I thought I'd take a quick break from my dissertation to write a short piece on the aftermath of yesterday's EU referendum vote. In that vote, 81 Conservative MPs rebelled against the Government.
In true McCarthy style, the rebels were described by their supporters as 'patriots'. I'm not sure when it became un-British to want to stay in the EU but there it is.
Perhaps more interesting was the claim that a vote against a referendum was 'undemocratic'. This reflects the modern phenomenon described by the Economist as 'Starbucks politics'. In a world where people have become used to personalised treatment in other areas of life, they demand the right to pick and choose government policies.
We live in a parliamentary democracy. In the words of the Economist:
The basic deal of parliamentary democracy is, or used to be, that on polling day voters make an overall choice among the packages on offer. They can turf out the government at the next election, but until then they have to live with compromise, frequent disappointment and occasional coercion.
It is based on an acceptance that government, with all its conflicting priorities, cannot be done on a single-issue basis. That reasoning no longer seems to convince a large number of people. They want their say on individual issues and accuse any government which refuses them of being undemocratic.
As California shows, direct democracy is not such a great idea. It is not practical for each and every government decision to go to a plebiscite. It causes chaos as governments lose the ability to govern. Referenda should be reserved for those rare occasions when they are truly necessary. Otherwise they undermine the very democracy they are meant to serve.
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