At the heart of the Channel 4 docudrama Brexit: The Uncivil War is an apocryphal story. It tells how Dominic Cummings visited the households of people who generally don’t vote in elections, trying to find out why.

Listening very carefully to their responses to his gentle questioning, Cummings hears more than simply anger, resentment or indifference. He hears a story of loss, of attachment to the past. But also a sense of increasing powerlessness, arising from a wide variety of overlapping causes – technology and ageing, alongside a story of abandonment by the state in the age of globalisation.

At no point does Cummings reason with them or make comforting noises: he’s just listening for the emotions and the degree of agency being expressed. While in the early stages of developing the Leave campaign, Cummings ran with the phrase “Take Control”, he later adjusted it to “Take BackControl”. This played on the idea that we’re demanding something that we used to have and is rightfully ours. It was aimed specifically at that group of non-voters he had ‘listened to’ - about 3 million people, who eventually made all the difference.

Yet the sort of control in the sense that Cummings was listening out for was not really on offer from any political settlement—whether Leave or Remain—as has become painfully clear in the three years since. The UK will always be obliged to make agreements with its neighbours about the relative freedom it can have; the same would be true of any country living in this complex global system. The “take back” slogan only really works as a metaphor at the emotional level – the feelingof being more in control.

What’s deep in the psyche affects our politics

Metaphors are not simply an invention of smart marketing: they are the means by which our brains integrate our emotions with the physical reality of our lives. As the Human Givens model of psychotherapy describes, our emotions are messages from our psychosocial body. They guide us to the ways we can thrive in society, which is essential to our survival. When we can’t get these ‘emotional needs met’ our mental health is threatened because, at a deep level, our very existence seems to be threatened.

Right at the heart of our needs is the necessity to balance our personal autonomy and our social trust – we need both in order to flourish. Without some level of control over our shared destiny, we lose our ability to respond to our environment. We then focus solely on our own priorities – we become irresponsible, meaning “not able to respond” to others. Without social relations we cannot build the communities we need to survive, let alone thrive.

When politicians use this knowledge to manipulate people emotionally, they are only deepening the causes of alienation. They invite us to depend on vast, collective knife-edge decisions, which we make under circumstances we barely understand. Boris Johnson’s commitment to leaving the EU by 31stOctober was described repeatedly as an issue of life or death ‘do or die!’ and “I’d rather die in a ditch’. He was deliberately triggering our existential vulnerability. (At least, until the reversal of his position this week.)

But to what end? From a political perspective it would seem obvious that Johnson is offering himself (not even his party or the broader Parliament) as the national saviour, the means by which people can have more control over their destiny. And as it stands, the polls suggest he is succeeding with that story.

However, given that he has already failed to meet his deadline and not resigned – no deaths in ditches so far evident – his credibility might soon be on the line. Either way, there is no end in sight to the rancour and division Johnson has amplified.

Some would say that Extinction Rebellion is playing a similar role in the public space, but for different reasons. XR also purposefully triggers existential angst to wake people up to the reality of climate breakdown. But while their message is directly connected to scientific evidence. it has less resonance right now with the British public than the rather unscientific threats to our existence coming from Downing Street. Yet both tell the truth about our own lack of ability to control events – something we feel deep in our psyche.

As it stands, both XR and Johnson’s Brexit are looking to our political system to answer the call for more control and better outcomes. Is that realistic? As Greta Thunberg has said repeatedly, she doesn’t expect the politicians sitting in front of her - as she speaks truth to power - to be able to hear her, or take the requisite action. They are too in hock to business-as-usual and, after all, are responsible for the appalling reality we now face. We need a new political system—or more accurately, a radically evolved political system.

Illustrating that point, Johnson looks like he’s undermining every part of the current political system, with all his demonization of existing institutions. Indeed, abusing the executive powers of parliament is a time-honoured tactic of oligarchs and demagogues. Even so he’ll end up relying on the same antiquated four-yearly electoral schedules that gives the Westminster executives such power.

Ours is not a call for revolution – the kind of political upheaval that only robs people further of the feeling of control they so badly need. Chaos, as Naomi Klein described in the Shock Doctrine, too often creates a vacuum for ever more powerful manipulators of vulnerability to step in.

Instead, we need new mechanisms at every level of society to capture this desire for more autonomy and feed it into a more balanced system of distributed power. A new political system.

Rabbi Newman became the first ever Rabbi to be arrested at a protest

In some ways this is already happening: social media, petitions and new forms of mobilisation are already affecting outcomes through their soft power. More than three thousand people were willing to be arrested to get attention for climate catastrophe. Over one million people marched in London for a People’s Vote, more than once. 7.5 million people across the globe responded to a School Strike for the Climate. This may not be shaping government policy yet, but it is growing the demand for more people power from every direction.

What’s a better slogan than “taking back control”?

But now we need to go deeper, to make the real-time connections between people’s need to be heard and the solutions that have real purchase on our community and planet. Many of these solutions are already available – energy, food, transport, housing initiatives – but cannot be delivered within the current economic system, shaped by our current political system.

In what ways could communities – towns, cities, regions – go ahead regardless? Leading the change from the ground up? There is good work going on at municipal level in many parts of the world but even that could leave the majority of people outside of the call for more citizen participation. How can we make sure that our next shift does more than move the locus of decision making to city town halls?

To even begin that process, we all need to enhance our ability to respond – our responsibility – to both our personal and our shared community’s needs. There’s always an element of self-development sitting alongside the desire for more agency. To understand better what we need to feel more in controlof material matters in our daily lives.

This might mean more mindfulness practice - staying centred in the midst of public turbulence. Or more time with family, friends and neighbours, to feel a network of support going into the future. Maybe we should even develop those communities of interest – arts, food, sports – which help us hone our identity and belonging. All are helpful in reconnecting with our own internal resources for getting our needs met; all make us less reliant on political parties to create the conditions for change to happen.

So in some ways, the evocation to ‘take back control’ has had a salutary effect, making different parts of the system step up. Witness the large group of civil-society actors meeting as CtrlShift who see this not as a simple Left v Right battle, but a whole system transformation.

But is there an even better call to make, that might help us move out of our pockets of activity and work better together? Imagine the ‘love and rage’ of Extinction Rebellion melding with the call to be better heard from both sides of the Brexit debate. Add to that the complex demands for more autonomy being expressed by the Scottish people. Over a third of independence supporters were also Leave voters - and many “Unionists” are also Remainers, unsure of where to place their vote. Yet doesn’t this all add up to more people power of one kind or another?

And yet, in the wrong hands this can all go horribly wrong. If people power is only ever evoked but never actually delivered, except in crude, superficial ways that keep the people in thrall to politicians like Boris, we could be in a worse position than before. What’s needed are more and more mechanisms for connecting people to each other and to the cosmo-local solutions available to answer our emergency. These can be found in the kind of citizen action networks we see appearing in ever more sophisticated forms around the country – from POP Plymouth to Civic Square, Birmingham. Shaped by people’s participation and deliberation, not by the exigencies of political parties.

From that perspective, does “taking back control” still work as a metaphor for what we are all trying to achieve over the next ten years? Or should we switch to something that makes us stronger together – a shared project of “doing whatever it takes” to build a future for our children? All answers on a postcard – or should we say tweet – to @AlterUK21.

Alternative Editorial: We Need A New Metaphor