WHEN WE ELECT OUR POLITICIANS we do so expecting them to make our laws and see them implemented. This is the standard format of a modern democracy and a free sovereign nation. It is why we elect our representatives – our lawmakers. There is no other purpose to a democracy than to elect lawmakers; and in a democracy there is no other authority whether church or monarchy that can fulfil this role.
However, such a welcome state of affairs did not just land on our laps as most of our citizen’s know. Both church and monarchy had to be persuaded (at the cost of much blood over the centuries) of the benefits of such an arrangement to the nation and its people.
Our laws are our first line of defence against anarchy, and the people should have their own say in who make their laws, which is why of course we have the universal franchise. But as we know its universality was drip fed to us over many years at the cost of much suffering.
If we are to live in a peaceful and settled society, the rule of law is paramount, and must reflect the wishes of the people. For it is only through their respect for it that we may continue to function as a society free from the threat of lawlessness. Respect for the law has to be maintained if it is not to be ‘taken into your own hands’. Law is what keeps society on an even keel. But it can only maintain this happy state of affairs if the people have control over its creation and implementation.
If our elected representatives construct, debate, and eventually pass new laws then the people know they are expected to obey them or break them on penalty of a fine or imprisonment. No matter whether they agree or disagree with any law passed, the government that manages to pass them was elected to office by a majority of the people, and only another election can decide its fate.
This is the formula by which we are told democracy functions. Our laws can only be legitimised if they are underwritten by our elected representatives in parliament. No judge can override or have any say as to the merits or otherwise of laws passed by British representatives in a British parliament – it is the judges’ job to administer the elected will of the people, and not to put any other foreign law above that will.
BUT UNFORTUNATELY this is just what has happened. The British electorate have found themselves bereft of their previous function. For it no longer matters which government has been elected to ‘govern’, because the lawmakers have given away their only function, and the people their only power in a democracy.
Our so called representatives have handed over to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) the power to override our sovereign and national right to implement our own laws on behalf of our own people. Our politicians have effectively neutered themselves as legislators.
They have done so because they collectively believe in something called a United States of Europe, and if they need to make our votes worthless in the process then so be it.
We have today over 600 generously paid but increasingly worthless politicians left without the ability to guarantee that the laws they pass will ever be implemented or made workable by the judges who have now to look toward Europe and the ECHR to arrive at a legal decision because it appears that this nation’s own laws are now a secondary consideration.
All of the main parties have signed up to the ECHR and therefore have limited their ability to pass the legislation that the UK people are demanding from them. Now, before a piece of legislation comes before parliament, the government of the day has to bow down to Europe. In other words our politicians have effectively signed away the only truly meaningful function they once held.
As for the poor UK electorate, they may as well have remained disenfranchised for all the good it does in voting. Why should the British electorate vote, if the franchise has been rendered meaningless?
THE BRITISH ELECTORATE has been weakened on two fronts. First of all, all of the main parties are now ideologically inseparable; as they all share the aim of being part of a United States of Europe. Which should give the UK electorate a clue as to where it leaves them.
None of the main parties will agree to renege on our signing up to the ECHR and the subservient role our own laws will play to it. This means that our votes for the main parties are wasted vote. Remember our only function as democrats is to elect a government that has the power to enact new laws made workable by our nation’s sovereignty and no other.
When we the people elect a government to govern, it is only to that government that we owe any kind of allegiance in the democratic meaning of the word. If however that allegiance is transferred through agreements signed to an authority we the electorate did not vote for, then it has no democratic validity. Therefore it encourages resistance to laws made without the democratic consent of our nation’s people.
If the people living in a democracy see their representatives giving away control of the one vital power any democracy gives a people - the power to elect politicians with the capability to pass and enact laws without the intervention of any outside country or continent - then under such circumstances the rule of law becomes a bastard child.
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