Whether one is an abolitionist or an advocate of the House of Lords, few would credit the second chamber with being democratic. Few, it seems, but the ever buoyant – at least in spirit – Natalie Bennett who last week took to LBC to claim that the Lords is more democratic than the Commons.
Perhaps it would be remiss of me not to mention that Miss Bennett is, herself, a peer. Her bizarre assertion was made no clearer by the explanation that followed: “in the Commons the Government has 100 % of the power having won 44% of the vote, at least in the House of Lords the balance of power is held by the crossbenchers who can defeat the government.”
If one were to be charitable to Miss Bennett, then one may say she is not so contemptibly stupid as to believe unelected peers undermining a majority government is any triumph of democracy. Instead, one suspects Bennett is working with a different definition of the word, a sort that Orwell had the prescience to define 71 years ago as ‘newspeak’.
Since the Brexit plebiscite, losers of the vote have employed this newspeak definition of democracy to an exhausting extent, subjecting the electorate to surreptitious suggestions such as ‘oh, so you like democracy, well why not a little more?’ As if we were credulous children being led by lollypop to the dentist’s drill. We all know what ‘more democracy’ would mean in that sense: the public voting ad infinitum until they give the right answer or give up the right to vote entirely – that’s Miss Bennet’s perverse kind of democracy.
[Interesting Read]
See Also:
(1) Au Revoir, Macron! Marine Le Pen ‘poised to crush French President in 2022 election’
(2) Sturgeon told to RESIGN: Lifelong SNP fans turn on leader for destroying children’s future
(3) EU fisheries row: Brussels tried to ‘wipe out UK fishing industry’ in Brexit talks
(4) Priti Patel ‘backs’ sending in Royal Navy as RECORD migrants cross channel in one day
(5) ‘Power up the economy!’ Boris urges for ‘confidence’ to return as Britain looks to build
