In these unsettled political times, it can be hard to discern a common ideology among the parties condemning the status quo. Donald Trump’s angry, nationalist MAGA movement, the anti-immigrant, Blut und Boden Alternative für Deutschland, Marine le Pen’s law-and-order, closed-borders, Boulangism-of-the-right National Rally, and the economically Thatcherite but politically mass migration-rejecting Reform UK have as many points of difference as they do similarities.

One thread running through them is a feeling that existing political institutions no longer work. From left to right, there is a frustration that ‘the state’ is not responsive to the priorities of voters or even the directions of governing parties.

The UK’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has talked about the need for ‘rewiring’ a state which is ‘overstretched, unfocused, trying to do too much, doing it badly’. Kemi Badenoch, when seeking the leadership of the Conservative Party last year, said that government ‘should do fewer things, but what it does, it should do with brilliance’.

You do not have to be a radical libertarian to see areas of British life, for example, in which the state has no business exerting its authority. The Football Governance Bill will create a statutory duty on professional football clubs not to change their crest or colours without consultation. The Employment Rights Bill makes employers liable for their staff hearing ‘contentious’ views being expressed. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is an elaborate way to ban smoking in its entirety, but without admitting that it is a denial of personal liberty.

Doing less but doing it better is both vital and urgent. It is important because freedom is a virtue in the abstract, an element of fundamental human dignity. But it drives prosperity, too, because liberty is indivisible: economic freedom creates an ecosystem in which innovation, improvement, diversification and profit thrive. Those things that really should be the bailiwick of the state – defence, welfare and healthcare provision – depend on economic growth.

The urgency comes from a darker place. If there is a strong feeling among voters that the state no longer works, it is matched by a dwindling patience to put up with it, and an understandable but desperate willingness to turn to anyone who promises change.

Trump and the MAGA movement are perhaps the clearest warning sign against ignoring public frustration: within their loose, angry ideology are some elements many support: shrinking the overmighty state, reforming sclerotic bureaucracy and restoring a nation’s ability to police its borders. But the last few months have seen these measures largely overwhelmed by deeper, bitter clashes: government not so much slimmed down as blown up and an executive attempting to sweep aside any legislative or judicial control. This is the price of delay.

Let me offer an illustration of the problem and a solution. I was a clerk in the House of Commons for more than 10 years, and a passionate defender of our democratic institutions. I always think that proposals for change must bear the burden of proof and I am no enemy of tradition.

The reputation of the House of Commons is as low as it has ever been. One reason is that it seems ineffectual, irrelevant and performative. But voters have also lost sight of what the House of Commons is for, and when they are disappointed by its failure to fulfil qualities it was never supposed to have, their opinion falls further.

The Commons is a deliberative body, but it also must be one that reaches decisions. Too often we have hours of poorly executed debate – often a series of unconnected speeches that do not engage with each other – non-subjects on which there is widespread agreement: childhood obesity, fuel poverty, World Asthma Day. Worthy causes, certainly, but also an opportunity for MPs to wring their hands and show they care rather than making decisions.

Too much faith is placed in Members of Parliament to solve local problems that are the responsibility of councils and local services. MPs should be able to represent constituents who have been systematically failed, but they are not elected to be a first port of call. When Tony Banks, the sharp-tongued left-wing Labour MP, stood down from the Commons in 2005, he vented his frustrations: ‘All you were was a sort of high-powered social worker and perhaps not even a good one at that.’

The House of Commons is an ancient institution. Towns and counties were first represented in Parliament alongside the nobility and clergy in 1265, and, after 1341, they sat as a separate house of Parliament. For 700 years, however imperfectly, the House had embodied that representation which is critical to Britain’s system of government: the Commons, by its electoral mandate, gives popular consent to the parliamentary process. But it is asked to do too much and to do the wrong things.

There are three essential roles the House of Commons must play. The first is confidence and supply: any government has to be able to command the support of the elected House as a matter of legitimacy, and it is the Commons that grants supply to that government – that is, it authorises the government to collect taxation and spend public money. Without those two components, there is no government.

The Commons must also examine and pass legislation. Each house does so in broadly the same form, but it is the Commons that gives laws their essential democratic legitimacy. It also claims financial privilege, the exclusive control over the taxation and expenditure mentioned above, to which the House of Lords simply consents.

Third, the Commons plays a broader part in holding the government to account. Most ministers (currently 90 of 120) are MPs; they regularly answer questions, give statements and are examined by select committees.

Those are the functions the House of Commons must perform. It legislates too much, because new laws are frequently a knee-jerk response to a crisis or unexpected event. If it made fewer laws and examined them more carefully and held ministers more rigorously to account – if it did less but did it better, it might begin to remind the electorate once again why it exists and why it is valuable.

Writers are often advised that they should ‘show, don’t tell’. Parliament will have to follow that advice to regain even the slightest degree of public trust and esteem. Politicians deal in words, but voters are not listening to self-aggrandising encomiums. The House of Commons needs to demonstrate it is carrying out its functions.

The experience of the United States suggests there is a tipping point beyond which institutions are regarded as beyond salvation. I do not believe the UK’s Parliament is there yet, but if it seeks to avoid populists doing to it institutionally what Guy Fawkes sought to do physically, time is running out.