Principles of Democracy and the Rights of the Electorate

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 26th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I remember the cries of outrage on Prorogation and the demands that Parliament should return because we had so much to discuss. Opposition Members were desperate to discuss these things, yet here we are, mid-afternoon on a Thursday, two days in, and I think I can count the number of Labour Members present on the fingers of one hand.

None of us came into Parliament to avoid making decisions, to duck the issues or to indulge ourselves in parliamentary processes, but to the outside world this appears to be exactly what the House is doing.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

If, as the right hon. Gentleman says, we were not elected to avoid making decisions, why did he seek to support a Prorogation when we still had 12 Bills outstanding?

[Oliver Dowden]

We could spend forever rehashing the political and legal arguments relating to Prorogation. The Government have accepted the outcome of the Supreme Court, although we disagree with it, and that has put an end to the matter. I do not think it will serve the House to discuss it any further. That is why we are back in this place.

To the outside world, all the House appears to do is say no: no to a second referendum; no to the single market; no to a customs union; no, no and no again to a deal. Perhaps most bizarrely of all, Her Majesty’s Opposition urge no to a no confidence motion. It is clear that we have reached an impasse. This Parliament becomes more entrenched and less effective by the day.

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[Oliver Dowden]

For the simple reason that I honestly do not believe that a second referendum would solve anything. I have yet to hear people who voted leave proposing a second referendum.

[Mr Carmichael]

Will the Minister give way?

[Oliver Dowden]

I am answering the right hon. Lady’s point, if the right hon. Gentleman will allow me.

The only proponents of a second referendum are those who wish to reverse the result of the first. If we were then in a position whereby we had one vote for leave in a referendum and one vote for remain in another referendum, how would that in any way solve the situation? Surely a better solution is to agree a deal and for the House to pass that deal so that the country can move on, which it so desperately wishes to do.

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[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I was very pleased earlier today that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) acknowledged that there is a common sense of good motive among Members of Parliament from all parts of the House. I confess that that has not always been reflected in the tone of many of the debates that I have attended, which has been a cause of some sorrow to me, because I believe that there is a huge amount of common ground in this debate on the principles of democracy and the rights of the electorate. Indeed, we were elected to Parliament to uphold those very rights.

I think most of us have a common dream—a dream of a society that is ever more prosperous and free; virtuous or, if not, at least seeking to become more virtuous; and happy, with people pursuing their goals and flourishing to their fullest extent, not trapped in poverty. The shadow Minister talked about the inhumanity and bureaucracy under this Government. I ask her please to read the Centre for Social Justice reports at the time leading up to the 2010 election, because they show that the state is never an instrument of kindness and compassion under any Government. It is always rule-bound and it is always inhumane. One of the things we all must do, which is not the topic of this debate, is to work out how to enable all the wonderful public servants in all our public services to be freer to express the compassion that they personally feel for other human beings. Members will find on the record a speech I made some time ago on just this subject in relation to the personal independence payment.

Now, I believe that democracy is the foundation of this common dream, and that foundation of democracy is something that I feel very deeply about: the moral, legal and political equality of every person. Every single person, irrespective of their actual merits, should be treated by our systems as morally, legally and politically equal. Somebody mentioned boundary changes earlier. My constituency happens to represent about the right number of people, but some constituencies are way too large and some are way too small. That does not reflect political equality.

Democracy ought not to be idolised. Goodness knows that things have gone wrong in the midst of this political crisis. I have referred to the economic crisis many times; I believe that we are in a profound crisis of political economy that goes way beyond the topic of any one particular debate. The fundamental issue at stake, though, is that we need to be able to restrain the coercive power of the state peacefully, at the ballot box.

I want to quote Karl Popper, a very important philosopher who started off on the left. I believe he was a Marxist who fled from Marxism when one of his friends was killed in a riot and the people organising it had no sympathy, saying that you had to break some eggs to make an omelette. At that point, he started thinking about whether communism was in fact scientific. Popper said—I paraphrase his remarks slightly to reflect the spirit of the day—that “You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government, and I personally call the type of government which can be removed peacefully at the ballot box ‘democracy’, and the other ‘tyranny’.” And that is the fundamental point. The public must be able to withdraw their consent from a system of government, and have it removed and replaced with a system that they prefer. We need a general election now, because this House has clearly withdrawn its consent from today’s Government. The Government should therefore fall, and we should have a general election. It is unconstitutional—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) grumbles from a sedentary position. I cannot hear him, but I will take an intervention if he wishes to make one.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Surely the point is that what we get with a general election is a change of Government. The hon. Gentleman is talking about a system of government, which is a quite different thing.

[Mr Baker]

I am talking about both. I am talking about the principle of democracy, which is the stability that comes from both the Government and the system enjoying democratic legitimacy expressed through the ballot box.

My second point is about the European Union. I am here today, although I care about many things, because of the way that the European Union constitution was handled. It was put to referendums in Lithuania, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Spain, Austria, Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Germany and Finland, all of which said yes. I had read the constitution and I knew that when the referendum came I should vote against it because it was too bureaucratic and therefore, I thought, likely to be inhumane. When it went to France and the Netherlands, they said no, and so referendums were cancelled in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and, yes, the United Kingdom.

But what did the European Union and those who govern it do? They did not change course and say, “It turns out we can’t get this system through the democratic consent of the peoples of Europe, so we must take another course.” As anyone who has read Open Europe’s side-by-side comparison of the Lisbon treaty, which replaced the European constitution, next to that constitution will know, they are functionally equivalent. What they did was an absolute democratic outrage. They changed the constitution of France to avoid a referendum and they made Ireland vote twice. That is why I am in politics.

The fundamental issue at stake today—