This is Bound to End in Tears

[Serial_Apologist]

The problem with all of this constitutional chatter - and I am not entirely sure I agree with some comments on the monarch or Crown but whatever - is that it is merely theoretical.

As such, it has little to say about where authority resides.

As with Parliament, the law is equally based in theory which is to say that it too cannot be enforceable, enforcing or enforced unless it has broad public backing.

So the will of the people or the general will is inconsequential compared with the authority of the people which enables.

(The French would know all about this of course)

As I see it there are two good reasons for respecting constitutionality - which I have come to accept, once having been an advocate of insurrectioary means of toppling power.

A situation such as that of pre-October 1979 Russia, where the majority had had little or no experience of inclusion in democratic processes and institutions of any kind, or apartheid era S. Africa, does not apply to countries where long experience of progress won inculcates different approaches to political change. The phyiical power, literally at the hands of the state machine, for them to resort to in the failure of the media, police and courts to maintain order and the status quo, is worth taking into the reckoning, of course, but it is not the sole consideration, which is how to get the numbers on board to ensure things turn out to the good.

Firstly, the words "only theoretical" can only be applied to historical situations outside the "advanced" west, prior to universal suffrage, and to countries today where any theoretical claim to representative legitimacy is rhetorical only, having no corresponding experience among majority populations on which to grant assent let alone consent.

Secondly, by contrast, it secures that common sense of legitimacy which has been built up over decades, nay centuries, of emancipatory change, where an historicaly guided sense of gain has become ingrained in the collective consciousness.

Howevermuch based in reality that mythic sense of legitimacy may - be true power residing elsewhere etc - people aren't easily going to give up either on it or the institutions such as the NHS and public education that have been sired under its aegis: it all may have to be replaced, but that replacement has to assume the form of a defensive fight to maintain and modify, but not destroy the status quo. This may take any number of forms, eg occupations; calls to elect heads and managements previously appointed by management boards; to decide on pay rates and differentials through workplace and/or community meetings or online voting, etc. By the time that defensive fight has exercised by means of force of well-organised, well-disciplined numbers, qualitative changes to the point of making those same insitutions unrecognisable, the processes of legitimacy will be seen as tested and proven.

[french frank]

So was the current one when it was advanced by Mr Cameron.

I mean the results of those referendums were for the status quo: it is the result which either binds or advises.

[Lat-Literal]

As I see it there are two good reasons for respecting constitutionality - which I have come to accept, once having been an advocate of insurrectioary means of toppling power.

A situation such as that of pre-October 1979 Russia, where the majority had had little or no experience of inclusion in democratic processes and institutions of any kind, or apartheid era S. Africa, does not apply to countries where long experience of progress won inculcates different approaches to political change. The phyiical power, literally at the hands of the state machine, for them to resort to in the failure of the media, police and courts to maintain order and the status quo, is worth taking into the reckoning, of course, but it is not the sole consideration, which is how to get the numbers on board to ensure things turn out to the good.

Firstly, the words "only theoretical" can only be applied to historical situations outside the "advanced" west, prior to universal suffrage, and to countries today where any theoretical claim to representative legitimacy is rhetorical only, having no corresponding experience among majority populations on which to grant assent let alone consent.

Secondly, by contrast, it secures that common sense of legitimacy which has been built up over decades, nay centuries, of emancipatory change, where an historicaly guided sense of gain has become ingrained in the collective consciousness.

Howevermuch based in reality that mythic sense of legitimacy may - be true power residing elsewhere etc - people aren't easily going to give up either on it or the institutions such as the NHS and public education that have been sired under its aegis: it all may have to be replaced, but that replacement has to assume the form of a defensive fight to maintain and modify, but not destroy the status quo. This may take any number of forms, eg occupations; calls to elect heads and managements previously appointed by management boards; to decide on pay rates and differentials through workplace and/or community meetings or online voting, etc. By the time that defensive fight has exercised by means of force of well-organised, well-disciplined numbers, qualitative changes to the point of making those same insitutions unrecognisable, the processes of legitimacy will be seen as tested and proven.

