Constitutional and societal reform is required in the UK. This is an unsupported assertion that I hope I have covered to some extent in past posts and that I hope to polish in later posts. I have an imaginary UK and Europe in my mind that we could create given the public’s buy-in.
In my opinion, the only party that is brave enough to make those changes and that is sufficiently free of the lobbyists is the Liberal Democrats. In fact, even individual parliamentary Conservatives who have supported some more radical constitutional reform in the past, have since shied away.
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#1 by Graham Smith on November 23rd, 2009 - 11:50 am
> Constitutional and societal reform is
> required in the UK.
You’re a bit late, Gavin.
Constitutional reform has just taken place: the former sovereignty of the United Kingdom is now subject to the whims of the bureacratic juggernaut that we know as the European Community.
I fear that, within my lifetime, we shall see civil war taking place upon the streets of our country, as people strive to break free from the totalitarian regime that has subverted our historic freedoms.
#2 by Gav on November 28th, 2009 - 9:58 am
The totalitarian regime that has “subverted our freedoms” is the failed constitution we have in the UK which allows those powers to be handed over without intervention by referendum and without insisting that, when those powers are handed over, they’re handed over to a democratic alternative.
If you want to be picky, of course, the sovereignty of the UK has never existed — since the UK was formed in 1707 sovereignty has remained in the hands of the monarch. At no point has that constitutional reform taken place which would have placed sovereignty with the people.
Personally, I blame the Conservative, Labour and the Liberal Democrats for this. And it is no good David Cameron thumping his chest when, actually, he hasn’t put together a coherent alternative to treaty after treaty after treaty.
What is needed is a vision for Europe setting out appropriate democratic reform of its governance (an elected Commission or at the very least an elected President of the EU who could appoint that commission).
But with constitutional reform on our side of the channel, the EU would seem more democratic in any case. Why, for example, should an MP for one constituency, be able to act like a President and appoint not only his entire cabinet but also the policy-maker for Europe who happens to come from these countries (the UK)? Wouldn’t it be much better to have an elected head of the government who could then appoint a Commissioner? If our electoral process, for this head of government, were as robust as the French presidential election system, a majority of the people would have voted for that person!