Winston Churchill is quoted as saying that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Yet there are many ways to implement democracy, not all are equally awful and some may take a little while to get used to.

It used to be that the Leader of the Labour party was democratically selected through a complex process involving block votes by Trades Unions. This centralised the voting power of many thousands of Trades Union members into the hands of comparatively few power brokers. Changing this to a more transparent system opened the door to entryism and swelled Labour Party Membership with supporters of the anti-establishment Jeremy Corbyn.

It used to be that the Leader of the Conservative party was democratically selected by the sitting MPs. They too had changed over to a system of one member one vote where the final two candidates selected by MPs would be decided upon by the membership.

The d'Hondt system of proportional representation used for EU elections allowed a visible and growing result for single issue politics that UKIP were able to exploit at the expense of largely Conservative votes. Whilst they benefited greatly from this more democratic system of elections they criticised European institutions for their complexity and the distance placed between the electorate and the final decision.

UK Tories have been largely Eurosceptic at the grass roots of their party for decades. David Cameron had needed to appeal to these grass roots voters in order to become party leader. Concerned that the rise of UKIP might both affect Britian’s historically successful record in achieving her aims within Europe and that their momentum built in Brussels may translate to Westminster, promised an in-out referendum. The intention was that this promise would win Eurosceptic support whilst the result would silence their demands.

Making the vote legally binding would require planning the nature of Brexit in advance so that it could be enacted by the referendum. This would be complex and open the door for a losing leave campaign to suggest that a deliberately weak option had been presented to the public. An advisory, in-out referendum would be expected to quash all the options being presented by Leave campaigners at a single stroke.

A Leave win or even a close result was not expected or planned for. However the opportunity to sow discord in the UK and EU was exploited by shadowy interests and their efforts were unexpectedly successful in delivering a close result for Leave.

The flipside of trying to defeat all competing Brexit options at once was the that after failing to do so, we were presented with the challenge of trying to enact a variety of promises that conflicted at times with with each other and often with reality.

The Tory leader abandoned ship, leaving the direction of our country and the manner of our Brexit, to be decided not by the wafer thin mandate of a close referendum result but by the candidate who would best appeal to a Eurosceptic Tory grass roots buoyed by Brexit success. In the end May’s opponents fell by the wayside before she was tested against grass roots support. But by then her die was cast, and the support of the ERG Brexit extremists was considered critical to her continued success. At party conference May made a number of promises that raised her capital with the Eurosceptics but bound her hands going into negotiations.

The EU refused to start negotiations until the Article 50 declaration had been made but unilaterally made their detailed negotiation position clear giving them the advantage of the first move.

May’s attempt to make the Article 50 declaration was forced through parliamentary channels by the Supreme Court. May wasted much money, effort and political capital fighting this in the courts. However in the event the opportunity for parliamentary democracy to insert caveats into this process was squandered.

The Leave vote being strong in the Labour heartlands won over an opposition partly lead by an anti-establishment, anti-capitalist anti-globalist with anti-european tendencies. This Leader of the Opposition called a three line whip on his party to support the government. At that point the default of a no-deal Brexit was set into motion.

However whilst both parties were well stocked with moderate pragmatists they both had leaders selected by appealing to a more zealous membership. These tensions make for an unruly parliament and inspired May’s advisors to use some of the time allocated to prepare for Brexit, to strengthen her hold on power at a time when the leader of the opposition was being seen as visibily lacking in both leadership and opposition.

This turns out to have been a strategic blunder second only in scale to her predecessor calling the referendum in the first place. Corbyn had won and reaffirmed his leadership on the campaign trail. May’s leadership bid was concluded before a wider public engagement and her abilities in this regard were untested. Her performance was robotic rather than strong and stable. Opponents of Brexit with little to cling to in Labour’s "constructive ambiguity" nonetheless rallied to oppose the harder line conservative party. There were no winners, only losers. May lost her majority and was forced into a pact with the extreme DUP. Their leader Arlene Foster demonstrating a far greater talent for negotiation than anyone we later sent to Brussels.

May then went to Brussels hampered by the clock she’d started already run down by a few months and the intractable problem of the Irish border made worse by even talking about a border between Northern Ireland and the Mainland Britain having the potential to bring down her government.

