Suggested Process Sharing the collective intelligence in the room

2. Suggested ProcessSharing the collective intelligence in the room • Talk – 20 + minutes • Reflect in pairs • Sharing your contributions and questions • Finish – book signing and conversation

3. Themes • The 21st Century challenges • A new Magna Carta: comprehensive constitutional reform • A new kind of transformative, enabling leadership • Using our power

4. The greatest challenges in human history? Five inter-related challenges: • The Environmental Crisis: Climate Chaos, Destruction of the Ecosystem and deadly Pollution. We’re on a trajectory leading to 3.6 to 4.5 warming. • Growing Economic Injustice. A widening gap between very rich and the rest. Fuelled by debt and the way money is created. We’ll need to adapt to much longer lives and the technological revolution: robots and the Internet of Things. • Resolving Conflict without Violence: Shocking inhumanity:over 200,000 Syrians dead, 9mdisplaced, 3m refugees, 12m in urgent need. Mass migration certain to grow. • Transforming Democracy - a great power shift from corporate power to people power. • Leadership - the lack of it. “Ordinary people” need to empower themselves and “Dare to be great” (Polly Higgins). Everything is connected; we need a holistic approach, joined up solutions.

5. Dysfunctional politics affects every aspect of our lives. • We fail to respond to the most urgent challenges facing humanity. • It obstructs our efforts to create a good society. • So-called “majority rule” results in flawed decisions and leavesmost of us unrepresented, frustrated and angry. • UK is a divided nation: prosperity, wellbeing, health and hope; a huge gap between the City/South East and the rest. • The biggest lesson: we need to collaborate and embrace difference. Failure to do so ultimately leads to violence. Britain now has a unique opportunity to create a model democracy for the world

6. Is majority rule appropriate in the 21st Century? • Only 24% of the electorate voted for the current government. • Yet Conservatives gained 51% of seats in the House of Commons. • Most votes were wasted. Of almost 31 million people who voted, 19 million voted for losing candidates. • 63% backed a candidate who didn’t win, leaving many voters unrepresented. • Many of the MPs who won failed to get the support of most voters. Of 650 winning candidates, 322 (49%) got less than 50% of the vote in their constituency. • Women and BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) are still under-represented.

7. People want a new kind of politics • Parties need to respond to what the public (particularly younger, progressive people and the “left behind”) are telling them. Brexit was a protest. • Many people dislike an adversarial, often abusive, approach. • They want collaboration. They want rigorous, responsible solutions. • Parties seen as short-sighted, focussed on power; putting party-interest before national interest. • Both major parties are riven by conflict; not effectively responding to or uniting their diverse membership. Growing protest movements all over Europe and America

8. A new Magna Carta A written constitution and new social settlement

9. Proportional Representation The very least we need is Proportional Representation. • Under PR the results in the 2015 election would have been (actual in brackets): Conservatives 244 (331) seats, Labour 201 (232), UKIP 83 (1), Lib Dem 52 (8), SNP 31(56), Green 25(1), minor parties 14. • Conservatives would still be the largest, but 37% of votes should never equal 51% of seats in a real democracy. • Under STV and multi-member constituencies, parties have an incentive to present a balanced team of candidates including separate lists for women and men. • It’s a condemnation of the political class that they have resisted reform for so long, putting party interests before those of the nation. Moves are under way to create a progressive alliance to bring about PR before the next election – see my latest blog post. “The Alternative”.

10. A new 21st Century Social ContractCollaborative Democracy • A Citizen-led Constitutional Convention – not politics behind closed doors. • A written Constitution and Bill of Rights. • Parliament the principal decision-making body of Government. • First Minister as head of Government elected by Parliament as a whole. • Proportional representation for national, regional and local government. • Democratise parties. • 50:50 representation for women – separate lists. • Devolution of power from Westminster to regions and local government – the principle of subsidiarity. • An elected reviewing chamber. • A cap on individual funding and complete disclosure. • End the so-called “revolving door”. • Votes from age 16.

11. A new kind of leadership is needed in the 21st Century • Transformative, enabling leadership that embraces the full diversity of humanity with the focus on a vision for a better world • An enabling, not nanny, state. Localised solutions. • Servant leadership. From Hero to Host. Not Alpha Males. • The principle of involving all stakeholders in bringing about change. Consensus design. • There are always crusading and restraining forces; both need to be heard, listened to; opposites make the whole. • The lesson of the past thirty years is clear: imposed change does not work; it oppresses dedicated people on the ground.This has happened over and over again.

12. From Hero to Host • In the age of complexity, our concept of leadership needs to move “From Hero to Host” - a leadership that enables people to empower themselves, create their vision and releases the power of love. • Love is a powerful force: love of one’s work, love of colleagues, love of diversity. • In place of greed, we need to embed servant leadership throughout society. Excessive consumption is driving us to extinction. We need to focus on the wellbeing of all, including all life. • Servant Leadership Margaret Wheatley describes this in her articleFrom Hero to Hosthttp://margaretwheatley.com/library/articles/leadership-in-age-of-complexity/. Another resource is Robert Greenleaf Servant Leadership http://www.greenleaf.org.uk/about.php .

13. Get the whole system into the room • An essential principle for creating change; enables people to build consensus, create solutions that work and meet everyone’s needs. • Leaders of political parties and their members also need to value difference and recognise the importance of “getting the whole system into the room”. • Future Searchhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Future-Search-Getting-System-Commitment/dp/1605094285is an excellent approach for building consensus on the best way forward.

14. Consensus Design Another approach, Christopher Day’s Consensus Designhttp://www.christopherday.eu/consensus-design. enables people to reach consensus. I come “into the room” with one view of what needs to be done and by listening with respect, instead of trying to win the argument, come to a different and far better solution. Many of these approaches are described my book Making a Difference: Strategies and Tools for Transforming Your Organisation https://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Difference-Strategies-Transforming-Ornisation/dp/1852523727

15. So what can you do? • Lobby all parties, demand their commitment to comprehensive constitutional reform in the next Parliament. • Support: Compass- together for a good society, Electoral Reform Society, Unlock Democracy, The Citizens’ Assembly Project, Assemblies for Democracy, Make Votes Matter, Counting Women In, 50:50 Parliament and Voice4 Change. • Subscribe to: New Economics Foundation, Positive Money, Global Justice Now, Polly Higgins’s campaign for the UN Ecocide Law - the 5th Crime against Peace, Jubilee Debt Campaign and James Robertson’s inspiring Newsletter http://jamesrobertson.com/newsletter.html Robert Greenleaf Servant Leadership http://www.greenleaf.org.uk/about.php. • Use 38 Degrees, Change.org and Avaaz to petition and lobby. • Visit my blog https://brucenixonblog.wordpress.com/andThe 21st Century Revolution – A Call to Greatness http://www.brucenixon.com/21stCent uryRevolution.html .

16. Review • Reflect in pairs giving each other attention in turn: • What impacted me most • My vision of a better society and world • What I’ll do now • Sharing: a conversation or dialogue • Any of the above • Other contributions or questions • Finish • Book signing and time to talk

17. Final Word “The greatest problem of our age is disempowerment – part of a political project to shift ordinary people out of power and out of politics, to leave them content to judge their identity by the brand of smart phone they rent. Bruce Nixon lays out the fullest dimension of this disempowerment and its fatal consequences. But he also outlines a way out; a way for all of us to become real citizens in a real democracy. The call to greatness not only refers to our own personal liberation from the shackles of disempowerment, but to the scale of the collective endeavour it will allow us to embark on - saving our species. It doesn’t get much bigger.” Nick Dearden, Director, Global Justice Now.