Democracy versus politics (continued)

After a very busy time of it yesterday I made myself a much-needed stiff drink and relaxed in front of the television to watch the BBC1 Six O’Clock News. One of the main topics was the Government’s now published Great Repeal Act, which was getting the Opposition extremely aeriated, an impression reinforced overnight by my just-completed swift perusal of the UK newspaper websites.

What strikes me is the apparent illogicality and/or lack of regard for democracy underlining these protests.

One of the key complaints that the UK has always had about the unaccountable EU commission/secretariat/bureaucracy (backed of course by the governments of the other 27 country members, a fair proportion of which are basket cases) is its capacity for coming up with Big Brother-style dictats and regulations affecting our everyday lives that UK doesn’t agree with and/or which, left to our own devices, we would never have chosen to impose upon ourselves.

Yet – okay, generalising here to the point of absurdity to make my point – suddenly we find  our esteemed Official Opposition embracing every last law, regulation, policy and directive that the EU has ever dreamed up as being by definition the best thing since sliced bread … and also apparently suggesting that the very notion that the UK Government – through normal Parliamentary process – should ever be able to discard, repeal, reverse or change any of them as an affront to democracy, justice, ‘the right thing’ and indeed what is best for Britain.

Hang on a minute, chaps!

So let’s get this straight. You’re actually saying that, rather than relying upon the UK version of democracy – in which, via General Elections, any particular elected Government of the day can not only enact its manifesto commitments but indeed amend, change or repeal any pre-existing law and regulation that it wishes (provided, of course, it can win the necessary votes in Parliament to make that part of UK law), all this at the risk that, at the next General Election, any new Government gaining power could theoretically reverse every last one of them – you’d prefer to accept any and all EU ones without question, query, protest or even potentially scrutiny, feedback or even perhaps the right to challenge them?

My response to that proposition is to suggest to you that, never mind getting rid of the anachronism and hotbed of mutual political backscratching that is the House of Lords, why don’t you just do the logical decent thing and de-commission the whole House of Commons as well, and indeed do away with the UK system of democracy in its entirety – then reverse the Article 50 notice to quit, beg forgiveness from Brussels, and get back into the EU, but this time do it properly rather than half-heartedly (as hitherto the UK has always done by niggling away at, and carping about, everything that the EU has got up to or done, starting with its eighteen-or-whatever-its-is consecutive years of completed unaudited accounts)?

After all, with the MEPs the UK currently retains, we have all the ‘hot air’ (all mouth but no trousers) access capacity to EU processes that we shall ever need.

Just think of all the hard-earned taxpayer’s money that we’d save by abolishing the UK’s system of democracy!

If we wished, we could spend all of that on the bottomless pit that is the NHS, as it seems many of us seem to think is absolutely essential to the well-being of the nation.

But let’s get real for a moment.

Is not all this heat being generated by the supposed Opposition just a ruse by the Labour Party to prevent a popularly-elected Government (okay, yes, a Tory one) doing what it was elected – or wants – to do?

And might not the Labour Party’s sudden conversion to its ‘the EU is so good and great for the UK’ view actually have quite a bit to do with the fact that – under the UK’s existing democratic system – the Labour Party, at least so long as Mr Corbyn and his acolytes hold sway over it, knows full well that it has zero chance of ever winning a General Election and becoming the UK Government?

In other words, given the current state of the Labour Party, championing the EU (potentially at the expense of the UK’s interests) is the only method it has at its disposal to affect policy within the UK.