Well, I suppose there is something to be said for the holistic approach. The idea that, in politics, institutions are intertwined so that if at the hard end they are disgraced it is all survivable because the soft service provision is to some extent still workable. The accumulation of brownie points. A legacy of less dysfunctional times. But when the ill Maynard Keynes was sent off to America with his begging bowl, the Government of the day was covering up the likelihood of mass starvation. While hunger was worrying, the greater concern was that any revelation would lead to another : that the authority for the ongoing existence of institutions as we knew them resided in the public who were on the verge of being uncontrollable.

Rampage doesn't necessarily have any thoughts about history or the future under its feet. It is, of course, true that from Paris '68 to the Yellow Vests via civil rights, the Vietnam War, Baader-Meinhoff and economic chaos in Greece that nothing was rocked on the scale of the Soviet Union. But we are in different times. It is not only the internet, beliefs in fake news and a dismissal of experts. In Belgium, in the Netherlands, in Italy, in Northern Ireland, there have been lengthy periods when governance has just gone AWOL and we are witnessing the longest shutdown in America's history as I write. People are getting used to the idea that they can do without, if not for all time then for quite a while. It is in some ways as if they are being instructed to by what is (not) taking place. That, of itself, provides far stronger foundations for the edifices to crumble - and I choose my phraseology here deliberately.

Yes, I accept there are differences with aspects of the law. If no one was having it that seat belts should be compulsory, that law would have been entirely useless but it would not have had a knock on effect on defence policy or the environment. It is a similar principle, though. Good law is largely self-enforcing. It is what people would choose. Good political institutions are self-justifying so that most would not question their justification. Still, in each case there is an illusion of where the true authority resides. Until, that is, they become inefffectual.

(I am 56 so am not of the age for upheaval, and it would disadvantage me, but currently should it happen here I could not philosophically support or oppose it; I may become typical)

[MrGongGong]

Quite so. The overwhelming majority of MPs are failing to act constitutionally in failing to act as parliamentary representatives, rather than delegates, with regard to the EU referendum.

[french frank]

Quite so. The overwhelming majority of MPs are failing to act constitutionally in failing to act as parliamentary representatives, rather than delegates, with regard to the EU referendum.

Whatever their own view, many Remain MPs in Leave constituencies see it as their duty to respect the referendum result; in Remain constituencies many feel the line supported by their party leader takes precedence over their constituents. One party leader, having made a career out of rebelling against the party leadership, now, as leader, rebels against the party. Strange times!

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, I suppose there is something to be said for the holistic approach. The idea that, in politics, institutions are intertwined so that if at the hard end they are disgraced it is all survivable because the soft service provision is to some extent still workable. The accumulation of brownie points. A legacy of less dysfunctional times. But when the ill Maynard Keynes was sent off to America with his begging bowl, the Government of the day was covering up the likelihood of mass starvation. While hunger was worrying, the greater concern was that any revelation would lead to another : that the authority for the ongoing existence of institutions as we knew them resided in the public who were on the verge of being uncontrollable.

Rampage doesn't necessarily have any thoughts about history or the future under its feet. It is, of course, true that from Paris '68 to the Yellow Vests via civil rights, the Vietnam War, Baader-Meinhoff and economic chaos in Greece that nothing was rocked on the scale of the Soviet Union. But we are in different times. It is not only the internet, beliefs in fake news and a dismissal of experts. In Belgium, in the Netherlands, in Italy, in Northern Ireland, there have been lengthy periods when governance has just gone AWOL and we are witnessing the longest shutdown in America's history as I write. People are getting used to the idea that they can do without, if not for all time then for quite a while. It is in some ways as if they are being instructed to by what is (not) taking place. That, of itself, provides far stronger foundations for the edifices to crumble - and I choose my phraseology here deliberately.

