Ode to our Political Democracy.

Ode to our Political Democracy.

Politics is often a cacophony of noise, it seems to be there purely to grate and frustrate, most “normal” people hopefully just ignore it assuming not too much is done, with varying degrees of either hope or trepidation depending on which group is winning at that time. Despite largely being an irritating noise, we need to be aware that it will at times become an overwhelming flood dangerous to life and limb if not managed, or controlled by the voters in charge of it.

This is unfortunately where we find ourselves. The main culprit for this resides in deliberate obfuscation of the word “Democracy”. Regardless of your political leanings, support and beliefs this affects you. Such a thought has been in front of me for a while now, it is not a new thought, nor a unique thought or even an unusual thought but it is a good thought to have. We are currently quickly moving pass the point of being able to do anything about it. We risk losing our political democracy and the only thing that can take its place is absolutism and populism.

Whilst watching a BBC politics program, a discussion was taking place with “experts”, please do imagine me saying this word as if I have bile rising up in my mouth. These experts came from various organisations. All these organisation were recognisable and so you could take their biases into account, all except for one expert, who came from an online organisation called Spiked. No mention of this organisation was made by the BBC, which in itself made it difficult to assess bias. On the surface the mutterings of the said expert were popular (democracy mattered, all politicians are useless etc). I am sure you know the type. But there was a persistence and undertone that I found more than a little scary which reminded me of the obfuscation of democracy that I mentioned above. A small amount of investigation of Spiked and I quickly understand why I started to feel scared. For those that don’t know, it’s an organisation funded by the Koch Foundation, (Yes the famous brothers who spend hundreds of millions a year buying US politics). It has a stated aim of not just reporting on the world, but changing it.

I was angry, not angry that they were given a voice or that they were deemed an expert, but angry that the BBC put somebody like this on a platform without first giving the viewer information concerning their bias and agenda.

I was angry enough to want to write this, a political piece on a none political blog. I was angry that I felt I had to stand up for political democracy as no other bugger is doing it!

In western democracies, whether the US, UK, Germany or even the EU. Each democracy has a system of checks and balances. Each sub area is represented, be they each US state, each UK constituency or each EU member state. There is normally a second chamber elected in a different but similar way, often at different times. I am not going to go into much more detail, it’s a well known, well trodden path. The key aspect is that they are all political democracies. They were not created with a whim, some of the greatest thinkers of their appropriate times, deliberated and fashioned the systems we now have. So a political democracy looks at how a form of democracy is used to create a stable political system in the best interest of and to reflect, all the people in the political area.

Democracy is different. Democracy is one person, one vote. Majority rule. It is how you vote for the leader of the bowling club, or how a group of friends might decide what film to watch at the cinema. 

It is a binary choice, whoever had the most votes wins, the least loses.

Donald Trump won power through a democratic election, but didn’t win the most votes. In the UK Teresa May won power, but didn’t get the majority of the votes. Angela Merkel in Germany etc. To be clear no Western Democracy actually uses a democracy, but rather a form of political democracy.

Imagine actually living in a true democracy.

If you are a minority your view would simply be worthless.

If the majority of people live in urban areas, then rural areas would be left to their whim.

If you were a member of a religion, then your religious freedoms would be left to other people’s whims.

If you were a high earner, then your tax rate could be determined by the majority of the lower earning people.

If you had Chinese heritage you might be forced to sign a register of fealty.

Imagine being a CEO of a small company where your bigger majority competitor company made all the rules.

Many countries have constitutions and laws to counter this, however under a true democracy, these would only be a democratic decision away from being changed.

If you think that's a good idea, maybe try out the kind of Democracy that Putin enjoys in Russia. His treatment of minorities is a perfect example.

This is where the murdering of the word democracy comes into play. You will often hear, “We live in a democracy. The people must be heard. This is what the people want.” Such utterings generally come from those we term populist politicians.

You know them, they wrap themselves in their countries flags and utter exactly what the majority want, often at the expense of the minority.

They might be categorised as right or left wing, it doesn’t matter. But make no mistake it’s about mob rule.

But, I hear you cry, we have democratic referendum. Yes we do, unfortunately. They are generally used to grant or extend powers and not to limit them. There is a good reason for this as you then don’t get the majority limiting or affecting the rights of minorities. Good examples might be lowering the voting age to 16, which would extend democratic rights and not remove them for anybody. Equally another might be the legalisation of cannabis, which again extends rights.

I am sure most are thinking about the EU referendum and that is where we have a problem as it does limit people’s rights, it is the majority limiting the minority. It would have been regardless of who won. For clarity I was one of those that thought that the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty should have been done with a referendum. But whenever we have a referendum we need to square its use with our parliamentary system which will enact it.

Our MP’s are voted in with a straight democracy. However they are expected to represent not just the views of those that voted for them, but of all of those they represent, their entire electorate, the majority and the minority, the voters and non voters.. It is therefore no surprise that MP’s have and will continue to struggle implementing such a big change that will affect everybody, which has been approved by 17m out of 66m people. Again for clarity I do think the referendum should be respected and that we should leave the EU, however it needs to be done with the least amount of impact on those that didn’t vote to leave. This is how our political democracy works.

Politics has certainly muddied the waters thanks to the inane splashing of all groupings, but I do believe that this is the way forward that allows Parliament to do its duty for everyone, as it should.

I also believe that eventually parliament will get there.

It will have got there far quicker though if the main parties did NOT adopt true democracy to elect their leaders….Did they not learn anything about the founding principles of democracies around the world. All they have done is ensured that the majority have all the power and the minority have none. That “mob rule” or populism is the decider. It is therefore no coincidence that both main parties have leaders now that embrace rather extreme versions of populism thanks to the relatively recent changes in the election methods.

With the spreading of absolutism, the spreading of populism, the well known magnifying affect of social media, the interference of organisations such as those funded by the Koch brothers, it comes as no surprise that we are in this mess.

Is there a way out?

We need to realise that talk of democracy is often false and means mob majority rule.

We need to realise that people v parliament means mob majority rule.

We need to realise that hateful words and attitudes lead to violence.

We need to understand our political democracy, value it and take part in it.

We need to understand that as well as our rights in our political democracy we have our responsibilities.

We need to understand and protect the guardians of our political democracy, such as an independent legal system and the inability to buy influence.

It really doesn’t matter whether your views are left, right or centrist you can be part of the problem or part of the solution. Regardless we should be counted amongst the people that are prepared to stand for our democracy and not support those that seek to circumvent, destroy or lessen it.

I am fed up of people using the term Brexiteer or Remainer to describe themselves, are their political opinions so shallow that they can be defined by a single issue?
The terms have one purpose, to keep and define divisions, to foster absolutism. Even worse are the people that turn it into an insult, the "Racist Brexiteers or the sore losers Remoaners."

This at least is my view. I certainly don’t force anybody to read this, but knowing the above don’t be surprised if I think less of you.