Does anybody remember the good old days when we at least thought we had a functioning democracy?
In this context, the good old days are not that old, perhaps only as far back as 2010. It was in 2016 that the shroud fell away. The referendum on our membership of the European Union was an astonishing example of direct democracy, with a high turn-out and a clear, unequivocal outcome. And then the wheels came off. 
David Cameron, despite promising to respect the outcome of the referendum and implement the result, as did all the major parties except the SNP, almost immediately resigned. There then followed one of the most disgraceful periods in the history of our parliament where, for three and a half years, a concerted effort was made to overturn the referendum result and deny the British public what they had voted for. This was an all-party effort, strongly supported by the Speaker of the House of Commons in a role that is constitutionally apolitical.
After Cameron came Theresa May with her infamous ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ statement after which she promptly arranged possibly the worst deal imaginable, which still struggled to get through parliament.
A new post was created, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, with David Davis as the first holder of that office as well as being appointed the Chief Negotiator. Davis lasted less than two years, resigning after his position was compromised by May and Olly Robins effectively shutting him out. Robins was appointed as Chief Negotiator after Davis and stayed whilst the negotiations were concluded to May’s satisfaction before another Leave supporter was appointed, Lord (David) Frost, who was left with little time to improve the deal that May had orchestrated.
Finally, in 2019, Boris Johnson became the Prime Minister and called a general election with a simple, clear message, ‘get Brexit done’. It was almost like a second referendum and delivered yet another emphatic message to our politicians that not only did we mean it when we voted to Leave but that we also expected it to be enacted.
It was during these Brexit years that the Conservatives were kept in power primarily on the basis that they were the only party likely to allow a referendum and implement the result. The collapse of the Tory vote in this year’s election is partially based on the party’s usefulness to Brexit being exhausted. Whether Johnson was ever a true Leaver or just a political opportunist is debatable, though it would be right to recognise May’s deal left him with little room for manoeuvre.
Biden’s victory in the US Presidential election in 2020 added to Johnson’s woes as Britain then had a partisan President who favoured both Ireland and the EU.
As we came out of the COVID pandemic lockdowns, life started to return to normal and more focus was placed on Brexit. Johnson's government sought to implement the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. The bill was introduced to address what the government called 'unacceptable barriers to trade' that the protocol introduced within the UK internal market. The government also renewed the proposed Bill of Rights that had its origins in the Conservative’s 2010 manifesto, though not pursued whilst in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The Bill of Rights would have replaced the Human Rights Act and changed the relationship between domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights. Alarm bells rang in the halls of Brussels and Tony Blair's mansion. There was a possibility that Blair’s transfer of powers from elected politicians in parliament to the corporations, Quangos, NGOs, regulators and politicised judiciary would be at risk, as well as our ties to the EU.
What could be done? First of all they needed to get rid of Johnson. Well, that was straightforward. If you're going to have a piece of birthday cake in your house on your birthday then it’s clearly an affront to democracy and you need to be removed. The Conservative Party then followed their normal process to elect a new leader of the party (and, therefore, Prime Minister). This is where the Conservative Party's internal democracy became a little bit of a problem because the candidates were whittled down by the parliamentary party and then offered to the conservative party membership for a free vote.
Unfortunately, the membership decided to vote for the ‘wrong’ candidate, Liz Truss. Then followed the infamous Truss/Kwarteng mini-budget from which the mere suggestion of stimulating growth apparently crashed the entire UK economy, which was obviously in fine fettle beforehand.
Who could rescue this appalling economic situation? How about the previous Chancellor who ‘borrowed’ (actually printed) half a trillion pounds to give to people so they could sit at home and watch the television. It wasn't difficult to prise Truss out of number 10, it just needed the assistance of the financial institutions, the Bank of England and the somewhat optimistically titled Office of Budget Responsibility. This allowed the Conservative Party to re-write the rules for electing the party leader so that the correct person could be crowned, Rishi Sunak. Almost immediately, the economy recovered in a miraculous manner of which even Gordon Brown would have been proud of.
Sunak needed some real talent in his Cabinet so engineered, with the monarch’s support, an immediate elevation to the Lords for David Cameron, taking up one of the great offices of state without that irritating hindrance of being elected.
The real purpose, of course, was to protect the linkage to the EU and other European institutions, not least the courts. Therefore, the first actions of Sunak included a full replacement of the NI Protocol and the cessation of work on the proposed Bill of Rights.