Yes, I accept there are differences with aspects of the law. If no one was having it that seat belts should be compulsory, that law would have been entirely useless but it would not have had a knock on effect on defence policy or the environment. It is a similar principle, though. Good law is largely self-enforcing. It is what people would choose. Good political institutions are self-justifying so that most would not question their justification. Still, in each case there is an illusion of where the true authority resides. Until, that is, they become inefffectual.

(I am 56 so am not of the age for upheaval, and it would disadvantage me, but currently should it happen here I could not philosophically support or oppose it; I may become typical)

I was 56 in 2001. At that time I had moved ideologically about as far to the right as I ever had been since quitting the Far Left in 1985. Within four years I was contemplating moving to this area on the advice of musician friends, who said it was just the place for me; and yet on announcing my intention, friends back home asked me. "Are you quite sure you want to live in an area like that? [sic]". My response was that I was moving to somewhere where new and old friends alike seemed very contented and feeling they belonged; and, in any case, the inner city areas experiencing neglect, poverty, crime and gang warfare, would more likely be at the forefront for improved services and investment than the suburbs, where For Sale signs permanently disgfigure every residential street from end to end, and disorder rampaged in the high street at every closing time. I made frequent Friday night forays into the "jungle" to attend gigs at The Crypt in Camberwell - nervously at first, having taken in to an extent what the media was kidding us: would my car be vandalised? would it still be there, even? - while at the same time attracted to the vibrancy of the district: the music, the barbers shops open at midnight, the smells emanating from takeaways and bars. I even parked a couple of miles away, near Dulwich College, walking the distance both ways to "get the vibe"; and I did a reccy - will anyone believe this? - to find out of the regular retail outlets sold food products other than exotic merchandise middle class suburbanites would visit Whitechapel market for at weekends!

In the end I was sold on S London, and the decision to come here has been re-confirmed time after time: from the description I have given above; from being made Chair of the resident's association within two years of moving in -notwithstanding my brazenness about my politics and general philosophy of life; from the experience of Kings College Hospital in 2013 and my fellow patients; from the fact that the best of venues for art, music and cultural activities as well as the open countryside were within comparatively quick and easy reach; and last but by no means least because this is the first place I've actually lived (as opposed to being on holiday at) where retail staff recognise one ("You don't need a bag"), no one barges through, and strangers of all creeds, ethnicities and socioeconomic classes actually smile as they approach without my bidding, and even say hi!

Career choices took me away from London in 1968, and at the time I had mourned leaving a place that, culturally, was in many ways the centre of the world. But I was a shy introvert back then, and in truth London may have been glossy on the outside, but you were left out if you were not part of a clique, and I was very much a voyeur: my enjoyment of Swinging London so-called was vicarious. Today, if one looks beyond the money machine the metropolis is envied for by the rest of the under-regarded nation, I've no doubt that multiculturalism has been good for London, as even those of a more cynical disposition than me just have to concede. And I have a theory about this - which in a maybe indirect way backs up the internationalism that has now informed my outlook for a good 50 years in admittedly various guises - and that theory is that people who came to this country were sold a myth about its welcoming character, which, howevermuch they came to realise through experience was not the place the ads had led them to believe before coming, they would go out of their way to foster, even if for the time being it meant having to smile in the face of adversity. And in the meantime, those of the older indigenous working class population who did not move out to Sidcup or Upminster when what they perceived as a takeover of their childhood neighbourhoods, were the ones who stayed and inculcated the vestigial spirit of community still in being, in continuity with the values of solidarity that went back through World War II to the age when a sense of interests in common, self-sufficient, was forged in the workplace a couple of streets or bus ride away, and the pub, the chippy, and the grocer's, butcher's and fishmonger's where gossip and edgy pleasantries were exchanged. It is older working class people local to the district who, I have observed, go on local guided history walks and have vivid memories of what was where, now including descendents of Commonwealth immigrants, and who enliven us with who did what and where, and what was where this altered building now stands. Somehow this district has resisted the gentrification that has changed the character of other once mixed but primarily working class districts - which, while it has been good in preserving fine Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian and interwar architecture, and halting or helping halt the tower blockisation of whole precincts wrongly condemned to the wrecking ball, has tarted up many of the pubs and replaced essential suppliers by wine bars, estate agents and curios emporiums. Here the library, very district-conscious, survives just about - as do a couple of betting shops, and we have four, yes four Pentecostal churches operating within the triangle half mile!

