IRVINE Welsh has said voting should be abolished and a "lottery system" should instead be implemented to elect MPs.
The Trainspotting author was part of the panel on Laura Kuenssberg’s politics programme on Sunday when he made the off-the-wall suggestion.
Kuenssberg and Welsh’s fellow panellists – journalist Jane Moore and former Conservative adviser Nimco Ali - looked stunned by his pitch, with the presenter describing how the show had taken on a “whole new format for political conversation” before it wrapped up.
In a discussion about the issues facing the main political parties in the run-up to the General Election, Ali suggested there need to be electoral reform and a shift away from first past the post, after Welsh had insisted Labour and the Tories were “the same”.
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Welsh then added: “I would abolish voting basically, I would have a lottery system.
“Everybody takes part in the lottery, 650 names drawn out of a hat, that’s your MPs. Another lottery of 40 names, and another lottery from that the Prime Minister.
“What that would do is crush the lobbying system. Every adult would have a lottery ticket and that would make it incumbent on society to have a proper education system.”
Kuenssberg visibly raised her eyebrows at the suggestion as the show took a left field turn.
Prior to outlining his MP lottery vision, the 64-year-old said: “I think people don’t trust politicians and I think they are absolutely right not to.
“You’ve seen a government feathering the rest of its cronies during Covid, and shorting the pound and Brexit, they are basically looting the taxpayer’s money.
“Really it doesn’t matter what party gets into power, there’s no difference between the two. They are all the same and they can’t be anything other than the same.”
Earlier this week, Welsh – a supporter of Scottish independence – said drug deaths were high in Scotland because the country was not in control of its own destiny and its people were on the “margins of British society”.
He said: “It comes down to deprivation, it comes down to the fact that we don’t really still have political institutions to have control of our own destiny in Scotland.”
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