The world’s gone mad (again)
It is not often that I am up at the time on a Thursday (10.35pm or thereabouts) for the BBC1 Question Time programme chaired by David Dimbleby, as I was last night.
The first two topics discussed were those of the US Presidential debate and, of course with Mrs May at her first EU summit, Brexit.
Two of the heavyweight panellists sitting around the table were the convicted fraudster under US law Conrad Black, former controller of Hollinger International (sometime publishers of the Daily Telegraph), and shortly to retire Kenneth Clarke MP. [Since I was listening to the programme on Radio Five Live I cannot identify the other participants.]
It was of interest to me that some strands of argument on both topics seemed to reflect a similar theme.
Conrad Black was a Trump supporter for the US Presidency, apparently because Trump was not a politician but an outsider … whereas Hillary Clinton was a member of the snobby elite which traditionally only took account of the views of ordinary people when forced to do so at Election time, but had also made a complete Horlicks of everything and was now just passing the highest office in the most powerful nation on Earth around within their own family dynasties.
On the EU Referendum, Clarke was in full denial mode like most Bremoaners – simultaneously paying lip service to the result (“I accept it, of course I do”) but then quibbling over the details of what sort of Brexit the Government might seek to achieve at the outset, never mind the one they might actually return with one day from the vast undemocratic bureaucratic dictatorship that moves between Brussels and Strasbourg.
The Bremainers apparently do this on the basis that nobody on the Brexiteer side – either during the Referendum or since – has discussed, still less yet agreed exactly what sort of Brexit the country was going to go for.
I have only two points to make here.
The first is that (from the viewpoint of anyone with half a brain) binary referenda are a ridiculous and fatuous way of taking any sort of democratic popular sounding. But once you go down the referenda route, if you do, you then have to accept the result. You cannot go back and have a second referendum (e.g on the basis the public must have got it wrong) and/or filibuster or otherwise seek to thwart the given ‘will of the people’.
The second is that the supposed ‘supremacy of the House of Commons’, combined with Ken Clarke’s much-vaunted right of each MP to form his or her own opinion on each subject – whether or not this is consistent with the views of those who voted him in – is all very well, but it doesn’t make sense in the wider context.
Is he saying that if the Tories issue a General Election manifesto, on which all its prospective MPs are supposedly standing – and then win the Election – that they (and/or the Government itself) have carte blanche to abandon everything in it on a whim if they choose?
Or is he effectively admitting that British democracy is a sham – just as it appears to be in the United States of America – whereby once every four or five years (depending in which country you’re talking about, but for now let’s just include every so-called Western democracy) the Establishment and ‘elite’ pretend to take account of the views of the Great Unwashed … but then, as soon as each Election is over … immediately go back to ignoring the will of the people as usual?
For these purposes, perhaps only, I’ll lump those who voted for Brexit in the UK’s EU Referendum and those who seem to be thinking of voting for Trump in the American Presidential Election together.
To a degree in both cases what we are considering is a protest vote.
Since Trump is a pompous windbag buffoon clearly unfit for public office, the only logical conclusion to reach is that those planning to vote for him are simply registering a general ‘two fingers’ in the direction of the US Establishment.
On the EU, the Remainers have been consistently effectively saying that leaving the EU would be a disaster. Instead (goes their argument) it is infinitely better to be inside and part of the EU, trying to persuade the other 27 countries to change what is wrong with it by argument and lobbying.
The logic against this – for some of those who voted to Leave – was inescapable.
David Cameron had set off on his famous but farcical attempt to emulate Neville Chamberlain at Munich (i.e. in Cameron’s case to renegotiate a minimum list of changes that the UK insisted upon, threatening that, if he didn’t get a deal that he could recommend to the UK people, he’d be first in the queue to vote Leave) … only then to come back with a ridiculous and tiny list of ‘concessions’ which barely stood up to any sort of scrutiny at all … and then only went and recommended them anyway as being a major reason to stay in!
That was the point at which Cameron’s goose was cooked. He’d cocked up by committing to have a Referendum in the first place and now he’d made himself look like a complete idiot over his ‘renegotiation’.
The Leavers’ logic thereafter went thus. It’s now as plain as a pikestaff that the EU is never going to change as a result of reasoned argument and persuasion from anyone, still less from UK politicians and statesmen (after all Cameron had just proved this with bells on).
So the only issue to decide in voting in the EU Referendum was whether the UK was better off ‘getting out’ … or, alternatively, remaining within the EU, accepting a continual ebbing of national sovereignty and any ability to make our own decisions, and effectively joining another 27 countries on a metaphorical sea cruise to God-knows-where whilst accepting that a bunch of faceless and unaccountable bureaucrats have locked themselves in the wheelhouse and there’s nothing that any of us can do about it.
For me, that just about seems to sum it up.
Well, unless you opt for the only other interpretation, which it seems that Ken Clarke and his ilk have, viz. that ‘consulting the people’ has never worked and anyway is logically unsound as a means of governing anything, so let us just play the ‘Western Democracy’ charade every five years (give the people the impression their opinion counts but in reality ignore it) just as we have been doing for the past 200 years.
I think that it actually boils down to a black and white choice.
Either (1) please don’t insult the people by ‘consulting them’ (via the ballot box) and then ignoring them … or (2), if you do consult them, bloody well accept that you must abide by the result.
To be honest, folks – given that I hate politics and politicians – (and I never thought I’d find myself committing this thought to paper) I really don’t mind which of those two it is.