The Greeks would laugh at our notion that “democracy” should be limited to placing an X on a ballot once every five years, writes Carlos Alba.
Of all the roles and responsibilities of a contemporary political leader the most challenging, I think, is the frequent requirement to mislead their supporters.
The artifice of politics, and its relationship with a modern mass media, necessitates that leaders speak in a coded language which facilitates the avoidance of letting voters know what they really think.
This is what many people mean when they accuse politicians of lying, and they may have a point, depending on whether you prefer to call a spade a spade or a curved, foot-propelled garden implement.
Some leaders struggle in this Janus-faced endeavour; others take to it like a duck to water. Tony Blair never flinched in his career-long insistence – against all the available evidence – that he was a socialist.
Jeremy Corbyn, in contrast, visibly writhed in discomfort throughout the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign in which he was obliged, as leader of the pro-Remain Labour Party, to give the impression that he actually wanted the UK to remain in the EU. Never one for thinking on his feet, he permanently had the appearance of a man simultaneously wetting himself while trying to work out a hard sum.
For leaders of the SNP, there is a relentless pressure to give their followers the impression that they are going hell-for-leather towards the goal of an independence referendum.
This is particularly acute when they are in office and there is the small matter of running the country to distract them from their party’s constitutional raison d'être.
While the man on the Clarkston omnibus may be more concerned with how much he is being taxed, the size of hospital waiting lists, and exam results at his local school, the Saltire-waving nationalist rank and file are permanently agitating for the next separatist plebiscite.
The challenge for any SNP first minister is not to betray the appearance that they are actually quite enjoying the status and trappings of office under the devolved status quo, with their ministerial chauffeur, sumptuous residence, lashings of foreign travel, and all the bowing and scraping they can eat.
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Each knows in his or her heart of hearts that they don’t have a cat’s chance in hell of securing a referendum, as it would require approval from an institutionally unionist House of Commons.
The 2014 vote was unique because it was sanctioned by a Conservative prime minister who had taken leave of his senses, and who was subsequently forced from office after repeating the same act of psychosis with an in-out referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.
But still they must try, and Nicola Sturgeon’s way of addressing this performative gavotte was to contract out responsibility for the decision to the courts, with a predictably inevitable negative result.
John Swinney’s new wheeze is to demand that the Labour Government sanctions a referendum if the SNP achieves a majority of seats at next year’s Scottish Parliament election.
This all sounds very fair and plausible and will, Mr Swinney hopes, convince the tartan hordes that he is taking the matter seriously ahead of his party’s annual conference in Aberdeen next month.
The twin midges in the ointment however are that, for his plan to have the remotest relationship with reality, it would require the SNP to achieve what it has only manged on one previous occasion in the history of devolution. The method of proportional representation used for Holyrood elections was specifically chosen to minimise the possibility of any party gaining a majority.
Even if the nationalists managed the improbable the only guarantee is that Sir Keir Starmer would show Mr Swinney the door out onto Downing Street when he attempted to use that as a pretext for securing a vote.
This dilemma remains permanent because the Scotland Act that established the Scottish Parliament didn’t include a provision for the triggering of a vote on independence, and so the criteria for granting one will always be nebulous and politically driven.
In appealing to the British public’s sense of fairness we are banging our collective heads on a brick wall because, in these arts, the notion of parliamentary sovereignty is hardwired.
In the history of this country, there have only been three national referendums, such is the primacy with which we afford decision-making to the houses of parliament.
In the UK, referendums are characterised as once-in-a-generation, nuclear options, but in many other modern democracies, direct involvement in the political process at national and local level is more widespread, through a range of procedures, including regular referendums, public assemblies, and recall elections.
The Greeks would laugh at our notion that "democracy" should be restricted to us putting a cross on a ballot once every five years.
While pure direct democracy on the scale of ancient Athens is clearly impractical in a modern context, elements of it are used in several countries, particularly Switzerland and certain states in the United States. Swiss citizens regularly vote on national, cantonal (state), and local legislation through referendums and initiatives. These votes can overturn laws passed by parliament or even amend the federal constitution based on public petitions. In the United States, states like California make extensive use of ballot initiatives and propositions, allowing voters to directly enact laws or approve bonds and amendments. New England towns have preserved the tradition of the town meeting, where residents gather to debate and vote on the local budget and ordinances. These modern applications demonstrate how the principle of direct citizen decision-making can be integrated into larger representative systems.
Referendums are, by no means, an ideal way of deciding critical issues. The Brexit referendum demonstrated how reductive they can be in characterising complex and multi-faceted issue as straightforward and binary, particularly when so much disinformation is introduced into the debate.
Nevertheless, it should not be beyond the wit of parliament to introduce a statutory mechanism for triggering constitutional referendums to replace ad-hoc political calculations with a principled, transparent, and consistent process that safeguards the national interest.
Carlos Alba is former newspaper editor who now works as a freelance journalist, author, and PR and digital marketing consultant at Carlos Alba Media where he helps businesses and organisations to improve their visibility in the media.
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