There is an undeniable problem with democracy in the UK, and that is it is not democratic. The causes of the problem are representation, political parties and internationalism.

The present system evolved out of our ancient aristocratic constitution whereby the representatives were for not the representatives of the people, and that has not fundamentally changed even with the transformation of Britain under democracy.  Representation is inherently elitist even where the representatives are the representatives of, and they can only be of when those who vote for them are a single coherent entity able to discuss and choose amongst themselves who should be their representative.  Constituencies in our country are not such single entities. The government’s adherence to unlimited immigration and multi-culturalism precludes coherency, to the benefit of the elite. Even without the elite’s politics of ‘divide and rule’ constituencies are still too large in terms of population ever to come together to discuss anything.

Representatives might be weaker in relation to those they represent if they were individuals but by organising themselves into political parties they form a self-sustaining elite. Supposedly these parties are of the people, in that anyone can pay to join them. But membership fee does not actually give members any rights over the party. Over the last few decades, and undoubtedly as a result of Europeanisation corrupting our political system, the relationship between an MP and his party has changed, with the creation of a two-tier structure within all parties whereby the ordinary members of the party become increasingly irrelevant to the MP. The ordinary members in a constituency, forming the lower tier, have no control over ‘their’ MP and indeed rarely now have a say in who ‘their’ MP or candidate is to be.  And if ordinary party members have no control in the matter then non-party constituents have no say whatsoever. 

Parties no longer have separate identities. People commonly talk of all parties being the same.  Parties do not hold to principle and there is no mechanism to make those in the ruling tier of political parties tell the truth or abide by any point. Once an MP has won the election no one other than his fellow MPs (his peers) have any control over him. Party rule is rule by a minority, it is just a dishonest form of aristocracy. Until recently the people had the safeguard of the House of Lords against the tyranny of the House of Commons, but that safeguard has been eroded and is about to be removed in its entirety. An apologist for the system might say that even if the MPs are not the representatives of the people maybe they are still in some way representative of the people.  But a member of an elite can only be representative of that elite, however that elite is constructed. On the basis of that argument they could have equally abolished the House of Commons and retained a purely hereditary House of Lords.

Parties are still ideological, it is just they all adhere to the same ideology which is internationalism. As the elite implements the political will of unelected foreigners and their institutions, whether that be the U.N., the E.U., the E.C.H.R. etc, they can be said to be the proxy of the ‘international community’ but they are not the representatives of our national community.  This then does not just provide the third fracture in democracy it effectively nullifies democracy, because internationalism removes the government even further away from the people. Western democracy no longer even pretends to be democratic.

One solution to the problem might be to adopt the referenda system as used in Switzerland. This is actually composed of three types of referenda: a mandatory referenda on changes to the constitution (the republic in southern Ireland has this);  a veto-right on laws made; and the right to initiate a referendum on any matter. The last two are not mandatory but occur when a certain number of citizens call for them. Connected with this is a fourth process, that of Vernehmlassungsverfahren, whereby public opinion is sought before laws are created. This means that the government already knows in advance whether a proposed measure is popular or not and therefore likely to be challenged by a referendum.

Referenda allows the majority of people a say in politics. It does not abolish the elite. Switzerland still has a political elite but that minority may be challenged at anytime by the majority. Even if a publicly initiated referendum is unsuccessful it alerts the political elite to the issue. The political elite must then pass laws which are representative of the people, not of the elite, because if they do not they will be challenged by the people. Referenda does not create ‘direct democracy’ as some people believe because there can never be ‘direct democracy’ with the populations modern countries have, but it does make ‘representative democracy’ representative of the people.

It must be emphasised that what Switzerland operates is a system of referenda. Britain holding the occasional referendum does not equate to the same thing.  Because they operate such a system, the very real threat of a referendum is enough to make Swiss politicians consider carefully what action to take.  The adoption of such a system in the UK would mean political parties would have to take into account the people and their interests not as at present the interests of other nations or politicians’ own pet ideologies. It would make those politicians who want a long career less reckless. And it would, of course, directly challenge internationalism which would undoubtedly be the main reason the mainstream parties would be opposed to the introduction of such a system. Witness the difficulties the internationalists have had trying to incorporate Switzerland into the ‘international community’. With more Switzerlands the ‘international community’ would effectively have to disband.

There are some obvious difficulties in introducing such a system into Britain: Switzerland is an independent country while Britain is subject to the E.U. ; E.U. rule means unlimited immigration which means perpetually changing demographics creating an unstable polity; Switzerland’s population is but the same size as London’s currently is;  Britain’s constitution is fundamentally different to that of Switzerland.

If there were but a single referendum on the matter Britain might remain ruled from overseas, however, the adoption of the referenda system would eventually mean cessation from the E.U., even with the deadweight of unlimited immigration, because referenda would begin to disrupt the E.U. system of rule by challenging its various laws, eventually leading to the collapse of its system.  Withdrawal from the E.U. would in itself challenge the supposed necessity for unlimited immigration, and immigration would rapidly have to be brought under control both for the sake of the national economy and also because the privileged position of migrants and asylum seekers etc would be open to immediate challenge by the people.  As the population of the British Isles is vastly greater than that of Switzerland the number of citizens needed to trigger a referendum might have to be greater than in Switzerland, though a clever statistician could argue otherwise. Parliament’s e-petition system, which has set a threshold at 100,000 signatures to trigger a response, shows that large numbers of citizens will sign up for change even though the politicians can ignore the e-petition system result. Imagine if the politicians were bound to hold a referendum at that 100,000 mark? The difference between the UK and Switzerland, or the republic in southern Ireland, is that our constitution is that of a divinely ordained monarchy with no visible origin, save with the ‘lordship of Adam’, whereas theirs are those of a man-made republic. Our constitution is a perfect whole, whereas theirs being created of many parts can be tinkered with on a daily basis.  However, much of what they refer to as constitutional, we refer to as institutional. There is, then, no reason why we could not have mandatory referenda on any changes to institutional matters, such as to the Church and to the Lords. There is though a very real counter against the use of referenda under the British constitution and that is that our sovereign government cannot be bound, indeed that is the essence of sovereignty. Switzerland has independence and autonomy but that is not the same thing as sovereignty.  Currently though, the British Isles has none of those things.