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Butler Lecture "The Second Superpower" now available to watch online

20 Mar 2012

Our system of democracy is in danger, and referendums are flawed devices, used when politicians lose their nerve, the president of YouGov research agency has warned.Delivering the Butler Lecture for the BBC and Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, YouGov President Peter Kellner said that the UK needed to shore up the foundations of representative democracy.  "To do this, we need to promote a more candid political culture - and to resist the growing clamour for direct democracy," he said.  "I contend that referendums are not exercises in democratic purity, but deeply flawed devices that we turn to when politics fails and politicians lose their nerve."  Peter Kellner, President of YouGov, delivered the 2012 Reuters Institute / BBC David Butler Lecture on 5th March.