Maybe we're the model for community everyone seeks: but don't tell them, or they'll all be wanting to come and live here!

[Lat-Literal]

I was 56 in 2001. At that time I had moved ideologically about as far to the right as I ever had been since quitting the Far Left in 1985. Within four years I was contemplating moving to this area on the advice of musician friends, who said it was just the place for me; and yet on announcing my intention, friends back home asked me. "Are you quite sure you want to live in an area like that? [sic]". My response was that I was moving to somewhere where new and old friends alike seemed very contented and feeling they belonged; and, in any case, the inner city areas experiencing neglect, poverty, crime and gang warfare, would more likely be at the forefront for improved services and investment than the suburbs, where For Sale signs permanently disgfigure every residential street from end to end, and disorder rampaged in the high street at every closing time. I made frequent Friday night forays into the "jungle" to attend gigs at The Crypt in Camberwell - nervously at first, having taken in to an extent what the media was kidding us: would my car be vandalised? would it still be there, even? - while at the same time attracted to the vibrancy of the district: the music, the barbers shops open at midnight, the smells emanating from takeaways and bars. I even parked a couple of miles away, near Dulwich College, walking the distance both ways to "get the vibe"; and I did a reccy - will anyone believe this? - to find out of the regular retail outlets sold food products other than exotic merchandise middle class suburbanites would visit Whitechapel market for at weekends!

In the end I was sold on S London, and the decision to come here has been re-confirmed time after time: from the description I have given above; from being made Chair of the resident's association within two years of moving in -notwithstanding my brazenness about my politics and general philosophy of life; from the experience of Kings College Hospital in 2013 and my fellow patients; from the fact that the best of venues for art, music and cultural activities as well as the open countryside were within comparatively quick and easy reach; and last but by no means least because this is the first place I've actually lived (as opposed to being on holiday at) where retail staff recognise one ("You don't need a bag"), no one barges through, and strangers of all creeds, ethnicities and socioeconomic classes actually smile as they approach without my bidding, and even say hi!

Career choices took me away from London in 1968, and at the time I had mourned leaving a place that, culturally, was in many ways the centre of the world. But I was a shy introvert back then, and in truth London may have been glossy on the outside, but you were left out if you were not part of a clique, and I was very much a voyeur: my enjoyment of Swinging London so-called was vicarious. Today, if one looks beyond the money machine the metropolis is envied for by the rest of the under-regarded nation, I've no doubt that multiculturalism has been good for London, as even those of a more cynical disposition than me just have to concede. And I have a theory about this - which in a maybe indirect way backs up the internationalism that has now informed my outlook for a good 50 years in admittedly various guises - and that theory is that people who came to this country were sold a myth about its welcoming character, which, howevermuch they came to realise through experience was not the place the ads had led them to believe before coming, they would go out of their way to foster, even if for the time being it meant having to smile in the face of adversity. And in the meantime, those of the older indigenous working class population who did not move out to Sidcup or Upminster when what they perceived as a takeover of their childhood neighbourhoods, were the ones who stayed and inculcated the vestigial spirit of community still in being, in continuity with the values of solidarity that went back through World War II to the age when a sense of interests in common, self-sufficient, was forged in the workplace a couple of streets or bus ride away, and the pub, the chippy, and the grocer's, butcher's and fishmonger's where gossip and edgy pleasantries were exchanged. It is older working class people local to the district who, I have observed, go on local guided history walks and have vivid memories of what was where, now including descendents of Commonwealth immigrants, and who enliven us with who did what and where, and what was where this altered building now stands. Somehow this district has resisted the gentrification that has changed the character of other once mixed but primarily working class districts - which, while it has been good in preserving fine Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian and interwar architecture, and halting or helping halt the tower blockisation of whole precincts wrongly condemned to the wrecking ball, has tarted up many of the pubs and replaced essential suppliers by wine bars, estate agents and curios emporiums. Here the library, very district-conscious, survives just about - as do a couple of betting shops, and we have four, yes four Pentecostal churches operating within the triangle half mile!