The Windsor Agreement, with its Royal stamp of approval by the use of the term Windsor, was hailed as a great move forward for the UK by all those who either didn’t want to leave the EU or didn’t bother reading the protocol. In practice, the Agreement ties Northern Ireland ever more rigidly into the EU single market, creating a trade border in the Irish Sea, and indirectly prevented any significant divergence from EU rules for the UK as a whole.
The whole Northern Ireland situation was a red herring, albeit a cleverly concocted one. The Good Friday Agreement did not say much of what was claimed. The idea of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland was never the intent of the UK government so the only hard border would have been put in place by the EU.
If you look at the borders of, for example, Poland, Hungary, France and Germany you'll see that there's much more rigid border security and customs control than anything that was likely to be placed in Ireland. The suggestion that international trade would be compromised by having an open border in Ireland seemed to defy the way international trade is transacted, which is almost exclusively by digital transactions.
And then we have the recent Labour ‘landslide’, which was less of a Labour triumph and more of a Tory collapse. The campaign came with enough dirty tricks against Reform to keep the uni-party on top, aided and abetted by Blair’s apparatchiks such as Ofcom, whose guidance was that media coverage should be based on the two previous general election results, i.e. when Reform didn’t exist, and the media who hosted debates between the leaders which excluded the party that was polling third in the polls and occasionally second.
The turnout was very low and would have been even lower if Nigel Farage had not energised the campaign when he threw his hat in the ring. Labour’s ‘landslide’ was based on 33% of the vote and only about 20% of the actual electorate. Both Reform UK and the Green Party suffered from the impact of the first-past-the-post system, between them securing over 6 million votes but with only 9 MPs.
This is what we laughingly call ‘representative democracy’. The candidates are now less likely to have direct links to the constituency in which they’re standing for election. Largely gone are the local people who lived and worked in the constituency, possibly with deep family roots and connections. Nowadays we have candidate lists provided by the central offices of the major parties with little attention paid to the local constituency associations.
The new Labour government is working at pace to implement some radical initiatives which will have huge impacts on all our lives with a wafer-thin democratic mandate. Will we see parliamentary reform? The simple answer is ‘no’, not whilst the Conservatives and Labour hold the whip hand. The first-past-the-post system suits them, their worst case scenario is to be forming a shadow government. They just have to sit on the other side of the chamber for a few years.
It does feel like we've got what we didn't vote for. And we're in good company. In France, Holland and Germany political parties of the left are working hard to ensure parties of the right do not access power even if they actually win the elections. If we want to see real political shenanigans then naturally we turn to the United States. 2016 looms again of course, as the Democrat leaning media were confidently predicting Hillary Clinton to sweep Trump aside with something like a 97% confidence factor. The realisation that the people may have voted differently to the way that they were told to created one of the most entertaining evenings of watching American politics on television.
Of course the Democrats and their supporters accepted the result in good grace and immediately set about denigrating Trump and his presidential team. We saw the early appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate collusion with Russia; a three-year investigation that came up with blanks other than a few process crimes by some individuals which were completely unrelated to the purpose of the investigation.
All eyes are now clearly on the upcoming presidential election. The Democrats have had a good go with the application of lawfare and the attempt to either imprison or bankrupt Trump. Some may claim this extended to attempted assassination.
Now that the mask of protecting Biden’s cognitive decline has also finally fallen away, the decline that most of us have seen quite clearly for years, the realisation that Sleepy Joe is going to be no match for Trump come election day has triggered a change of candidate.
The Democrats, though, have left themselves in something of a fix. The obvious pick should be the Vice President, Kamala Harris, but the Democrats recognise that her performance and ratings is almost as bad, if not worse, than Biden’s. However, not only would the optics look bad if she was sidelined, but a significant amount of campaign donations might also become inaccessible. In the immediate aftermath of Biden withdrawing, it appears that Harris has sufficient support to be the presumptive candidate. The only other declared candidate is Marianne Williamson, though the rules to be followed at the Democratic National Convention have not yet been published. By endorsing Harris, Biden has effectively freed the DNC delegates bound to him from their pledge to vote for his nomination, though it is unknown whether they are now free to vote for their desired candidate or have their pledge carried over to Harris. The DNC is scheduled to be held 19-22 August in Chicago.
Whoever is the Democrat candidate, let’s hope the election is ‘free and fair’. At least the Americans still get to pick their leader.