Oh no!
For the last three years, a series of votes have thwarted the ambitions of progressives. The Scottish referendum, the general election, the EU referendum and finally the US presidential election have all had a result that has brought even the most seasoned reader of The Guardian to tears. Like the exposed villain in a Scooby-Doo cartoon, the liberal elite believe they would have prevailed had it not been for some inconvenient factor. Their ideas must be the right ones, so some unreasonable factor must be to blame.
It’s voting. The leftists are actually blaming the act of casting a vote. Trump won, they say, because ‘democracy is broken’.
The trend in articles in the New Statesman and The Guardian is to state that the reason why recent elections have not advanced their ‘progressive’ world-view is due to democracy being at fault. ‘Our democracy is broken’, wails Zoe Heller. ‘Our democracy is drifting’, moans another editorial. ‘No country with a McDonald’s can remain a democracy’, announces George Monbiot. ‘Our democracy is broken’ repeats Monbiot. ‘American democracy is being derailed. Can faith be restored?’, cries Richard Wolffe. Even a former Archbishop of Canterbury is blaming democracy. It is toys out of the pram time for the Left.
Leftists cannot accept the fact that their bogus utopianism is not universally accepted. So they are now attacking the fundamental method people use to express their opinions through a series of myths. Here they are in chronological order.
There should be a second Scottish independence referendum
Given the margin of the EU referendum, the 55 per cent who voted against Scottish independence is decisive. But the SNP do not accept this result. If they did, their party would be irrelevant and should split. Now that the UK has voted to leave the EU, Nicola Sturgeon and her gang have argued that conditions have changed so much that the Scottish people need to be consulted again.
This is poppycock.
The SNP will use any twist and turn in our island story to demand a new plebiscite. They ignore the fact that they have the ability to initiate the process themselves. They could call an extraordinary general election for the Scottish Parliament to obtain a mandate for a new referendum. There is, however, an inconvenient obstacle. The Scottish Parliament has fixed-term elections and this can only be changed by a two-thirds majority. The SNP does not have this, currently being a minority government. These rules can only be changed in Westminster. That is not going to happen. But the SNP have to keep the prospect of a referendum alive or there is no point to their party. This does mean that the quality of their governance in Scotland never gets proper attention as every Scottish election becomes a mini-referendum. The SNP are using nationalist socialism to stay in power.
Only 25 per cent of the electorate voted Conservative in 2015
This is a back door demand for proportional representation and also tries to question the legitimacy of a decisive general election result. I have seen the Greens’ Caroline Lucas make this statement on television and amazingly no one brought her up for it as it is plainly nonsense. This statistic is for the entire registered electorate, including people who did not vote. Using Lucas’s own logic, the party that should have won the 2015 General Election should be ‘none of the above’, as 33.6 per cent of the electorate did not vote.
The general election is not a binary vote and the party that got the largest proportion of the votes as well as the largest number of seats was the Conservative Party. There was a referendum back in 2011 to change the voting system. The British people voted overwhelmingly not to do so. Our evolving first-past-the-post system of voting, with secret ballots, an expanding franchise, and fairer constituencies, has been a resounding success for the last three centuries compared to other European countries, which have been wracked by revolution and civil war to a point where their populations have lost faith in national governance. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The British people did not vote for a ‘Hard Brexit’ – there needs to be a second EU referendum on the actual terms.
Oh yes they did! Oh no there doesn’t! The Leave campaign made it very clear. ‘Take Back Control’ means exactly what it says on the tin. Brexit means Brexit, stated our new premier.
The basis of the Remain campaign was Project Fear, warning people of the consequences of a Hard Brexit. Remainers assumed that Brexit would be very hard indeed. Because the EU could not and did not make any fresh offer to the voters on the lines of ‘The Vow’ in the Scottish referendum, Remainers had to campaign on the basis of preserving the status quo and the dangers of deviating from this. So they did promise earthquakes, tidal waves, and swarms of killer bees should we vote to Leave. The voters were told that the choice was Remain or Hard Brexit. It was very clear.
The Remoaners cannot turn around and discredit the result as being the product of a misinformed electorate. They did most of the informing themselves. There is no need for a second referendum. We voted for Hard Brexit, the EU can only offer Hard Brexit or look weak. We will get a Hard Brexit. This is what we voted for. This is democracy.
In a second post, I will continue my survey of leftist myths about recent democratic votes. Stay tuned.
(Image: Mick Baker)
