When did democracy die in the UK?

Duncan Wade

Lingering death for our once treasured freedoms

We live in a nation led by an unelected Prime Minister presiding over a government that does not represent the will of the British people.

It is unconcerned with the welfare of the public, and is aided by a nominal opposition that simply supports their position.

Rather, it follows a radical political agenda that is opposed to the once deep-held values the UK was built upon.

Democracy was certainly dead during the Tony Blair years, with a disregard for international law evidenced by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and subsequent efforts to impede any investigation into the political manoeuverings and disinformation given on weapons of mass destruction.

David Cameron’s government was hardly better. The attempts to thwart the population on the issue of Brexit were characterised by Project Fear, with the public warned that if they did not fall into line and vote as instructed there would be political and economic armageddon, even wars and famine.

Those who dared to voice the alternative were branded as misled, dangerous, radical racists. The UK was told there was no option other than a union with the European Union (EU).

After Cameron, Theresa May’s government also attempted to backpedal on its promise to deliver Brexit, in order to find a way to return to the undemocratic bureaucracy of the EU. They went as far as telling the nation there should not have been a vote, because most people did not understand the complexities of the modern political world.

Boris Johnson outdid them all, though. The British people were ordered into surrendering a raft of freedoms for covid. Project Fear Mark 2 was unashamedly set in motion, with the police and a hastily recruited platoon of civil enforcers instructed to ensure that the population wore regulatory masks, were locked down and socially distanced. Being beaten up for your own safety by the police was the regime for two years.

We were told that death waited around every corner. Yet while all this occurred, the Johnson regime ignored its own state of emergency and sipped wine on the patio of 10 Downing Street, while also indulging in regular pre-weekend drinks together.

Those who refused to be vaccinated were hounded, victimised, lost their careers, and were denigrated in the media as enemies of the people. Their right to free speech was stripped; they were described as ‘spreading disinformation’. They were segregated.

As for today, Rishi Sunak obtained his position by the premeditated, cold-blooded backstabbing of his predecessor (Liz Truss), who had barely taken her seat. Sunak is a multi-millionaire, representing not the people, but a global cabal of the filthy rich.

In a GB News interview with MP David Davis, host Nigel Farage asked Davis if the character of Parliament had changed during his career, stretching back to 1987. Davis’s answer is telling and revealing.

According to Davis, his two predecessors as MPs were decorated veterans of World War Two, and Parliament was filled with men and women who had lived a life before entering Parliament, and had had a connection with the world they represented.

They were businessmen, soldiers, teachers and trade unionists; people from the shop floor of life. However, they were replaced by what Davis described as ‘careerists’.

In short, Davis was identifying a cohort of incomers to Parliament with no connection to the people they represented, viewing politics as a stepping-stone to a better tomorrow for themselves; uninterested in the role of being an MP, with only a selfish interest in their own welfare and furthering their own ambitions.

At the time of Davis’s arrival in Parliament, the nation was led by a greengrocer’s daughter who often highlighted her humble origins. Her influential long-serving Deputy Prime Minister, Willie Whitelaw, was well respected by all, a decorated tank commander in Normandy (awarded the Military Cross). His father had died in World War One.

So what did these newcomers achieve and want from being elected to represent their constituencies? In November 1990, Margaret Thatcher was ambushed by the MPs in grey of her own party. It was led by passionate pro-Europeans, in this case Michael Hesseltine. It was a coup.

The argument given for the political assassination was Thatcher’s resistance to a currency union with the EU. In retrospect, it was a fortunate escape from the manacles of closer ties with the EU.

The resulting government of John Major became characterised by a rearguard fight from those opposed to further integration into the EU. It also became identified with many MPs, largely pro-EU, who regarded their positions as merely an opportunity to enrich themselves. They had no affinity with the people, or with the welfare of the nation, only an interest in their own betterment.

So did democracy perhaps die when the cohort of those who had fought for freedom, and those who had lived through it, passed on the baton to grey newcomers? Those who had no experience of real life, of the value of freedom, or any interest in protecting the values of the nation they were meant to represent?

Did democracy die when these individuals took on the mantras of the EU, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum? Mantras and political thinking that had nothing but contempt for people-led democracy and national identity. Democracy is most certainly dead in the UK in relation to the mainstream parties, whose leadership, in all respects, is not interested in the everyday welfare of the people. They no longer represent the will of the people, if indeed they ever did.

There may be a bright note here, though. It may be that democracy as we know it is dead, but there are enough of us left who hold its values dear; and that can be the beginnings of something new. There are more of us than them; it is up to us to re-establish what kind of nation we truly want to be.

Published in The Light newspaper, 32 (April), 2023, p. 6