A small miracle happened in politics recently. Someone had a good idea, and then enacted it really quickly. I popped into my local chemist’s last week and the nice chap behind the counter recommended a few treatments, adding that if I still felt rough in a few days, he could give me some antibiotics. Eh? Wouldn’t I have to contact my GP? Apparently not. I could just come back to the shop. This was handy. Unlike doctors’ surgeries, shops tend to be open at the weekend, when people are actually free to buy things. They’re funny like that, shops.

I then remembered reading about a recent proposal to allow pharmacists to supply antibiotics without a GP visit for certain conditions, but assumed it would follow the usual government timescale, being trialled in 2031 after a lengthy ‘consultation period’ during which lawyers and special-interest groups would ruin the idea. But in this case, freakishly, it just happened. The BMA probably whinged a bit, as they do, but for once it wasn’t even referred to the ECHR or something.

Politicians are groomed to win arguments, not to solve problems. The two skills are wildly different

This is good. Pharmacists are an underused resource: they may know as much about pharmacology as your doctor, and they can make additional money by selling you a Mason Pearson hairbrush after discussing your symptoms. Most of all, though, this option reduces our propensity to see the GP as a first port of call for everything, freeing them to do more valuable work.

Here’s my question. How many simple solutions of this kind are within easy reach but routinely overlooked because of the peculiar nature of politics? Is our current system uniquely ill-suited to solving practical problems like this? A weird class of people who have been in politics all their lives, or have previously worked as lawyers or academics, have been groomed for their ability to win arguments, not to solve problems. (The two skills are wildly different.) Does an obsession with adversarial point-scoring cause them to focus more on divisive issues than easy wins? Or is this the fault of TV and social media, both of which focus our attention on issues which rile people, rather than on common sense ideas on which normal people can readily agree. Maybe there are a lot of politicians doing useful work like this, but we never hear about them.

This perception matters. Apart from the 5 per cent of weirdos who watch politics the way other people watch football, most people voting for extremist candidates do so not because they are necessarily angry, but because they are bored with the whole tenor of debate or impatient with the glacial pace of government.

A partial solution to this disconnection has been successfully tested in many countries: you may have heard it called deliberative democracy, or else a citizens’ assembly. Rather like a jury, 50 to 100 citizens are chosen by lot to debate an issue over several days: they hear from experts, but ultimately decide among themselves. It is in many ways the polar opposite of a focus group, in which people merely reveal knee-jerk reactions to things they haven’t thought about much – fine for soap powder, not so good for government. Here, representative, normal people can bargain among themselves and arrive at conclusions which may not be legally binding, which are invariably illuminating, often original and may break political deadlock. Inheritance tax and housing are probably two issues where opinions often change and new consensus emerges after wider deliberation.

This idea is so inexpensive and simple, and so complementary to current political discussion, that it seems obvious. Consequently it will arouse no great passion, no news coverage, and politicians will ignore it in favour of debating partisan nonsense which gets them in the papers.