Montag, 20. März 2017
Democracy in the Time of Brexit
jonhughes, 01:11h
Two hundred years ago, the Brits helped to defeat Napoleon. That might have been good news for the maniacs running Russia and Germany, but in terms of democracy in particular and social progress in general it threw back Europe a hundred years. And the Brits have kept looking back ever since. Their version of world history starts in 1066 - the only date they all know - with the Battle of Hastings and the other one at Agincourt, Magna Carta (sounds like Margret Thatcher) then the Second World War and now they have Brexit too. It's sobering to think that the century following the catastrophe of the First World War is nowhere near long enough for them to read the writing on the post-colonial wall (education always having been an important area in Britain when it comes to saving government money). Sobriety was never Churchill's strong point, but he could see through all the cigar smoke clearly enough into the future to recognise that something like the European Union would have to happen if the Germans and the French were to be kept from each other's throats and everyone else's. You won't easily find a more passionately pro-European piece of text than his Zürich speech in September 1946. Presumably the Tories were too excited by their Page 3 of Margaret Thatcher to bother to read it. But of course, being half American, Churchill wasn't a true Brit anyhow.
It was the old Tory Prime Minster Harold Macmillan who finally applied for EU (then "Common Market") membership in 1963 and the similarly old Charles de Gaulle who hit the nail on the head rather well with his famous answer, "Non!". Obviously, he understood the British mentality rather well. I'm an optimist though, having spent the last 50 years of my life believing in Churchill's United States of Europe without noticing that a population who voted more than once for Margaret Thatcher can't be right in the head. I thought Tony Blair was better news – until he single-handedly destroyed EU foreign policy by dancing off to war in Iraq with nice Mr Bush. That little act of solidarity cost him the Nobel Peace Prize he would surely have been awarded for his Good Friday Agreement - but that's life. Unfortunately, the €50000 per year it cost David Cameron's parents to send him to Eton wasn't enough to help him understand things any better: you can't feed a ravenous wild pig like the Tory party with rotting anti-European garbage for 40 years without it finally biting off your own hand.
Looking at it that way, it amazes me in the meantime that 31% of the Brits (48% of the 65% who bothered to vote) actively voted to remain in the EU! Jacques Delors obviously did a magnificent job the last time the EU had an even vaguely visionary President. Or maybe they just thought that Marine Le Pen had nice tits. We shall probably never know (their motivation, I mean). What I do know is that it wasn't my fault: although I'm a British citizen, my having lived outside the UK for more than 15 years was sufficient reason for the UK government to suspend my right to vote in the referendum.
33.7% of the British electorate voted for Brexit, showing that they at least know – or knew – how they'd like the world to be, despite all appearances. Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that a result like that would hardly justify cutting off continental Europe from supplies of fish & chips, but you'd be wrong. Like their friends in the USA, the British retain a primitive "first past the post" voting system which almost invariably provides the government with a comfortable absolute majority in parliament despite the fact that only about a third of even the people who vote actually vote for the "winning" party. It's not as though anyone in the UK is actually interested in the government representing the majority of the people: that would mean proportional representation and coalitions - like in Europe! Don't be fooled: what the British like is strong government, not democracy.
Here's a little example, in case you don't believe me. The Labour party is currently in what's called "opposition". The man they call "Leader of the Opposition" is Jeremy Corbyn, actually a nice chap even though many think that his flaccid support for the EU was a significant factor in the Brexit vote. In accord with British tradition, Corbyn used the full power of parliamentary party discipline (the appositely-named "whips") to insure that over 70% of Labour MP's voted in favour of the government's Brexit legislation. That was what Corbyn considered to be "the will of the people". Any further questions? The biggest surprise was that the government was supported by only 80% of voting MP's. Lists of their names were posted prominently.
Not that that's a problem for anyone else. Having campaigned about as robustly as Corbyn to remain in the EU, Theresa May's credentials as an opportunist fully in the tradition of Winston Churchill are less in doubt than her anti-European beliefs. Consequently, her government is not working 100% for any old Brexit, but rather for a 100% "hard" Brexit that even Rupert Murdoch's editors had failed to imagine.
Risking a brief glimpse of the mentality behind all this, like certain other nationalities, the Brits have a problem with not being respected to the extent to which they would like. The Tories in Westminster want to "make this parliament great again", blaming the EU for the collapse of the British Empire (rather than Thatcher for that of British manufacturing industry). Although it's a nice "woody" idea, I personally think it would be more plausible if they first came round to crediting Oliver Cromwell with his seminal contribution to parliamentary democracy. Unfortunately, he had to chop off Charles I's head to do it, and even then it didn't last long. The tourists certainly find it nice to photograph all the embarrassing ceremonial crap they still put on day after day, so I suppose parliament does still have a purpose.
