The ThunderDragon

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.

“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.

It’s almost like the impossible has been achieved.

Gordon Brown has said that “ratification will not take place… until we have the judgement” of the High Court on whether a referendum is required.

Lord Justice Richards was launched an attack on the government’s actions in taking the treaty through both Houses of Parliament - with a lack of opposition from the Lib Dems in one and active connivance in the other - saying:

The court is very surprised that the government apparently proposes to ratify, while the claimant’s challenge to the decision not to hold a referendum on ratification is before the court.

The court expects judgement to be handed down next week. The defendants are invited to stay their hand voluntarily until judgement.

And had Brown not stayed his hand over the formal and final ratification of the treaty/Constitution he would have invited Stuart Wheeler, the man behind the court battle, to seek an injunction to prevent it.

So Brown isn’t postponing formal ratification because he wants to know what the courts will say, but because he doesn’t want the utter humiliation of being told to stop what he’s doing.

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.

Today, we all own the people of Ireland a huge debt of gratitude. For they have voted against the Lisbon Treaty!

Ireland is the only one of the 27 EU member states have actualy put it to a popular vote. Theya re the only ones who actually asked the people what they want. And the people said no.

This should now be the end of the Lisbon Treaty. This should now be the end of the continuing sweeping up of national powers into an undemocratic suprantional institution. If the statement of the French Prime Minister is true, of course:

If the Irish people decide to reject the treaty of Lisbon, naturally, there will be no treaty of Lisbon.

If the EU force Ireland to vote again - as they did last time over the Nice treaty - then they just show themselves to be disgusting anti-democrats. And if they try, the Irish people should refuse to vote.

The Lisbon Treaty has been rejected by the only ordinary people who were given the choice. The constitution Treaty is not wanted. It must be retired, in full. With no little bits brought in through the back door as normal business.

It is not wanted. It must now be discarded and shredded.

The only appearance it should ever make again is in the history books, as a defeated attempt to remove the power from the people.

I mean seriously. They’re elected to do a job. To represent the people. Whether that be in Westminster, Bruseels/Strasbourg, Holyrood, the Senedd, or even at the local town hall.

So why do they keep fucking fiddling their expenses?! They get paid to do a job. If they don’t think that they get paid enough and want more money, then they can go into the private sector and try their luck. But what they shouldn’t do is follow the examples of Derek Conway and Giles Chichester.

David Cameron is absolutely correct in his statement to say:

Giles Chichester is right to stand down as leader of our MEPs to prepare a full explanation of how his office is funded. Just as I expect our MPs to adhere to the highest standards, so must our MEPs. The tax-paying public have a right to know how their money is being spent and politicians have a duty to ensure it is spent properly.

But those words now need to be followed up with actions. Since both of the main expenses scandals have involed Conservative politicians, the Conservative Party must take the lead in ensuring that such actions are stopped.

As such, the Conservative Party should publish a monthly audit of all expenses claimed by Conservative MPs and MEPs, with explanations for the claims from the politicians. To ensure that, in future, all Tory politicians are completely in the clear over their expenses.

To show that he is committed to following pretty words with string action, Cameron must implent this without delay. And MPs who refuse to comply should lose the whip, and new candidates selected in their constituencies.

By doing this, the Conservatives will shame the other parties and Parliament itself and, with any luck, cause Parliament to take up the baton and produce this for all MPs.

Somehow I doubt that Peter Lilley is the most popular MP in the House of Commons today after suggesting that MPs should get a pay cut as owers are passed to the EU.

If people receive more responsibility, they get higher pay - the same should be true of Parliament…

I don’t have a masochistic desire to see MPs’ pay cut, but still less do I want to see our powers diminished, and the best way to prevent the latter may be to link pay to responsibilities…

I don’t actually know any MP who entered Parliament to become financially better off.

Nonetheless, as the prospect of being hung in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully, so the prospect of finding our pockets a bit emptier at the end of the month and having to justify that to our spouses, may wake up those who have shut their eyes to what’s happening.

If we don’t face up to what is happening, we will find we are progressively relegated to what Bagehot called ‘the dignified part of the constitution’.

Well said that man! MPs should get paid for the responsibility they have over laws - not for the number of them that they pass. Especially since Labour seem to prefer making new laws to enforcing existing ones.

But there is just no way MPs will vote the Members of Parliament (Pay and Responsibilities) Bill into law.

Tonight is Eurovision. Unlike last year, however, I won’t be getting drunk and watching it. Or even getting drunk or watching it. Which is kinda a pity.

At least our entry to this year’s Eurovision entry is pretty good. Not that it matters, as all the voting is political rather than with any reference to the actual song at all.

Though, unfortunately, Ireland’s glovepuppet Dustin the Turkey didn’t make it through to the final with his piss-take of the whole contest.

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…

The nationalised of Northern Rock is to be shrunk to half its size, with thousands of jobs being axed, due to EU competition rules.

I thought the idea of the nationalisation was to prevent thousands losing their jobs through the inevitable slimming down that any private purchaser would enact?

Why didn’t Brown and Darling think of the EU rules before they decided on nationalisation? Or did they just not look through it properly - despite the length of time they took to come to a decision?

Seems like the next queue won’t be outside Northern Rock, but ex-Northern Rock outside the Job Centre.

A Labour government planning to axe thousands of jobs in a nationalised bank primarily based in the north of England. You couldn’t make it up.