We need a broad movement within the Conservative Party that will push for referendums, citizens’ initiatives and the rest of the paraphernalia of direct democracy. I don’t just mean a referendum on Europe - though, naturally, that is the obvious place to start. I mean full-on Helvetic people power, as adumbrated in this best-selling publication. I have returned to the back benches in order to concentrate on building such a movement.Hannan was the Tories' legal affairs spokesman in the European Parliament.
Thanks to Paul Waugh.
Politicians really are stupid everywhre (at least some of them). Now they want a referendum on the EU - because they think the "silent majority" is against it...
ReplyDeleteWhat about a referendum on the death penalty eg - probably also a majorits is for it...
Or a referendum on ... whatever you say...
Either you have a type of democracy where almost everything i decided by a referendum like in Switzerland (which produced a lot of problems for their politicians) or you have a representative democracy like the rest of Europe, or at lest the EU.
Can you imagine a direct democracy in the EU - the smaller countries would have no chance at all...
This is a re-used comment fragment, for which I apologise (although its first version has not yet appeared on the blog to which I originally sent it this morning): Alvin Toffler, writing in 1980 The Third Wave, foreshadowed much of what we have now, and tried to show us some pointers for resolving the difficulties. His look forward to the 21st century is at the end (Ch 28) and starts with 3 ideas: Minority power, Semi-direct democracy, and Decision division.
ReplyDeleteWe need to look closely at the non-directive thoughts of Nick et al in the LDs - perhaps they too have read AT, but, now they are at the sharp end, they don't tell us clearly how to find the direction to take.