REPRESENTATIVE democracy hasn’t had much of a summer.

The self-appointed leaders of the Leave campaign swanned off or stabbed one another in the front within days of the European referendum result. The Prime Minister quit, revealing he had no contingency plans for Brexit. Scotland and Northern Ireland found themselves at odds with rUK over EU membership and depending on which UK Government minister is speaking and whether it’s before lunch or after it – there may or may not be a separate Scottish deal. If the UK Government fails to deliver, it may or may not allow a second indyref to be conducted by the Scottish Parliament which Tory ministers still have the temerity to describe as “the most powerfully devolved parliament in the world.” So powerful it cannot achieve its desired relationship with the European Union whilst truly tiddly but properly devolved island nations like Greenland and the Faroes can.

The UK Government taking all these momentous, long-term decisions is led by a politician without a personal mandate to govern as PM and without any intention of holding another General Election to seek voters’ approval for the final Brexit deal she negotiates. Theresa May wields supreme power even though her party gained only 24.3 per cent of all registered voters at the last General Election – and just 10.6 per cent in Scotland.

Yet last week, MPs rejected a bill that would have changed the Westminster voting system to a form of proportional representation. The SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Lib Dems and Ukip all backed Green MP Caroline Lucas’ Bill – but Labour Party policy was to abstain. In the end, the limousines appeared minutes before the vote so Tory MPs could make sure a fair voting system didn’t happen. Since the UK Establishment is now very wary of referendums, there’s little more British citizens can do now to affect the way the UK’s governed. You’ll have had your democracy – come back for more in 2020.

Yip, Westminster is a total shambles and by comparison Holyrood and the whole system of Scottish democracy looks much better. But since Westminster’s grasp of democracy is as vibrant as Donald Trump’s grasp of gender equality, that’s not saying much.

Of course Scotland, like the rest of the UK, is on the edge of its collective seat, waiting to see what Brexit brings. If it’s nowt the SNP’s October conference agenda confirms a second indyref looks very likely. And amen to that.

But if Scots think Westminster is the only place with serious question marks over legitimacy and democratic accountability, we are fooling ourselves.

Here in Scotland, it’s all steam ahead and business as usual for local council elections in 2017 – even though the new map of ward boundaries has been rejected by more than two-thirds of councils, even though failed local democracy was listed as a top concern by Rural Parliament meetings across Scotland, even though our councils are Europe’s largest by population size and physical mass with the smallest councillor cohort, even though just 22 per cent of Scots say they feel powerful in their local domains, even though the last council election turnout was a miserable 38 per cent and even though the council umbrella organisation Cosla wants the size of councils to be cut and the number of Scottish councils trebled and maintains the current system of distant, massive regional-size council units has “hollowed out democracy in Scotland over the last half century”.

No, that doesn’t apparently constitute any kind of democratic crisis ‘cos it’s isn’t a lofty battle for sovereignty with London, it’s just a problem with cooncillors. And who wants mair cooncillors?

Well, all those Scots who believe the debate about the location of power within Scotland is part and parcel of the bigger debate about where power should reside within the UK. If remote and top-down doesn’t work for Scotland within the Union, why is remote and top-down an acceptable way to run every local community in Scotland?

Two months ago the Local Government Boundary Commission produced a report that will make the difficult business of local democracy in some parts of rural Scotland almost impossible.

But despite widespread criticism, it looks set be rubber-stamped by the Scottish Government Minister Joe Fitzpatrick since MSPs opted to represent the interests of party whips and the Holyrood timetable, not the interests of local democracy.

You’d be forgiven for missing the Boundary Commission review – after all the net change was just two fewer wards and four fewer councillors across Scotland and the admirable aim was the restoration of parity in the ratio of councillors to electors.

But there have been unintended and decidedly anti-democratic outcomes. Some of the new wards are enormous and mean councillors must use ferries (time-consuming and weather dependent) to reach every part of their new super-sized wards, some of which also split natural communities.

