation.
The plan would involve 500 members of the public, facilitated by experts, and attempt to reach a consensus for the path ahead. Group members are selected at random but representative of the demographics of the UK.
Writing for the Guardian in a joint appeal, Nandy and Creasy said the Brexit debate had become “unspeakably awful” and there seemed no other way to find consensus in the House of Commons.
“We are nearly three years on from the referendum, and yet we are still arguing about the ‘will of the people’. Opinion polls and focus groups are conflicted. As has been made abundantly clear, referendums alone, like elections, are blunt instruments that remove complexity in pursuit of simple propositions,” they wrote.
The MPs said that citizens’ assemblies could “disrupt the bad habits that have come to characterise Brexit – kicking issues into the long grass, placing party interests over the national interest, and assuming the public are unable to cope with hard choices”.
Nandy and Creasy said citizens’ assemblies could be completed in seven weeks, faster than a second referendum and had many successful predecessors, including in Iceland following the banking crisis, and in Canada and Australia on issues such as nuclear waste and constitutional reform.
Nandy, during the debate in the Commons ahead of the vote on Tuesday, used her speech to push the benefits of an assembly and said it would go some way to healing MPs’ relationships with the public.
“I have not seen this level of anger directed towards MPs since I was first elected nearly 10 years ago during the expenses scandal,” Nandy said. “We are playing with fire, we are breaking our democracy, but there is the hope. The public are better than we are.”
A small-scale citizens’ assembly on Brexit was held in the aftermath of the referendum by the constitution unit at University College London, and concluded that the negotiations should seek close trading ties with the EU27 through a customs union but not full single-market membership.
If a bespoke deal like this were not available participants said they would prefer full single-market and customs union membership over leaving without a deal.
