Democracy

I am going to do something that I should probably not do – something that I have largely avoided doing over the past couple of years. However – times are critical and needs must!

It is part of our wonderful human nature that we – from time to time – make bad decisions or bad choices. Sometimes these decisions affect other people to their – and to our – detriment.

Making a bad decision does not make one a bad – nor a stupid – person. Sometimes we are big enough to acknowledge when we have made a mistake. Other times we rigidly refuse to do so regardless of the outcome. It matters not, however, whether we are in denial or not – a bad decision remains a bad decision regardless of whether we accept the fact or not.

Further – the fact that a bad decision may have been taken by a very large number of people – maybe even by a majority of those who had a say in it – still does not alter that fact that it is a bad decision!

There is a reason why in the United Kingdom and in Canada we have representative democracies rather than direct democracies. It is characteristic of representative democracy is that while the representatives are elected by the people to act in the people’s interest, they retain the freedom to exercise their own judgement as how best so to do – with the express purpose of protecting the nation and its people against choices that may be self-harming.

The use of referenda in such democracies is a very dangerous practice and enormous care should be exercised whenever such a prospect is raised. There is a good reason, for example, why there has never been a referendum in the UK or Canada in favour of capital punishment.

The resolution to leave the European Union was a bad decision; the suggestion that we should leave without a deal is a far, far worse one. Virtually nobody who will have to operate under such an outcome thinks that to do so would be a good idea. Neither business nor workers do – pace today’s joint call by the CBI and the TUC. Scientists, academics, economists, healthcare providers and on and on… no-one does. The Europeans don’t. Our parliament as a body does not. Polls (as unreliable as they are) show that a considerable majority of the population does not.

The only group that positively pushes the idea of a ‘no-deal Brexit’ is that hard core of right-wing free marketeers who see opportunities for themselves and their like to profit from the carnage, much in the way that spivs and profiteers do in times of conflict or war. Should one have any doubts at all as to the likelihood that these people truly have the good of the nation at heart one only need look at who they are and at how they have acted over the past three years and more.

They are not on the side of ordinary people!

In spite of everything, however, the country is slowly sliding towards a hard exit and time is running out. Protestations that all we have to do is to believe in ourselves and that all will turn out alright in the long run are hopelessly naive (or downright mendacious!). There has been some revisionist thought in recent years that the appalling decisions taken in 1914 which led Europe to sleep-walk into the Great War have been somehow vindicated by later outcomes. No-one with any awareness or compassion believes this for a moment – and there is a very real chance that in years to come a decision to crash out of the European Union without a deal would come to be regarded in the same light.

I urge those who are able to consider doing the following two things:

Sign the petition to revoke Article 50.

Take part in the march on Saturday 23rd in support a final say.

Before it is too late!