Democracy is messy, especially when you don’t respect the concept

By Kent R. Kroeger (August 19, 2019)

At issue in the United Kingdom (UK) over Brexit — UK’s exit from the European Union (EU) — is not just whether the country should leave the EU, but the democratic status of the people vis-a-vis Parliament.

The working assumption about the UK democracy has long been that it is predicated on the concept of parliamentary sovereignty: Parliament has absolute and unlimited power.

The idea of a popular referendum supplanting the will of Parliament, even if authorized by an act of Parliament, is controversial in the UK, evidenced by the fact that only three national referendums have ever been held.

Popular referendums have never been popular among UK’s political class. When Prime Minister Winston Churchill wanted to use a referendum to extend his wartime government during World War II, Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee balked, “I could not consent to the introduction into our national life of a device so alien to all our traditions as the referendum which has only too often been the instrument of Nazism and Fascism.”

UK elites, including Margaret Thatcher in 1975, have since echoed Attlee’s admonishment of referendums.