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Referendums

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 29th April 2000.

The proposal by Lords Owen, Healey and Prior to extend the referendum principle to Government Bills of “first class constitutional importance” (report, 26th April) is a welcome move towards a more direct democracy in this country, but it could be carried much further.

Switzerland has long had both a right of Initiative and a right of Optional Referendum which are triggered by a minimum number of electors, 100,000 in the case of the Initiative, 50,000 in the case of the Referendum.  In addition, all government proposed constitutional change is automatically subject to Referendum.

The Initiative allows electors to put their own proposal for constitutional change to popular vote, along with the government’s counter-proposal.  Scaled to the British population, this would required about 850,000 electors.  There is a minimum time before essentially the same proposal can be voted on again.

The Optional Referendum right allows electors to call for any Government measure to be put to popular vote.  Scaled to the British population this would require about 425,000 electors to obtain a referendum.

Of course such a massive extension of democratic rights, which can be extended down to local government level too, would be resisted by most of the political class.  But with government by representative democracy giving way to government by pressure group, it may well be that the people themselves would welcome direct democracy à la Suisse.

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Trouble with the Germans . . .

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 12th October 1996.

One wonders what Professor Cameron Watt means when he asserts that “two generations of German leaders” have established “a democracy at least the equal of ours”, and “whose politicians seem more responsive to the anxieties of the electorate” than ours are.

How do you measure democracy in fact?  Has contemporary German democracy really been tested by the sort of harsh economic conditions which the post-1919 Germany democracy had to endure?

As a recent visitor to Germany, the one actual measurement I saw was the poll which showed that about two-thirds of the German people were opposed to giving up their currency in favour of the euro.  But Mr Kohl has decided that, come what may, they shall give it up.  Not much democracy there!

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