Democratic Society blog archive

There’s an interesting interview with Douglas Carswell (a Conservative MP) at the Mark Reckons blog.

Carswell is an interesting figure. I admire his radicalism and his readiness to fight for reform. He is, according to his lights, a true friend of democratic reform. That’s the ice-cream. The liver is that I thoroughly disagree with his political starting-point – that “vile elites” of pro-European leftists have taken over the British state and need to be exterminated by the cleansing power of the referendum.

His belief in direct democracy, brought out in his book with Daniel Hannan, The Plan, is married with a belief that the consequences of direct democracy would be as radical and anti-statist as his own views.

For example, from Mark’s interview:

The Left’s long march through our institutions explains the leftist disposition of so much of the quango state – from the criminal justice system, to the BBC to the educationalists. The default settings of the quango state are well to the Left of the British people. That is why we need direct democracy – to recalibrate the state and undo the left’s creeping victory.

This, I think, is the original sin of the supporters of direct democracy – they support referendums because they think the people in general agree with them. In reality, I doubt that the people are as anti-left as Mr Carswell thinks they are, they are just small-c conservative. I can’t imagine that a referendum would support, say, the abolition of the NHS or the lowering of taxes on the highest-paid. Referendums might support populist/right measures such as leaving the EU or imprisoning petty criminals for life, but they might just as easily support populist/left measures such as confiscatory taxation or trade protection.

I hope that Mr Carswell is consistent enough in his beliefs to accept that a 99% tax rate on incomes over £60,000 is a reasonable price to pay for removing the power of those vile elites. I’m not sure that the barristers, bankers and others on either front bench would necessarily agree with him.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 7:10 am and is filed under Democracy, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.