Democracy on Trial - In the United Kingdom

The New York Times headline reads, "‘We’re in the Last Hour’: Democracy Itself Is on Trial in Brexit, Britons Say."

As I'm going through the article, over on LBC radio, London, callers are having their say on whether the UK needs electoral reform, an end to "first past the post." Here's what NYT reports:

The whole world of Britain’s Parliament — its effete codes of conduct, its arcane and stilted language, its reunions of Oxbridge school chums — seemed impossibly remote from the real, unfolding national crisis of Brexit, the process of extricating the country from the European Union.

Over the past weeks, as factions within the British government have grappled for control over the country’s exit from the bloc, the mood among voters has become dark.

Those Britons who wished to remain are reminded, daily, that a risky and momentous national change is being initiated against their will and judgment. More striking is the deep cynicism among those who voted to leave, the group that Prime Minister Theresa May is trying to satisfy. They are now equally bitter and disillusioned, as the government’s paralysis has called into question whether Britain will ever leave.

In interviews, many Britons expressed despair over the inability of the political system to produce a compromise. No one feels that the government has represented their interests. No one is satisfied. No one is hopeful. 

It has amounted to a hollowing out of confidence in democracy itself. 

“I don’t think the central institutions of government have been discredited like this in the postwar period,” said William Davies, who teaches political economy at Goldsmiths, University of London.

...The referendum question has divided Britain into warring tribes, unable to settle on any shared vision of the future. An ancient, robust democracy is groaning under the weight of conflicting demands — on the executive, to carry out the will of the people; and on the members of Parliament, to follow their conscience and to act in what they believe to be the people’s interest. 

In such a situation, the country might have united in its resentment of the European Union, which had vowed to make Britain’s withdrawal painful. But that has not happened. Britons are blaming their own leaders. 

“I think people have totally lost confidence in democracy, in British democracy and the way it’s run,” said Tommy Turner, 32, a firefighter. He was perched on a stool at the Hare & Hounds, a working-class pub in Surrey, where nearly everyone voted to leave the European Union. Among his friends, he said, he sensed a profound sense of betrayal that Britain was not exiting on March 29, as promised.

An Election Should Never Become a Defeat for the People.

Sure, there are winners and losers in an election, but that should be confined to politicians and parties. The people should never be vanquished.  The public should never lose an election. Yet they routinely do.

That's especially true for what we in Canada endure today in our multi-party, first-past-the-post system where a party can garner scarcely 40 per cent support and yet receive a powerful majority. To "rule" with 40 per cent support and consider that some sort of mandate to do whatever you fucking well like is, frankly, despotic. It's the antithesis of democracy. When, as in the case of the current regime, that minority/majority was won on empty promises, it's that much worse.

Canadians have become accustomed to that. We acquiesce in it. They got 36 per cent, you got 38 and so you're the master of the universe until we get a chance to see our will defeated again in four years. Fuck That!

When governments do that, as so many of ours have, you're not just defeating your political opponent, you're defeating the public, the majority of the people. And, when the majority of the public lose to your false political majority, just what kind of government do we have? It's an illegitimate government whose power is cheap and thinly procedural at best.

What is a government that governs without the consent of its people? I don't know but I know we've had plenty of them. One thing it's not, it's not a liberal democracy. It's something else and that may vary depending on the whim of the ruler of the day.

That ruler, not leader but ruler, may be benevolent. That ruler may not be. Democracy becomes a matter of whim and that can ebb and flow markedly even during one term of power. We wind up with rulers, some less authoritarian, some much more. And that's the back door where special interests always insinuate themselves between the public and those elected to serve them. And, when that happens, the real losers from the election are the people. Somebody wins. The prevailing party and the special interests, their patrons. Somebody loses. The people, the nation.

That's why Canada needs electoral reform. We're no longer a two-party system which has come to guarantee that an election spells defeat for the majority of our people. That's obscene.

An election should never become a defeat for our people. Why do we continue to tolerate that?

Trudeau promised electoral reform. He got elected on that promise. He reneged. Ditch him.