What is a bit strange is that the process of making parliament great again is accompanied by a fanatical need to exclude exactly the same parliament from any involvement in the Brexit process itself. You never know: an MP might stumble across something important that no one had noticed and might even want it to be discussed publically! Actually though, indeed it would probably only waste time, and anyway, as we have seen, there's no opposition to do the job properly anyhow. Unfortunately, the EU-friendly Liberal Democrats are in no position to do anything, let alone represent a real opposition. They helped the Tories back to power in one of the more suicidal coalitions formed by any party anywhere since politicians learned to walk on their hind legs.
You have to hand it to the Brits: they certainly know how to pervert democracy (not that they're the only ones).
It was the old Tory Prime Minster Harold Macmillan who finally applied for EU (then "Common Market") membership in 1963 and the similarly old Charles de Gaulle who hit the nail on the head rather well with his famous answer, "Non!". Obviously, he understood the British mentality rather well. I'm an optimist though, having spent the last 50 years of my life believing in Churchill's United States of Europe without noticing that a population who voted more than once for Margaret Thatcher can't be right in the head. I thought Tony Blair was better news – until he single-handedly destroyed EU foreign policy by dancing off to war in Iraq with nice Mr Bush. That little act of solidarity cost him the Nobel Peace Prize he would surely have been awarded for his Good Friday Agreement - but that's life. Unfortunately, the €50000 per year it cost David Cameron's parents to send him to Eton wasn't enough to help him understand things any better: you can't feed a ravenous wild pig like the Tory party with rotting anti-European garbage for 40 years without it finally biting off your own hand.
Looking at it that way, it amazes me in the meantime that 31% of the Brits (48% of the 65% who bothered to vote) actively voted to remain in the EU! Jacques Delors obviously did a magnificent job the last time the EU had an even vaguely visionary President. Or maybe they just thought that Marine Le Pen had nice tits. We shall probably never know (their motivation, I mean). What I do know is that it wasn't my fault: although I'm a British citizen, my having lived outside the UK for more than 15 years was sufficient reason for the UK government to suspend my right to vote in the referendum.
33.7% of the British electorate voted for Brexit, showing that they at least know – or knew – how they'd like the world to be, despite all appearances. Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that a result like that would hardly justify cutting off continental Europe from supplies of fish & chips, but you'd be wrong. Like their friends in the USA, the British retain a primitive "first past the post" voting system which almost invariably provides the government with a comfortable absolute majority in parliament despite the fact that only about a third of even the people who vote actually vote for the "winning" party. It's not as though anyone in the UK is actually interested in the government representing the majority of the people: that would mean proportional representation and coalitions - like in Europe! Don't be fooled: what the British like is strong government, not democracy.
Here's a little example, in case you don't believe me. The Labour party is currently in what's called "opposition". The man they call "Leader of the Opposition" is Jeremy Corbyn, actually a nice chap even though many think that his flaccid support for the EU was a significant factor in the Brexit vote. In accord with British tradition, Corbyn used the full power of parliamentary party discipline (the appositely-named "whips") to insure that over 70% of Labour MP's voted in favour of the government's Brexit legislation. That was what Corbyn considered to be "the will of the people". Any further questions? The biggest surprise was that the government was supported by only 80% of voting MP's. Lists of their names were posted prominently.
Not that that's a problem for anyone else. Having campaigned about as robustly as Corbyn to remain in the EU, Theresa May's credentials as an opportunist fully in the tradition of Winston Churchill are less in doubt than her anti-European beliefs. Consequently, her government is not working 100% for any old Brexit, but rather for a 100% "hard" Brexit that even Rupert Murdoch's editors had failed to imagine.
Risking a brief glimpse of the mentality behind all this, like certain other nationalities, the Brits have a problem with not being respected to the extent to which they would like. The Tories in Westminster want to "make this parliament great again", blaming the EU for the collapse of the British Empire (rather than Thatcher for that of British manufacturing industry). Although it's a nice "woody" idea, I personally think it would be more plausible if they first came round to crediting Oliver Cromwell with his seminal contribution to parliamentary democracy. Unfortunately, he had to chop off Charles I's head to do it, and even then it didn't last long. The tourists certainly find it nice to photograph all the embarrassing ceremonial crap they still put on day after day, so I suppose parliament does still have a purpose.
What is a bit strange is that the process of making parliament great again is accompanied by a fanatical need to exclude exactly the same parliament from any involvement in the Brexit process itself. You never know: an MP might stumble across something important that no one had noticed and might even want it to be discussed publically! Actually though, indeed it would probably only waste time, and anyway, as we have seen, there's no opposition to do the job properly anyhow. Unfortunately, the EU-friendly Liberal Democrats are in no position to do anything, let alone represent a real opposition. They helped the Tories back to power in one of the more suicidal coalitions formed by any party anywhere since politicians learned to walk on their hind legs.
You have to hand it to the Brits: they certainly know how to pervert democracy (not that they're the only ones).
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