02 - The solution

While the nation state as a vehicle has brought us forward the last couple of hundred years and that and federalisation has prevented armed conflict well, it is starting to show its limitations.

"Democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the others that have been tried"

-- Churchill

This is the point that I am going to argue for a different way of doing things. I am not saying we need to change democracy - we still need it as a way of governing. I am going to argue for the end of the nation state as we currently know it. Or inside a nation like the US this can be achieved at the state level.

Mobility within structures like the EU and US is a huge benefit. Inside the blocs every citizen has the right to pick themselves up and travel to another country/state and settle, to live and work. This level of freedom to move is exactly the thing needed to make this change possible.

It is this freedom to move that makes the next change possible. In fact, it is perfectly possible to make this change without the consent of the governments involved. We only need the people of the blocs themselves to organise and make this happen.

Rather than have a nation state where there is a mix of people across the political spectrum who jostle for power and drag the country down a meandering path around the centre, we should switch how this works. Each country should lay out its social and economic position and give people the freedom to move to the state that most matches their values.

One country declares that LGBT+ people are welcome and enshrine heavy legal protections. Another can simply ban anything they consider sexual 'deviancy'. Then the people vote with their feet and go live in the state they like the sound of the most. Once a country is populated with like-minded people then the democratic process gets easier to steer it in the direction that is desirable for the population. No more internal conflict in politics, just a competition in the marketplace of ideas to get the population that wants to live there.

The utterly vile Suella Braverman recently said that anti-gay discrimination is not qualification for asylum but of course like any other Tory she is wrong. It should not only be a reason for migration, but that migration should be welcomed and encouraged by the states setting out a pro-diversity platform. Similarly, countries that have an anti-tolerance position should be encouraging and subsidising like-minded people to go there.

This way of doing things will - across populations - reduce violence and discrimination to minorities and will promote social cohesion. It's the change we need to make to move on from the current ping-pong of nation state democracies.

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