Maybe we're the model for community everyone seeks: but don't tell them, or they'll all be wanting to come and live here!

An interesting and moving account for which many thanks. There is a lot in it that I didn't know. Obviously I know these areas. Mostly, I can identify strongly with what you say although I fell out with London after 2010 on account of work issues. As you well know. I think the only thing that jars slightly is the reference to people moving away because of a perception of a takeover. You are not saying that was universal and it could apply both to perceptions of ethnicity and "yuppiedom". Certainly that happened in the second wave in the 1980s. But my parents moved to the suburbs in 1960. Most of the people here who are still alive and of a similar age predated them slightly. 1954-1960. Their motivation was not to escape from a sense of takeover - change hadn't occurred - but to buy something affordable in an area perceived to be an improvement on their own class and family background. So, skin colour and Eton Rifles didn't come into it. There was a preference too for greener areas over the urban to the extent that all of the irritations of commuting were regarded as a reasonable trade off.

Re community, I would have that categorised as the white working class in the 1960s/1970s and mixed ethnicity working class in the 1980s/1990s. That shaped my outlook if I ended up as I did on occasions in, say, a market in Marseille. These notions last a very long time and almost certainly throughout life. If I am being strictly honest in 2019, the first was shaped by the warmth I experienced as a child in wider a family. I saw it working in them too in the wider context of neighbourhood. But it probably didn't quite work for me, being one step remove. Still, - to take another time and place, Ilfracombe last year when all alone - it did appear there in the ways of the ladies in the fish restaurant perhaps more than anywhere else. Aunts from way back in the past reappear in such a context in that sense. Welcoming, cosy and familiar.

As for the second, it was pure Nick Hornby as I have often said. The white working class, people of ethnicity - there was an attraction to, dare I say it, a sense of exoticism in them all in an "anything but soulless suburbia". It was, in essence, cultural as much as they were regarded as people. But again to be strictly honest, suburbia had not actually been soulless to me. Rather there was a sense of community in that neighbourhood. So what was really go on in looking outward was a youthful wish to see and hear a range of things which were arguably less grey. Money changed everything. It ruined everything in my view. It doesn't really matter now whether I turn up regularly in some place in Camberwell or Caterham. Friendliness isn't absent but there is a distance in people who are alongside but still in their own purchasing orientated compartments. Indeed, the only way in which most relate now in anything like the old way is when they have something to sell or are employed in a selling role. The working class, the middle class, people of ethnicity - they all seem the same to me. All are everywhere in large numbers. And all seem to be no less bland than the identikit shops on any high street.

……...that's how it seems to me.

It is partly my age but mostly the age.

[Serial_Apologist]

An interesting and moving account for which many thanks. There is a lot in it that I didn't know. Obviously I know these areas. Mostly, I can identify strongly with what you say although I fell out with London after 2010 on account of work issues. As you well know. I think the only thing that jars slightly is the reference to people moving away because of a perception of a takeover. You are not saying that was universal and it could apply both to perceptions of ethnicity and "yuppiedom". Certainly that happened in the second wave in the 1980s. But my parents moved to the suburbs in 1960. Most of the people here who are still alive and of a similar age predated them slightly. 1954-1960. Their motivation was not to escape from a sense of takeover - change hadn't occurred - but to buy something affordable in an area perceived to be an improvement on their own class and family background. So, skin colour and Eton Rifles didn't come into it. There was a preference too for greener areas over the urban to the extent that all of the irritations of commuting were regarded as a reasonable trade off.

