From 'Andy For Us' To 'Andy By Us': Deliberative Democracy Supporters Raise Their Hopes

Illustration by Tracy Worrall

Andy Burnham’s first major policy speech after winning the Makerfield by-election was a full-throated battle cry for devolution. “Imagine what it would feel like to live in a country wired to work for local people instead of against them,” he asked of his audience.

The incoming prime minister well knows, however, that it will take more than a few more powers for metro mayors to restore trust in politics, which is at an all-time low. Some around him believe that, to make a reality of his dream of a “country wired to work for local people”, something altogether more radical will be needed.

Advocates of so-called ‘deliberative democracy’ hope Burnham may adopt at least some of their agenda.

“Deliberative democracy is a way of bringing people into the policy decisions that are being made that affect their lives,” explains Miriam Levin, director of participatory programmes at Demos.

Unlike a run-of-the-mill consultation, the process of deliberative democracy runs “all the way through to the end point, and the recommendations are acted on”, Levin adds. “Because that’s the thing that rebuilds trust between citizens and state, which is on the floor right now.”

Such an approach aims to rebuild trust between people and the state, with politicians and policymakers working with the public to tackle big policy areas, ensuring that their voices feed directly into the finished product. Its advocates see the current form of policymaking as too limited and partisan, calling for approaches such as citizens’ assemblies, citizens’ juries and citizens’ panels.

The idea of deliberative democracy and its various forms has been around for a long time, but interest in the process and what it can do for policymaking has been growing among MPs in recent years.

Some in the Burnham team are open to the idea, and the approach has already been embraced in some areas of Greater Manchester.

In November last year, Burnham was present at the launch of the Participation Playbook, a resource created by the Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership, “bringing together tools and examples of participatory methods from citizens’ assemblies and participatory budgeting to co-production and digital democracy”.

The document states that for too long, “decisions have been made about people, not with them” and a new approach in Greater Manchester will see a world in which “decisions are made by the people, for the people – where community power and participatory democracy thrive”.

Burnham ally Neal Lawson believes the use of deliberative democracy could be something that Burnham’s team is open to exploring. Reflecting on Burnham’s policy priorities, he points to a change in the voting system to proportional representation, highlighting that a citizens’ assembly-style approach could fit well within a national commission.

Wigan MP and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy was a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Deliberative Democracy. She is a long-time key Burnham ally and was the first Cabinet minister to join Burnham in Makerfield on the campaign trail.

“There are people around him, like Josh Simons, who are quite pro-citizens’ assemblies as I understand it,” Lawson adds, referring to the former minister who stood down as an MP in May to pave the way for Burnham’s route back to Westminster. Simons is expected to play a key role in the new Makerfield MP’s government.

Simons told The House in 2024 – when he was director of Labour Together, before entering Parliament – that he favoured citizens’ assemblies for subjects concerning public health or other behaviour where the policy solution requires people to comply, such as a smoking ban.

“It can be a political way of making a decision that requires the consent of a certain group of people for the policy to actually work. The political opportunities that it opens up for the politicians are much more important than any enduring legitimacy it could get for that policy,” he said.

Simons’ track record shows an affinity for deliberative democracy when it comes to tricky policy areas. As a minister, he oversaw the government’s digital ID policy. First announced by Keir Starmer in September last year, the initiative prompted an immense backlash. Labour figures, including those in government, widely thought the initial bid to communicate the policy – rushed, and framed in terms of migration control rather than the fundamentals of a modern state – was flawed.

PoliticsHome revealed in December that ministers would tour the country in early 2026 to discuss the plan with voters, with the government later revealing shortly after Simons’ departure that 100 people would be randomly selected from across Britain to contribute to the government’s consultation on digital ID.

Ian Murray, the minister now responsible for the policy – and a Burnham ally – is positive about the impact of the approach.

Murray would like to see more uses of deliberative democracy such as the citizens’ assembly in government policymaking. Speaking to The House, he says that, in the past, the country has tended to have referenda for some of the biggest issues that people are most concerned about “with a binary choice on very complicated questions”.

The use of the citizens’ assembly in feeding into the digital ID policy allowed the government to work in partnership with the public, Murray said, and was a way to tackle the “anxiety and misinformation” that existed around the policy.

He adds that while those involved may still have disagreed at the end of the process, they “at least understood it and were able to feed back their anxieties to develop the policy”.