Scotland and Wales too, provided their own complications. It used to be that these regions were ruled directly from Westminster but their own devolved assemblies demanded a right to be heard on Brexit and a say on any final agreement. The Welsh had voted leave in proportion to the rest of the country but as a major recipient of EU subsidies wanted to use their leverage to see the cheques written by the Leave campaigns (regarding these subsidies), would be cashed by the Westminster government.

Scotland’s interests were far more complex. For the longest time the Labour party relied on a large number of Scottish seats in Westminster but starting in the 70s was losing seats to the SNP not least when Labour MP’s defected citing a lack of progress in devolution. Tony Blair’s rise to power was fueled in part by promising devolution. A promise that when delivered was accompanied by a more proportional “Additional Member” system of election. Constituencies would return a member by first past the post and a lesser number of MPs would be assigned to wider regions from the proportional vote. In the first such election the SNP returned only 7 Constituency MSP’s but with a further 28 seats from the additional member regions, immediately became Scotland’s second party. A platform from which they were able to grow to become a considerable force both in the Scottish Parliament and at Westminster eventually securing their own referendum for independence prior to the Brexit vote. Comparisons and contrasts between the campaign may be drawn. Scotlands Nationalists drew up specific and detailed plans for their independent future. These relied on continued membership of the EU and whilst both sides lauded the importance of EU membership, the “No” campaign were able to throw fear uncertainty and doubt over the question of Scotland’s continued EU membership as an independent nation. Given this background, it is unsurprising that Scotland overwhelmingly voted to Remain in the EU and that being the case are understandably upset that the will of their people is subsumed by the will of the wider Kingdom.

Thus far Westminster has remained ironically sovereign over Brexit issues thwarting the democratic will of the other nations in her Union.

A recurring theme in these tales is a tension between an established political class whose power is derived through traditional democratic institutions and those powers and decisions perhaps more democratically linked directly to the people. The latter is seemingly characterised by staid pragmatists, moderated by the experience and demands of the realpolitik; whilst the new guard has been able to draw significant power from populist themes that deride the establishment as detached and promises to elevate the common man’s concerns above those of the so called experts.

Tensions between established party figures and popularist leaders have only escalated. Boris was anointed by the Tory grass roots when May could not deliver the Breixt they demanded. He complains that taking No-Deal off the table weakens his negotiating position with Brussels. An argument that would make sense if he was visibly negotiating with Brussels. That strategy would be like playing chicken with a freight train. The argument makes more sense in terms of a battle between himself and Parliament. If he hopes that Parliament will be more likely to blink and pass his cosmetically adjusted withdrawal bill when the only alternative is No-Deal then adopting a persona of maniacal belligerence could well be the work of genius. Time will tell. This could be the tensest showdown yet between the popularists and the establishment.

Technology is improving. Not so many generations ago as we needed to send a someone to Westminster to represent us, as we couldn’t all be involved in decisions taking place a two-day coach ride away. We now have the infrastructure that we can not only all be involved in making all decisions, we can all be accurately informed about them. But whilst the information is flowing easily the quality control is weak. Salacious lies and propaganda spread with greater speed than dull truths. We are also nothing if not Votey McVoteFace. The novelty in exercising power has lead us to make decisions directed at upsetting those who we are told look down upon us. The digital world is so new that few of us recognise attempts to manipulate and the most successful methods of doing so appear to be divisive ways to incite outrage and short circuit the critical process. I would hope that with time, experience and education we'll get better at dealing with that. Otherwise, when does democracy become mob rule?

I leave you with the following quote from John Higgs which is regarding the Brexit Vote. I feel a similar sentiment may be in evidence in many other related examples of direct democracy:
“Alas, one of them got into power and decided to ask the British people in a referendum if they wanted to tell a bunch of politicians to go and fuck themselves, thinking that they would say no. That’s probably worth dwelling on a little. He asked the British people – the British people, that’s the British people – if they wanted to tell some politicians to go fuck themselves, and thought they would say no. During a time of austerity. He genuinely thought that. Those are real thoughts that he had in his head.” [tinyletter.com]