Not in all cases by any means, Lat, which was the erroneous impression I gave, and not in yours of course, but certainly in many, I'm afraid. I knew a few of them.

[Lat-Literal]

Not in all cases by any means, Lat, which was the erroneous impression I gave, and not in yours of course, but certainly in many, I'm afraid. I knew a few of them.

Quite understood.

I am going to choose to say this without an overly opinionated angle on the grounds that people do whatever they do. But - you are, to be blunt, talking about so called "white flight". From my own experience, I would associate that closely with people making a bit of money from council house sales. It led to vacuums in which both the white working class in urban areas and British West Indians were sort of colonised by American so-called culture. It has happened to the white middle classes too but with fewer tensions. Away from music, I don't especially perceive white Europeans as white Europeans anymore but emanating from the European version of the US. I don't think that is an improvement. There was a time when people of a different background from me would respond well because they picked up on a vibe of empathy. Now they just respond via our grey similarity. It's ok but feels like loss.

For the record, I have never had any concerns about perceived difference. What worries me most is the instability of people as they come under increasing pressures in crammed home environments, poor, or lucrative work environments. I am prone to panic attacks. It doesn't suit me to be alongside people who could be off their heads. Space seems imperative. That is where I am coming from ostensibly when it comes to possible increases in population numbers. I'd no longer think of going to football or a concert without having an end row seat.

[Lat-Literal]

Teamsaint and Serial_Apologist,

It turns out you were right.

I make "many useful suggestions" and have "simplistic assumptions that may or may not be sensible but are not achievable".

Our paths must have crossed in a previous life.

It is v pleasing to me that I have had a considered, tailored, reply from an ex Foreign Secretary who has taken me seriously.

(It's so much better for one to go direct to the echelons of power rather than just having a natter on a forum, dontcha think?)

Dear Lat-Literal

Thank you for your email and many useful suggestions. It will be very difficult for the House of Commons to make the necessary adjustments to the WA. We have to remember that 27 other countries have signed up to it and unilateral changes by us are likely to have many repercussions. The mechanism, in my view, is to exclude most aspects of the WA from Article 132 onwards and, in effect, to return to a less ambitious negotiation as was envisaged up until the Chequers meeting. The House of Commons is not going to agree to a new EEC nor is the Republic of Ireland about to leave the EU. Those are simplistic assumptions that may or may not be sensible but are not achievable. Norway and Iceland have deliberately not become members of the customs union but the mere fact that if we remained members of the EEA with its detailed and comprehensive means of dealing with hygiene and animal issues, called loosely SPS, means we are a long way to resolving NI border issues and the suggestion of the Brexiteers to negotiate a specific border Protocol until we have a Canada-like EU-UK FTA means that it would be possible to handle the border without having to enter into a very complicated customs union agreement. Such a thing exists between Turkey and the EU but the EU would want to be very much more prescriptive than this agreement and we would want it to be looser. Entering a customs union, even temporarily, presents difficulties because as we have seen over the Irish backstop who determines when it stops?

All the best

Regards

DAVID OWEN
21 January 2019

[Dave2002]

"The law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to contribute personally, or through their representatives, to its formation."

The UK being a representative democracy, citizens have the the right to contribute through their representatives.

Cannot similar arguments be made about the EU, which has been widely branded by those opposed to it as “undemocratic”?
I can’t really comment on how effectively it acts “democratically”, but there are several routes to representation, including via MEPs (which are voted in by those entitled and who bother to vote), and by consultation with governments and government departments etc.

