The Jury

"A jury is the lamp that shows that freedom lives" - Lord Devlin

During the last eight centuries since Magna Carta (read extracts) we have developed and kept faith in the jury system. This is based on the view that regular people are able to make decisions about complex problems and that the integrity and lack of vested interests of those involved is more important than the experience of members of an establishment.

In a jury system lay people are selected to come to a decision on behalf of the community, choosing between two competing arguments. People in juries are trusted to make decisions which can have profound impacts on people's lives. There is no reason why similar people cannot choose between political alternatives.

The philosophy of the 'wisdom of crowds' demonstrates that a group of independent people can usually make a sensible decision through combining their independent assessments. In contrast, people in a like minded group tend to amplify extremes.

The concept of proper representation of the community is at the core of the proposals by the Jury Team which links this basic concept of fairness with a practical way of achieving significant change through the established UK constitution. In the same way that people can form effective juries, they can be elected to Parliament as a much more diverse and yet more local group than is the current case with career MPs. They can also be trusted to decide major issues through referendums.

The Jury Team therefore proposes that, in the same way as a jury, people from a wide range of backgrounds should be encouraged to become MPs and on major issues it should be the people and not the politicians who decide. Gilbert and Sullivan described this in their 1875 opera Trial by Jury:

Now, Jurymen, hear my advice--
All kinds of vulgar prejudice
I pray you set aside:
With stern, judicial frame of mind
From bias free of every kind,
This trial must be tried.

The next three months are the time for real change.

If you believe in making the UK a better place to live then come and help us take back our politics from those who now dominate it and do so well from it.