A pluralist project with good intentions

Thank you for the apt title you gave my letter of 11 October. “Only system change can heal our society” precisely captured my apolitical conclusion that our legacy governing system and obscure constitutional conventions no longer aligned with society’s DNA and civic culture. No “guardians” were trying to spot systemic flaws and rectify longstanding deficiencies, because our democracy was assumed to be self-correcting.

Yet, despite your title, my letter’s critical concepts of system change, constitutional specification, brilliant teams and paradigm shifts either baffled or were misjudged by Philip Wood and John Airs (Letters, 12 October). Even the motives behind my multi-disciplinary, system-designing, pluralist project team that trailblazing governance demands were questioned. Before it even existed, the team was deemed elitist and technocratic, rather than crucial and potentially effective. Yet all pioneers are de facto era leaders. Many self-select; others grow, envision and invent the future.

Below are two links that describe more of the thinking and analysis behind my reform proposals. The first shows our legacy system. New evolution-protecting positive separations of powers, using competing teams, are described here. A multi-competitive eco-systemic approach to pluralism is required, if teams are not to display the well-known flaws of inferior agencies without inbuilt selection, churn, evolution, feedback, open boundaries, challenge and concept testing.

A high-calibre multi-talented unit – I call it the Metabrain – should be founded to start the UK constitutional reform process by creating new design specifications to rectify governing system flaws.

I hope readers can now appreciate that only high-level paradigms, which advance new eco-systemic organising principles and adaptations of our governance leadership, are likely to improve our democracy and thus heal society’s open wounds and safeguard its culture.
Norman Strauss
Adviser to Margaret Thatcher, 1976-82; co-author of Stepping Stones (1977) with John Hoskyns

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