Lawson, who campaigned for a citizens’ assembly for Brexit, believes that a more collaborative approach could be used for immigration and welfare when it comes to finding “the balance between rights and responsibilities”.

“If his slogan for the by-election was ‘Andy for us’, his slogan for government should be ‘Andy by us’,” Lawson adds.

The former strategy adviser to Tony Blair believes that deliberative democracy, combined with proportional representation, devolving power down to the lowest possible levels and reinventing the House of Lords could take the heat out of politics and bring people back together.

A Burnham spokesperson says he “has been clear that Westminster politics is broken and that Britain needs a fundamental shift of power out of the centre and into the hands of the people and places best able to use it”.

If we are going to crack that unity issue and that cohesiveness, but also take away the polarisation of politics, we’ve got to go much more round a deliberative approach

They add that Burnham’s approach is “about giving people and communities greater agency over the decisions that affect their lives”, which would mean “place-based collaboration, a new operating principle for government, with power flowing to every region and nation of the UK, decisions taken closer to the people they affect, and a politics that is less about point scoring and more about problem solving”.

MPs across all parties are also warming to the approach. In early 2026, the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee travelled to Leicester, Renfrewshire and North Tyneside, bringing together locals to discuss and debate what is currently one of the most contentious and polarising topics in the UK: immigration. The citizens’ assembly-style events brought together 100 people from across the three locations in March and May to feed into the committee’s recommendations to the government on immigration.

Karen Bradley, Conservative MP and chair of the committee, tells The House that the motivation behind the process was to make a series of recommendations to government that took the public’s views on board. “The problem is that it’s such a contested area that getting to the nub of what people actually think is really tough, and it’s also so easy to merge and to confuse the different issues,” Bradley explains.

The idea of a citizens’ assembly was born. Bradley says it presented the opportunity to bring together a group of people “without shouting, without social media and the algorithms” to hear: “What do people think is important? What are they concerned about?” For Bradley, the approach would mean that the committee would hear from a truly representative portion of the public, not just those who are likely to engage in policymaking in the first place.

Labour MP Jo White, who sits on the Home Affairs Select Committee, is a recent convert to the use of deliberative democracy. White would like to see a Burnham government use this approach in policymaking but is wary of how the media “deals with it” as she believes some media outlets could “create cynicism” around it, meaning “people don’t participate”.

While it will need to be sold to the public, White is certain of its benefits: “[Burnham’s] biggest demand is to stop the boats and deal with illegal immigration, and yet his policies and his values have been socially liberal.” It will be important for him, she says, to bring those issues together and create “consensus within the country and he’s making the right choices for the whole country”.

She adds: “How he manages that may well be through bringing more people into that arena and giving people the opportunity to think through the ideas.”

Back in SW1, the impact on Westminster and party relations could also be positively impacted by a more deliberative approach. Rachael Maskell, who sat as a vice-chair on the past APPG for Deliberative Democracy alongside Nandy, thinks such an approach is essential: “If we are going to crack that unity issue and that cohesiveness, but also take away the polarisation of politics, we’ve got to go much more round a deliberative approach.”

She also points to party unity as well as country unity, claiming that in the two years under a Labour government, policy “hasn’t derived from that space of cohesive understanding and trying to get to what would be the right solution. People with polarised views, even within the party, have not been brought into that space of understanding”. Without that space being created, Maskell says one part of the party is segregated, alongside their constituents.

While this approach will be essential to building consensus when it comes to febrile and polarising topics at a national level, councils have also begun to get involved. Demos is currently trialling a project to build and test a new model for participatory local democracy. Under the approach, “thousands of people will have the opportunity to shape local government policy on an issue affecting their area”.

The House joined one such session on a Saturday over Zoom where residents in South Staffordshire were discussing the approach to an updated local planning strategy – one of many sessions they had attended. Over five hours, a group of local residents discussed the pros and cons of different approaches, mediated by the Demos team and with council staff on hand to answer queries. Such a mediated approach was starkly different from the often febrile and inflamed tensions that can exist online, especially when it comes to local planning.

Speaking at the end of the session, The House heard from residents who said the process had “opened my eyes and made me realise things about South Staffordshire and my whole community”, while another said it had been nice to be in a safe environment and voice opinions.

While such an approach across the board may be attractive, it is time-consuming. If he enters No 10 later this month, Burnham will inherit a country split at the seams and juggling the pressure of a looming general election in 2029. What he chooses to prioritise – and how he chooses to do it – is still up for debate. 

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