You have to admire the guy!

For sheer nerve (chutzpah if you like), in a procession of potential Prime Ministers all trying to square a seemingly impossible circle, he stands out as someone different trying his best to offer something distinctive.

His latest wheeze (as of Wednesday afternoon) is to criss-cross the country armed with a smartphone and a selfie-stick to talk to people and listen to their views. He is on Twitter filmed listening to a range of popular views and talking about ideas such as Citizens Assemblies as a means to break the political logjam.

He will certainly receive a lot of abuse. A ‘Citizens’ Assembly’ on Brexit is an idea so stupid only a clever person could dream it up says Madelene Grant of the Daily Telegraph. Channel 4 news last night also made him look a little silly contradicting himself about whether or not a Citizens Assembly (…or did he mean a Jury? They’re different) would or would not be given freedom to consider the ‘REMAIN’ option.

But in one sense, that is not the point. He fuels a debate we are all going to have at some point as to the relative roles of representative, deliberative or direct democracy models. For many observing the current political impasse, they see the representative institution – Parliament thrown into chaos because we sought an answer to a binary decision through the direct democracy device of a Referendum. Surely, they say, a deliberative mechanism such as a Citizens Assembly can be no worse.

We should therefore encourage discussion and debate about these tools. My view as expressed last December was that some issues are so polarised that whatever answer emerged would be unacceptable and the process (Who took part? … Who chose them? … What were they told? … How could they vote?) Questioned repeatedly.

Yet, there are few ways out of our current dilemmas and full-marks therefore for any leading politician willing to countenance more participative methods of dealing with difficult issues. Let’s watch where this takes him ….