[french frank]

Cannot similar arguments be made about the EU, which has been widely branded by those opposed to it as “undemocratic”?
I can’t really comment on how effectively it acts “democratically”, but there are several routes to representation, including via MEPs (which are voted in by those entitled and who bother to vote), and by consultation with governments and government departments etc.

The EU has a system which is different from our own, but it can hardly be claimed to be substantially less democratic, when our own system is not a model of responsiveness to the wishes and needs of individuals and substantial groupings.

Within the EU itself there is the realisation of a 'democratic deficit' and at various points action has been taken, including through the ECJ. An interesting résumé (ignore the lexical idiosyncrasies - Aristotle, for one, would have known better, I'm sure!).

The conclusion of the writer (an individual legal writer) is that, yes, there is a democratic deficit, mainly in the lack of transparency at the top of the organisation. My (an individual non-legal writer) conclusion is that to understand how that lack of transparency impacts directly on the citizens is to understand how deep is the problem. What may be more transparency in the UK (though not 100% even here!) puts the problem with the EU in perspective.

A system of democracy like the Athenian one, where every citizen was involved (unless they were slaves - or women?), cannot exist in the same way in any modern nation state. Groups like the ERG are anti-statist: they want less government. It is hard to see how this increases empowerment for the citizen.

For me, the key point is how far - in a general way - decisions taken in Brussels are deleterious to the interests of the individual citizen. People do not seem to realise to what extent 'tiresome EU regulations' are for their benefit, the benefit of citizens (consumer rights, worker rights, health and safety, environmental protection). You either believe 'We could do this, and better' - or you don't. Less government means handing over the power to other interests and leaving the citizens to fend for themselves.

[Dave2002]

Within the EU itself there is the realisation of a 'democratic deficit' and at various points action has been taken, including through the ECJ. An interesting résumé (ignore the lexical idiosyncrasies - Aristotle, for one, would have known better, I'm sure!).

The conclusion of the writer (an individual legal writer) is that, yes, there is a democratic deficit, mainly in the lack of transparency at the top of the organisation. My (an individual non-legal writer) conclusion is that to understand how that lack of transparency impacts directly on the citizens is to understand how deep is the problem. What may be more transparency in the UK (though not 100% even here!) puts the problem with the EU in perspective.

That's interesting.

I can't say I like being in a "democracy" where false claims are made - not only before referendums - and generally misused by those who manage to manipulate the system after they gain power. I'm thinking of, for example of elections, where "promises" are made but ignored afterwards. At least DT is trying to get his wall built - though I think that's probably a bad idea. That is perhaps one (the only one?) area where he cannot be criticised.

Arguments used to justify actions after any democratic "vote" seem very selective.

I don't see that we have more transparency in the UK than in the EU - but I'll look at the links you provide.

[Richard Barrett]

Regarding democracy in the EU: let's imagine there were to be a general election in the UK some time in the coming months and it resulted in a Labour victory - I'm not speculating on the relative likelihood of this, but it's a scenario we can all agree is within the realms of possibility. This would almost certainly result in some rather comprehensive shifts in government policy, to say the least, if the 2017 Labour manifesto is anything to go by, with the effect of setting the country in a rather different direction than that followed since 2010. The same sort of thing would apply to most other countries in the EU mutatis mutandis. However, it could never be the case with the EU as a whole. There's never been an opportunity, for example, for the EU population to vote on the EU's policy towards Greece or its general espousal of austerity. Or am I wrong?

[Richard Barrett]

At least DT is trying to get his wall built

Well, he is using the issue as a way of holding on to his power base and trying (unsuccessfully it seems) to blame the Democrats for obstructing him. Remember that there were two years of his presidency in which Republicans held both houses of Congress, and he was unable to get his wall money then either. Generally I don't think you can get very far holding up Trump up as an example of someone who delivers on election promises. He hasn't repealed the Affordable Care Act for example, or had Hillary Clinton arrested. His words are worth precisely nothing.