Third, in spite of impressive welfare state reforms the system that emerged proved incapable of affording the population that most basic of democratic protections: protection against poverty. Poverty rates in Britain, both among the elderly and among children, have remained high. It was thought that the post-1945 welfare reforms would finally overcome poverty. When that anticipation failed, British democracy, instead of reforming again, settled down to an embarrassing acceptance of persistent poverty among affluence. It is a matter of record that poverty rates in Britain were exceptionally high by European comparison all through the second half of the twentieth century. It is the proud boast of the present government that it is on the path to abolishing poverty, at least among children, but that boast is premature. It is trying to do so with the help of carefully engineered means-tested benefits>13>. We have enough knowledge from social policy theory to say that this strategy can reduce poverty, which it is indeed doing, but that it cannot eradicate it, that it is arbitrary in its effects because it is never target efficient — as was put dramatically on display by the Parliamentary Ombudsman in the scandal of out-of-control overpayments and underpayments of tax credits in Britain in 2004-5 — and that it comes at the price of indignities and harassments reminiscent of the old poor-law regime. In the best European welfare states poverty has been eradicated — so we know it can be done. But British democracy remains on the defensive in poor relief because it has been unable to mobilise the resolve and resources to put itself on the offensive.
These are examples of the democratic deficit in British governance: its potential is not realised in delivery. British democracy should do better but there is not enough force in the system to carry through to the difficult matter of delivering protections in all relevant forms to all citizens.
The democratic deficit is understood and recognised in the population. Voting participation is low and falling, in particular in local elections. Membership in political parties is in free fall. Confidence in the democratic institutions is low and falling, as is documented in repeated British and comparative value surveys. So low is now confidence in democracy that in spite of local democracy having been all but killed off — and in spite of citizens being far more interested in local than in national issues — there appears to be little or no demand or appetite in the population for this crucial building block in the democratic architecture to be restored.
