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It does make me smile

Regular Rust readers will know that I exercised my most fundamental democratic right (some might say duty) for the first time in my life on 23rd June 2016 when I recorded my vote in favour of Brexit in the UK’s EU Referendum.

To this day I remain defiant in the face of constant criticism from family members and friends who have recoiled in horror at the news of my five decades of declining to vote in any election, local or national, and then seen fit to lecture me about the supposed dereliction of my democratic/political duty.

To my mind, I am not obligated – either by the principles underpinning democracy or (most particularly) the stirring example of those who ‘gave their lives so that I would have the right to vote’ – to make my mark upon every ballot paper for which I am eligible. Rather the key element of democracy in any form – to my mind – is ‘freedom’. Which boiled down to its essence is the freedom to vote … or indeed not vote, if the individual so wishes.

I have always said that if the UK were ever to make electoral voting compulsory, I’d go into the booth and deliberately ‘spoil’ my ballot paper. And would be happy to serve a gaol sentence in consequence if necessary. After all, if I form the view that nobody seeking election is standing for the policies I wish to see carried out and/or indeed is ‘worthy’ of receiving my support, then why should I give any of them my vote?

It’s the ultimate protest. Or it would have been, if only David Cameron hadn’t given people like me the chance to vote in an “in-Out” Referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU.

We are currently fast approaching three months since the UK voted for Brexit and the aftermath of the decision is still being debated all over the country:

The Government is EITHER quite properly taking its time to devise an opening negotiating position, anxious to get it right – OR constantly being shown up for its total failure to have set in motion appropriate advance planning for the supposedly unlikely event of a Brexit vote and, day by day, becoming the laughing stock of the world.

The UK economy is EITHER defying all the doom-mongers who said we’d go straight down the pan if a Brexit vote came in – OR is living on borrowed time as eventually and inevitably the disastrous effects of the ridiculous Brexit vote finally unfold in all their horrifying catastrophic glory.

singleAllegedly, the ‘Establishment’ and all other members of the business elite who voted to Remain (being intelligent enough to appreciate in advance which was indisputably the ‘right’ decision) are totally entitled to do everything they possibly can to prevent Brexit happening, or at least mitigate its adverse effects by trying to ensure it becomes some form of Brexit-lite, even if that means totally ignoring one of the main reasons that the majority of the nation voted for Brexit (re-gaining control of our borders and restricting the flow of EU migration).

The Remainers’ argument seems to be that the UK is so much better off inside, rather than outside, the EU’s single market that it is worth paying the downside price (indeed any downside price) of EU membership.

rightsAllegedly, also, according to the TUC and indeed it appears Mr Jeremy Corbyn, one reason why Brexit is going to be such a disaster in that it may mean that the many ‘workers’ rights’ (equal pay, maternity and paternity leave, the duration of the working week – there are several more but I cannot remember what they are) that the EU caused to be enacted in Britain may somehow fall by the wayside.

I have to say that I don’t understand this argument in any event, for it seems to deny that the UK has the ability (via Parliament) to enact any workers’ rights it wishes at any time … including any that would be imposed upon us by the EU, or indeed ones even more favourable to workers than that – [here I don’t want to get into a ruck over whether, if the UK tried to enact greater rights for its workers than the EU had imposed, the EU would actually allow that to happen, or not.]

I’m not making the following point as a Brexiter (though I am one), but it seems to me that all these groups still peddling an anti-Brexit line on the basis that the UK would be so much better in the EU than out of it have a fundamental problem of logic.

Pardon me for being thick here, but is it not the case that those continuing to argue both that (1) being part of the EU, especially its single market, is economically better for the UK than not being part of it; and/or separately (2) the UK must remain in the EU to protect the aforementioned ‘workers rights’ are ignoring – or completely and conveniently forgetting – one of the biggest, if not the biggest, objections to the structure and manner in which the EU is run and makes its decisions?

I’m referring to the fact that, at its core, those wielding ultimate power within the EU not only pay no regard at all to the principles of democracy (i.e. the people’s right to elect and/or throw out its lords and masters) but are actually unelected and unaccountable to anyone but themselves.

In other words, by arguing as they do, those who maintain that the UK would be immeasurably better off within the EU than out of it – whether that be economically and/or in order to protect ‘workers’ rights’ – are actually saying they’d prefer to live under the control of a totalitarian (or, to put it in a more sanitised manner ‘undemocratic’) super-state than a democracy.

Well, that’s it then.

In future I’m certainly not going to take any lectures from ‘holier than thou’ Remainers about my democratic dereliction of duty in my lifelong choice not to vote in UK elections.

Why should I, when they profess to be quite happy to live forever under the yoke of a non-democratic, non-accountable, political executive?

There’s barely a cigarette-paper thinness of difference between our respective views, or so it seems to me.

 

 

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About Simon Campion-Brown

A former lecturer in politics at Keele University, Simon now lives in Oxfordshire. Married with two children, in 2007 he decided to monitor the Westminster village via newspaper and television and has never looked back. More Posts