A Weighty Judgement

We live in a representative democracy, not a popular one. At least such appears to be the basis of the Appeal Court Judgement insisting parliament be consulted before the triggering of Lisbon Article 50 can initiate the UK's withdrawal from the EU.

The European Communities Act of 1972, we are told, conferred rights upon UK citizens which only another parliamentary decision can remove.

Now my understanding was that UK Common Law is framed upon a different basis from Roman Law. The latter, as applied in continental Europe, grants citizens specific rights with the state held to be the source of those rights. The former operates upon the assumption that the citizen has the right to do anything that the law does not specifically prohibit - in other words the state is the servant of the citizen not vice versa.

The meld of these two systems during our membership of the EU has been an uneasy compromise, but I for one would be reluctant to accept that the Roman system has entirely superseded our own superior one.

Accordingly I would argue that the Act in question confirmed rather than conferred UK citizens' rights and hence the citizens can themselves determine whether they wish the continuance of the same.

Given that the citizens have made such a determination, it seems superfluous (to say the least) that parliament, which in the UK holds its sovereignty from the people, should be required to confirm that the people have made the correct decision.

Everyone knows that the people were denied a say in this issue for forty years because all major political parties supported the principle of EU membership. Even the formation of UKIP did not end this at the parliamentary level because our first past the post electoral system is so heavily weighted in favour of the status quo.

Therefore it is obvious any parliament would inevitably hold a majority of Remainers and that a referendum would be the only way for the popular will to be expressed.

The Referendum Act was framed in such a way as to make the plebiscite advisory rather than mandatory, but it was also clearly the will of parliament that the people should decide.

The EU has already set several dangerous precedents by insisting on the overthrow of democratic decisions in other countries.

The danger is now that the letter of the law will be used to thwart its spirit. Parliament should think carefully before bringing UK law into disrepute in this way.

Can You Define Democracy?

Hardly anyone in the West can be found to argue against democracy; it's considered a truism that democracy is the best form of government. Countries moving towards democracy are making political progress while those with other systems are politically backward. When applied to systems of government, the word ‘undemocratic’ has become a synonym for ‘bad’.

You'd be tempted to think we knew what democracy was.

You'd certainly be excused for thinking we believed ourselves and most western countries to possess democratic systems.

But do we?

Representation in the UK has travelled a long road from the days when the leading citizens of each borough used to select two of their number to travel to the capital for short assemblies. These meetings were called to decide basic issues of taxation and supply, and after them MPs returned and explained matters to their fellow citizens.

From the enfranchisement of the masses to a restructuring of political parties to reflect the changed electorate took maybe half a century. From there to the voters' realising their votes weren't making any difference took another fifty years or so. From that realisation to giving up voting took about fifty more.

A whole class of people who know no trade but politics has grown up and taken control. They've been aided by manipulative, self-interested groupings known as political parties.

Whatever this system should be called, I doubt if it's democracy – timocracy or plutocracy maybe. The literal translation of democracy in ancient Greece was ‘government by the people’. Government by the people as a whole was practicable in the city state. Representative democracy, evolved to apply the same idea to larger states, was hijacked by the party system as soon as the expansion of the franchise pushed communication with the electorate beyond the financial reach of most independent candidates.

In the UK, with mass party membership a thing of the past despite the recent accession of numerous hard left activists to Labour, candidates are chosen by a small group of party members in each constituency. Combining this degraded system with parliaments lasting for several years results in something more reminiscent of what Lord Hailsham called ‘elective dictatorship’ than government by the people.

Churchill described democracy as the worst system of government except for all the others that have from time to time been tried. Not a good thing – just the best of the available evils.

The drawbacks are obvious. Why was I condemned to live in a democracy where every fool's vote is equal to a sensible man's? asked John Wyndham. There spoke a man in the Platonic tradition; everyone should stick to what they are good at, a neo-Platonist says, and most people are no good at statecraft.

Isn't it true of any specialist subject? If you were about to undergo brain surgery would you rely on a brain surgeon or take a vote among all the patients in the hospital? Would you rather your airliner was flown by a pilot or elect someone from among the passengers?

If we agree specialist tasks should ideally be performed by specialists, then a democrat presumably believes running the country demands no expertise?

Let's go further. How many who live with the supposed blessings of a democratic system can define democracy or enumerate its benefits? Even elected politicians, who surely ought to know, are regularly heard to make a simplistic equation between democracy and majority rule.

If democracy were indeed the same thing as majority rule then of course it would be far from the best possible system of government. It's not hard to show examples of what J S Mill called ‘The tyranny of the majority’.

Suppose a society to be divided upon ethnic, religious or economic grounds, such that one section was always outvoted. Is it democratic for the majority to rob, persecute or enslave that minority? If not, then majority rule (alone) is not democracy.

More crudely, the doctrine of the mandate is widely taken to mean a 'democratically' elected government is empowered to put into practice any element of the manifesto upon which it stood. The voters who supported that government are held to have endorsed everything it proposed, even though many voters are not expressing support at all but voting tactically - choosing a lesser evil.

If it is undemocratic to claim a mandate for something people have not consciously endorsed, is it any better to give them what they do want? Populist politicians regularly promise impossible or damaging policies so long as the people want them. These politicians may not care about deceiving the people; their objective is simply to be elected.

The huge debts which threatened economic collapse in so many countries recently were the results of the unsustainable mortgaging of tomorrow to pay for today. Ask people if they want goodies and of course they'll agree, as long as someone else pays. Deficit financing effectively makes our children pay. Eventually the pile of debt becomes unserviceable. Yet riots and demonstrations attended upon attempts to return to affordable levels of public spending.

Under many supposedly democratic systems even the principle of majority rule breaks down. Total power is handed to the largest minority. The 2010-15 UK coalition government was the first since the Second World War to be formed by MPs who collectively received more than fifty percent of the popular vote. In spite of this, previous minority-supported governments enacted widespread and radical changes to society.

So if democracy is not government by the people, by a majority or even by the largest minority thereof, what does it actually mean today?

The House of Peers

I love the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Iolanthe in which we learn how the House of Peers does nothing in particular and does it very well.

So much of the UK constitution is anachronistic that it is always difficult to enact reform in one area without introducing anomalies somewhere else. Like a worn jumper, pulling upon just one thread can threaten to unravel the whole thing. We need only consider our haphazard devolution process which subsequently threw up the unanswerable West Lothian Question and has made internal relations within the UK very much worse.

The current concern has been aroused by the House of Lords defeating a government financial proposal.  By convention they are not allowed to do this.  I suppose it mighty have been a good idea if successive governments had thought about these conventions before appointing large numbers of party donors and superannuated political hacks to the red benches. Since they didn't, we now have yet another cry for reform.

If you want someone to fly a plane, you choose a pilot. Designing a building is best left to an architect and treating the sick needs a doctor. The same principle applies to any task that requires expertise. Government of the country however has for some reason been opened up to any megalomaniac, plutocrat or ideologue willing to put himself forward, with no qualification required.

It seems odd that we should be so exercised about achieving a well-constituted House of Lords when we make no efforts whatsoever to achieve a well-constituted Commons. Surely if the Lords is to consist of well-qualified people it must inevitably outclass the Commons?  Yet the latter will still govern because they are democratically elected (sort of).

A century ago when the long slow process of reforming The Lords began, Lloyd George described the house as “five hundred men, ordinary men chosen accidentally from among the unemployed.” It seems to me that we now have something considerably worse.

Perhaps, like juries, availability for service in the upper house should be one of the obligations of citizenship and the membership chosen randomly from the electoral roll.

Of course such a chamber might still outclass the Commons