ThunderDragon Blog

The government has now formally ratified the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty. In doing this, they have sidestepped the courts, and shoved two fingers in the direction of the British people.

We wanted to vote on it, and successfully stalled ratification. But the government have now gone on anyway, despite their being a hearing today on whether Stuart Wheeler may appeal the original decision. Hopefully the government’s action of ratification - which could be said to be holding the court of the UK in contempt - works in Wheeler’s [and our] favour.

Brown’s action is also dismissive of the people of Ireland - the only people in the EU to get a chance to vote on the treaty - who voted no. At the same time, Sarkozy, who currently holds the EU Presidency, is declaring that Ireland must vote again - because they gave the “wrong” answer - aka the one with whom he disagrees.

It is disgusting that such actions are taking place. By saying that the Irish should vote again, rather than accepting the will of the people, the EU destroys any and every claim that they have to being a democratic institution.

Voting: The chance for the people to vote for issues or politicians out of a desire to choose their own leaders and/or future.

Right?

Well, not under this government.

Instead, it has been reclassified as:

Voting: The opportunity to get into a prize draw to win a TV, iPod or supermarket voucher.

Voting is an essential part of the democratic process. Voting is about making a choice between several available options, and selecting the one who prefer [or at least dislike less] than the others.

Bribing people to turn up at the ballot box would not improve democracy. In fact, the very oppsoite - it will belittle it. Rather than a civic duty, it becomes another crass opportunity to get a prize.

Whilst taking part in the democratic process is not a rational choice - why bother when someone else will for you? - lowering it to the position of commercialism won’t help. Just like compulsory voting, it simply isn’t democratic.

It is a duty, right, and responsibility to vote. It shouldn’t be demeaned like this.

The only thing you should get for voting is the satisfaction of taking part in the process. Though we should get given stickers for it. That would be good.

According to Tory Bear [the Guido Fawkes of Conservative Future]:

[The CF Steering Committee] have discussed in depth the prospect of removing the entire elections process from CF. Elections are apparently a) messy and dirty, b) cost too much - the ERS charge a hell of a lot and of the thousands of ballot papers sent out, only a fraction of them are returned and c) at the end of the day the big people’s Party don’t get the candidate they want.

TB has now heard this from two trusted and well wired sources.

If that has even the slightest inkling of truth, it is utterly reprehensible. What is the point of having a separate “youth” organisation within the party if its leaders are not to be chosen by its members?

The country is a democracy and the party is a democracy [well, pretty much] so why shouldn’t CF be one as well? Especially since it is already democratic, to remove the democratic element would be a huge step backwards - and rightly garner negative publicity.

Whilst all of their points are relatively valid, (a) and (c) can’t be helped and are an inevitable outcome of elections. They are unavoidable, and this argument is an argument against all democracy. However, (b) can be minimised at least - move the CF elections online and/or extend the term. Then not only is it saving money, but making the party look “innovative” and “forward moving” and other such phrases.

Very simply, removing the elections from CF would make it into a laughing stock, and be a travesty for a party that claims to support democracy.

“We The People” is a column written for the Wardman Wire. This blog post can also be seen here.

The attitude of politicians today to democracy can so well be summed up by the cartoon below, by Peter Brookes in the Times.

All for democracy - except where it might adversely affect them and what they want. Screw the people! Democracy is for the politicians!

There are two main areas in which democracy is taking a battering at the moment - Zimbabwe and the European Union. Neither of which are exactly strangers to this.

The difference between the two is as much as anything all in the appearance: Mugabe deploys violence and force in order to ensure that he stays in power; the European Union bureaucracy deploys “diplomacy”. Both ignore what we the people - the ones from whom they are supposed to draw their power through the support of - want.

Zimbabwe

The people of Zimbabwe want the MDC to control the parliament and Morgan Tsvangirai as President. Yet Mugabe declares that he will “go to war” before he would let Tsvangirai take over as President.

