LETTER: What is ‘real’ or ‘true’ democracy?
Endless referendums would simply result in the current elite being replaced by a new elite
No government, it may confidently be said, would hold a referendum it expected to lose. And, of course, that is how referendums have been used historically and up to the present: as instruments of the executive. Napoleon III of France — sometimes seen as the originator of this style of “democracy” — used them to get his way; Mussolini and Hitler to get theirs. So the first point to grasp about the Brexit referendum is that former British prime minister David Cameron lost it. It happens sometimes. It happened, for instance, in February 2000 when then president Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe’s referendum on his new constitution produced a defeat for him. No surprise it made no difference to the autocratic Mugabe, who went ahead with seizing land anyway. However, Cameron’s failure and the ensuing calamity is of a different order of magnitude, as not only Britain but Europe and the wider world now bear witness. Why has it gone so wrong? Referendums are a tool of “direct democracy”, if not th...
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