By John Gibson. Venue 64: Gilded Balloon at the Museum

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Black begins with a brief summary of her recent events; stepping back from politics, getting married, planning the next chapter in her life.  Much of this is an opportunity to show how witty and humorous she and her brother are (as she shows many committed long-form trolling comments on her wiki courtesy of her bruv).

So far so Fringe, but things improve when she moves onto the meat of the Ted Talk, and Ted Talk it is.  She intends to show how parliamentary procedure and ritual is designed (not for democratic ends) but to ensure that the ruling party (and the establishment) make it as difficult as possible for real change to occur.

She gives the example of how, when she suggested making voting more streamlined they installed digital scanners for registering votes.  What they didn’t do was change the centuries old ritual of herding hundreds of people into two separate voting corridors (within a time limit), then ringing a bell for eight minutes before releasing them to use the new technology.

Hopefully, her show and this message can go far and wide because it appears that only she and Rory Stewart are remotely interested in highlighting how mentally ill our ‘democracy’ really is.