Abolish Westminster makes an utterly irrefutable case for radical change.
The Westminster political system in Britain is an utterly inappropriate vessel to carry us through the coming storms.
Climate breakdown and ecosystem collapse are here and now, and going to get worse. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have choices to make. We can still accelerate or decelerate these crises.
We can still choose to become a society where a tiny group of hyper wealthy people live in gated communities, relatively protected from the consequences of the breakdown of our planetary systems.
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Epoch
Or we can choose to come together, look after each other as best we can, and figure out together where to go next.
The vast over-centralisation of power in the Westminster system, the lack of democratic accountability and resultant corporate capture, and the cultural legacy of empire mean that our current system is completely incapable of facilitating the conversations we need to have as a society about how we achieve the latter, and is almost completely designed to steer us towards the former.
Human civilisation was made possible by the climatic stability of the holocene.
The relatively moderate weather on Earth over the last 12,000 years granted us a period of calm in which to develop writing, learn some maths and build societies bigger than those immediately around us.
Many human institutions have contributed to ending that epoch. But few hold as much responsibility as the British state.
Interests
As my investigations for The Ecologist and Abolish Westminster have set out over the last year, the British state provides vital services to the global fossil fuel industry.
It does this through intricate trade deals worldwide, its globalised spiderweb of corporate law, its offshore hubs, its network of Naval bases and its embassies full of diplomats shilling for Shell and BP.
And it has done ever since fossil capitalism was invented. Invented, in large part, by the British state and institutions it sheltered.
In my book, I look in detail at how our constitutional system actually operates. I talked to MPs and lawyers and civil servants. I went to Gibraltar and interviewed two of its leading ministers, and I went through every line of the vast House of Lords register of interests.
Abolish Westminster makes an utterly irrefutable case for radical change.
Irrefutable
I’d already pitched a book called Abolish Westminster when I did this, so it’s fair to say I was pretty cynical about the British state before I began. Despite this, a lot of what I found still shocked me.
We inherited our political system from an empire which laid the foundations of the current global system - that’s the system which is destroying the climatic and ecological conditions which allowed our species to form civilisations in the first place.
While the British state has clearly got some retrofitted democratic features, it is still, at its core, what it always was: a system designed to protect and enhance elite power.
But don't just take my word on whether the book can convince you that we really must abolish Westminster.
Caroline Lucas, the Green Party grandee and former MP, said: “Abolish Westminster makes an utterly irrefutable case for radical change. We cannot create a new politics using the old institutions that got us here.
Rotten
Ramsay’s forensic exploration into the rot at the heart of the British state offers a searing critique of what is wrong, and makes practical propositions for how to put it right. This is essential reading for anyone interested in radical democracy and a fairer, greener future.”
Yanis Varoufakis, the economist and writer, said: "Adam Ramsay strips Westminster’s façade to expose a machine engineered for the powerful – Whitehall, courts, Crown, and offshore cash working in concert. His verdict: don’t reform this prison, storm it."
Josie Long, the comedian, said: “This book achieved something nearly impossible. It lays out every single rotten facet of the British state without making the reader feel hopeless. It’s genuinely stuffed with ideas and possibilities for better ways of living and building a better society together.”
We absolutely must create a new politics. My children - all of our children - are depending upon it.
This Author
Adam Ramsay is editor and co-founder of the investigative and campaigning website Abolish Westminster, and a regular contributor to The Ecologist. Abolish Westminster is published by Faber and Faber, and available in all good bookshops, including those at this link.
