This may come as a surprise to you, what with all our politicians saying ‘we must fight to protect democracy and all we stand for’ against the threat of Islamic terrorists.
The truth is, though, that the UK and the USA run on some very strange kind of democracy – if it can be called a democracy at all.
Let’s take a look at what the Collins English Dictionary defines a democracy as:
democracy n, pl -cies 1. a system of government or organisation in which the citizens or members choose leaders or make other important decisions by voting 2. a country in which the citizens choose their government by voting. [Greek dēmokratia]
Now here comes the interesting part. Sense 2, which applies to most countries calling themselves ‘democratic’, is a fundamentally flawed system. Well, I think so at least. And I’d like to explain why.
Imagine that we have a country with a population of 100,000. Those are then sub-divided into constituencies of 10,000. And each constituency elects one MP to represent them in Parliament.
I should point out now that this is a simplified version of Britain’s voting system. The concept of the system is called first past the post, where points are calculated based on the general consensus of subdivisions, or constituencies.
Now, on Election Day, each citizen casts his or her vote for either the Red Party or the Blue Party. Here is an imaginary table of results for each constituency.
Now see how many seats each party actually won.
The difference is quite marked. Now comes the interesting bit.
Supposing all said MPs from the Red Party were unable to attend the house due to an illness going around in the Red Party club. This means that supporters of the Red Party, regardless of whether or not their vote was successful, get no representation in Parliament whatsoever.
Now comes the more disturbing part of all this.
Supposing that all those in Parliament had views that were not shared by the general public. As a frivolous example, they all like strawberries and cream.
Now, if a bill is going through Parliament to ban strawberries and cream, and the general public opinion is that strawberries and cream are vile and a threat to society, the members of Parliament may not go with the public opinion, and instead all vote against the law.
I know this example is slightly frivolous, but if research concerning subconscious racism, sexism, homophobia and Islamophobia is to be believed, it could, in the end, widely impact on how the Government represents the people.
So, in short, we’re not living in a ‘true’ democracy because of the fact that instead of the people making decisions, the people elect other people to make decisions for them. This is technically a ‘republic’. The same is true in America, the self-styled ‘home of democracy’.
The only way we could ever achieve a true democracy is if ordinary people are permitted to make important choices. For example, if every week each citizen was given a list of proposed policies and asked to state their level of approval for each policy, that would be a ‘true democracy’ of sorts.
However, it gets worse. Even in the present state, a lot of people are denied the right to vote in Britain. Schoolchildren have reasonable intelligence, and politics affects them as much as anyone else – but they can’t vote. Prisoners can’t vote – even if they’ve been wrongly imprisoned. Asylum seekers (who often have genuine reason for fleeing to Britain, despite what the Daily Mail would have you think) can’t vote. Countless others can’t vote – and this has to stop if we really can charge into other countries calling ourselves ‘liberators’. Otherwise we’re just a bunch of hypocrites.