Take Argyll and Bute as an example. The Commission recommends part of the Cowal peninsula is merged with the neighbouring island of Bute to form a single council ward. Sure – why not? There’s a relatively tiny population in both places and a year-round ferry connecting them. From the perspective of a distant planner it makes sense. But to locals like veteran Rothesay councillor Isobel Strong, it’s crazy.

There’s worry that all these problems may further deter folk from standing as candidates in the 2017 local elections and (ironically) increase costs as mileage and the number of overnight stays soars.

“If all four councillors come from Bute it will be almost impossible to attend evening community council meetings on Cowal without a dash to the last Colintraive ferry at 9pm. I fear communities won’t feel represented by someone who live a long way away. Commission members should travel the routes involved in the depths of winter when ferries are cancelled because of storms,” says Strong.

Meanwhile, the southern part of Oban is to be merged into the council ward that includes Lochgilphead, an hour’s drive away. Ardrishaig, on the other hand, will now be in a different ward despite centuries-long human connections with Lochgilphead (and connected school and postal systems). But the entire length of the Crinan Canal will be one ward – a clear indication that boundaries have been drawn up to suit administrators and quango boundaries not local realities.

It’s a similar story across Scotland. Highland Council will have six fewer members, and the Western Isles four fewer, whilst some city areas acquire more and Orkney and Shetland remain the same.

The Boundary Commission though is hardly to blame for making the job of local councillors even more pressurised, remote and unappealing. The main problem – the massive physical size of Scotland’s so-called “local” councils and its tiny councillor cohort – is not one they can fix.

Scotland currently has 32 councils and 1,223 councillors.

Norway (with roughly the same population) has 429 councils and 10,785 councillors. Compared with any modern European democracy – or even the rusty old ones – our councillor cohort is 10 times smaller while our councils are 10 times larger. This is the problem the Scottish Government has opted not to tackle.

Thus Argyll and Bute has 31 councillors – but in Scotland it’s considered a big council. When you use PR to elect a tiny number of councillors in massive multi-member wards you get the current democratic shambles. It’s not the STV electoral system that’s at fault – it’s the massive size of councils and the tiny size of the councillor cohort.

Of course folk fear that mair cooncillors means more expense. That’s partly because we pay councillors £16k per annum – not enough for a person of working age to get a mortgage but enough to trigger bean-counter complaints.

In the old days, councillors just reclaimed loss of earnings. But the massive size of councils today ironically makes it hard for folk to do council work in their spare time. Argyll and Bute hold council meetings during the day because it takes so long for representatives to reach its Lochgilphead HQ. If Argyll and Bute was broken down into five or six smaller councils, meetings could be held at night and businesses might be happier to let staff nip off for the occasional daytime meeting as they do in much of the rest of Europe.

In short, big is not beautiful, more economical or more democratic when it comes to local democracy. And yet the Boundary Commission Review is set to make matters worse without resolving the democratic dilemma in the same way that the Community Empowerment Act chose to ignore the mess that is the community council system. Stripped of any statutory function they have been allowed to rumble on with an average annual budget of £400. Why? To keep local activists diverted?

What Scotland needs is a vigorous debate about a genuinely local government system. But is that coming along the tracks any time soon?

Several constituency organisations tried to put local democracy on the agenda for the SNP’s autumn conference, but none succeeded. No surprise there. Membership motions raising dissatisfaction with the party’s land reform proposals failed to be selected for debate last year but the leadership still received a slightly bloody nose.

The mechanism to deliver such a rebuff may not materialise at this year’s SNP conference, but that won’t deter those outwith political parties who’ve long since abandoned the expectation that big structural change is ever tackled without grassroots pressure.

Plans are afoot to encourage the most active communities to hold their own alternative council meetings in the run-up to next years’ elections, decide which issues really matter and what size of councils would ideally work for them. In Sweden, such meetings endorse popular community activists as candidates and they enter the election campaign with a wheen of local support in the bag.

A national convention early next year could gather all those who want to overhaul our local democracy – even if the political parties are still too feart or too busy to get this on the agenda.

One day we must fix the basic unit of democracy in Scotland. Why not make it before May 2017?