So he simply doesn’t care what the result of the presidential run-off would have been, had their actually been an opposition candidate. He doesn’t care about democracy, just about having power. Even the UN have declared that any Zimbabwean poll cannot be free and fair.

In the end, there is nothing that we can do about Zimbabwean democracy. Only the other African leaders can stop Mugabe and free the people of Zimbabwe from tyranny. Just calling for the poll to be delayed is not good enough by a very very long shot. The very principles of democracy need to be re-established.

European Union

Then we come to the European Union. This body suffers a democratic deficit nigh on as large as Zimbabwes, with the elected element having so very little power indeed. They are going to continue ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, despite it having been rejected by the Irish people.

The only people who got to vote on the Lisbon Treaty voted against it. Whilst every other country decided to press ahead and not bother asking their electorate what they thought but ratify it by parliament instead, Ireland asked the people. And they said no. Yet the EU don’t and won’t accept “no” for an answer, and appear to expect the referendum to be held again, like they did with Nice. If they do, they will destroy any claim that they ever had to being democratic.

In the UK, ratification was successfully stalled through legal action by Stuart Wheller who said that we the people had a “legitimate expectation” to be able to vote on Lisbon. But that has been lost - but hope still rests on an appeal, however slim that chance may be.

The EU is no a democratic institution. As the famous statment goes, it would not meet it’s own democratic criteria to join itself. And that goes quite some way to demonstrate the doublethink that surrounds and permeates it.

Conclusion

Democracy today is not democracy as it should be. It doesn’t meet the ideological requirements of democracy or even the practical requirements in Zimbabwe and the EU. The cry of “democracy!” spills from the mouths of all politicians, yet few ever actually do anythign about the issues in their own backyards. It is always someone else who is lacking in it; never themselves.

I am the first to admit that democracy is unlikely to be perfect in every, or indeed any, case. But these two examples are some of the worst in the world today - dictatorship under the banner of democracy.

“We The People” is a column written for the Wardman Wire. This blog post can also be seen here.

Democracy really does seem to be taking a huge battering at the moment.

In Zimbabwe, Mugabe is proclaiming that Morgan Tsvangirai will never lead the country - and that he will take the country in to civil war to prevent it. The Opposition leader, who gained more votes than Mugabe in the April presidential elections, has been detained numerous times whilst on the campaign trail.

There can be no free and fair elections in Zimbabwe at the moment. Mugabe must be removed from his position. If he wins the presidential election, he would have done so by intimidation. He makes it impossible for a free and fair election to be held.

Secondly, in one place that we just expect democracy to be ignored - the EU. Who are going to continue ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, despite it having been rejected by the Irish people.

What are they going to do? Make the Irish people vote again like over Nice? They’re not ruling it out.

So I say this to the EU: No means no. Accept it. You have no choice. Or at least you would, if you actually believed in demcracy and the rule of the people. The people have told you to eff-off. Do so.

We finally have a chance to vote on Gordon Brown! As has been flying around the blogosphere recently, we can vote to decide whether or not Madame Tussauds makes a waxwork of Gordo:

When Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair last year, for the first time in a 150 year history, Madame Tussauds took the decision not to immediately create a figure of the current Prime Minister.

Instead we chose to wait for a General Election to confirm Gordon Brown’s status. Ten months later there is still no sign that Mr Brown intends to go to the polls – so Madame Tussauds is holding its own election to let YOU decide the question: Gordon Brown – in or out?

The ballots will be counted and on Wednesday 14th May the results released. Work will either proceed on Mr Brown’s figure or be put on hold until a General Election is called, whenever that might be.

So, basically, because Gordo is a coward and chickened out, and as it becomes clear that Gordo continues to have no balls [despite having Balls], Madame Tussauds is offering us the chance to vote on him instead.

Voting closes 5pm on 13th May.

Go vote and let Gordo know that we don’t want him!

It seems that Labour are pro-referendums and direct democracy when they think that it will give them the answer they want, yet not when they think we’ll give them an answer that they don’t want. Whilst you can easily demonstrate that any political party has done this over time, for one party to do this within a couple of months shows contempt for the electorate of this country.

Either they do or do not believe in referendums and direct democracy. Wendy Alexander’s argument for a referendum in Scotland is that:

It’s time for them to put up or shut up… If [the SNP are] convinced [they've] got a majority, we shouldn’t leave it to the fag end of a parliament to get around to testing public opinion.

This can just as easily be applied to Gordon Brown’s government in Downing Street. If they’re so convinced that they are right and that the people support them, they should hold or referendum. Put up or shut up, as Wendy says.

Not to mention Labour’s lack of internal referendums on leadership…

Zimbabwe appears to be on the brink of finally getting rid of Mugabe and establishing proper democracy. At the very least, Mugabe’s party has lost control of the parliament, but still has 94 of the 210 seats, with the main Opposition party only two ahead on 96. So it is hardly a crushing defeat for him - but a defeat nevertheless.

We can all hope that this result means that the end is nigh for the tyrant Mugabe. We can all hope that Zimbabwe can at last go down a democratic - and hopefully less economically destructive - route in to the future.

Mugabe should accept the defeat and step down. If he forces a Presidential run-off vote, he will almost certainly be humiliated. And if he doesn’t, he will just end up with the same result as in Kenya - certainly not a good thing for anyone. But if he steps down now, he can ensure a better future for Zimbabwe and a less damning legacy of his own regime*.

This is an opportunity for Zimbabwe to move in a new, democratic, and brighter future. Let’s hope that opportunity is grabbed with both hands.

* Less damning, but damning nevertheless.

Nick Clegg proposes such a plan. Now the flippant answer to this is simple “remove the Lib Dems, then”. But this doesn’t answer the question. And besides, there never will be 150 Lib Dem MPs to remove.

On a serious note, Clegg’s justification doesn’t work. He wants to remove 150 MPs from the Commons - taking it to around 500 - to save money. Well, primarily to save political parties from having to raise money from big donors. Let’s have a little pop quiz:

So why do political parties raise money?
a) To pay MPs
b) To run the rest of the party
c) So they can swan off on holiday

So Clegg’s idea that fewer MPs equal less need for party fund-raising just doesn’t make sense… especially since he also wants more state money to go to political parties. Which would eat up the £30m savings he said would be generated by cutting the number of MPs. There is, of course, another way of saving money - cutting MPs salaries or expense allowances.

The idea of cutting the number of MPs also raises other questions - such as the potential impact on democracy. Is fewer MPs a goof thing? Not in and of itself. If anything, actually, more of a bad thing as MPs become more and more distant from their constituents. Any reduction in the numebr of MPs would have to be matched in devolution of powers to local councils, or as part of a proper devolution system - equal English, Scottish, and Welsh parliaments.

The plan to reduce the number of MPs sounds good in a press release or a speech, but in reality it isn’t much cop. The downsides of the loss of representatives simply isn’t worth the tiny amount of money that is [supposedly] to be saved.

As the news informs us that MPs have decided not to allow us a democratic vote on the Lisbon Treaty…

The European Union and related issues is a topic that causes great schisms across most parties, one that is usually widest across the Conservative party, but recently it is the Lib Dems who have been most split by it, primarily over what we should have a referendum on, the “Libson Treaty” or EU membership itself.

Referendums and Democracy

Referendums are a form of direct democracy, whereby we the people answer a yes-or-no question on a subject of importance. In some countries, such as Switzerland, referendums are standard events. In others, such as here in the UK, they really aren’t. After all, we have had only one referendum ever. Which just happened to be on entry to what is now the EU.

Referendums are important events, no matter how often they are carried out, and just become even more important the rarer they are. After all, the last referendum decided that we would be members of the Common Market, which has become the EU without we the people getting another vote. Even though the last vote was held a decade before I was even born.

Read the rest here.