Category: United Kingdom

Source: Traditional Unionist Voice – Northern Ireland

The following article was published in today’s News Letter.

In my last article in this series on the first majoritarian vote on a matter of great controversy to take place at Stormont in over 50 years that is now required (unless the law is changed) before the end of this year, I highlighted further problems with the assertion that the vote gives expression to democracy.

I explained why, rather than doing so, the effect of the proposed vote is to ask MLAs to effectively renounce the rights of their constituents to be represented in the legislature making the laws to which we are subject in 300 areas of law (Removing Stormont’s cross-community vote for the Northern Ireland Protocol violates the Belfast Agreement, September 17).

There is something disturbing, unnerving and alarming about the sight of those in authority seeking to legitimise the renunciation of democracy by hiding its true implication in a process presented as a manifestation of democracy and called euphemistically the ‘democratic consent vote.’

Engaging in these antics cannot but risk placing the wider ‘integrity’ (in every sense of the word) of UK democracy in jeopardy. This is a dangerous game.

In order to really appreciate the full extent of the difficulty, though, we need to consider the proposed vote in context.

The first essay in this series looked at how the forced majority Stormont vote ahead places the future governance of Northern Ireland in jeopardy.

We live at a time of growing concerns about voter apathy across the UK, underlined by the second lowest UK turnout figures and the lowest ever Northern Ireland turnout figures at the General Election in July. This is really concerning. Democracy only works if people vote.

If there is a shift away from voting, the validity of both democracy and the government it sustains are called into question and people begin to consider the less enlightened alternatives. The difficulty is compounded at the current time on two bases.

First, the sad truth is that it makes complete sense that voter turnout should have been the lowest ever in Northern Ireland on July 4 because this was the first General Election after the debasing of the vote in Northern Ireland from January 1, 2021 with the introduction of the protocol/Windsor Framework.

At the 2019 General Election the people of Northern Ireland went to the polls on the same basis as people across the rest of the UK, able to vote for MPs, who together with their other legislators, were able to make all the laws to which the people of Northern Ireland were subject, as in the rest of the UK. On July 4, 2024, however, while the people of England, Wales and Scotland went to the polls on this basis, we in Northern Ireland were only afforded the right to elect people to make some of the laws to which we are subject.

In 300 areas our laws are now made for us by a foreign Parliament in whose elections we cannot stand and to which we can elect no representatives.

The new arrangement has two troubling consequences. In the first instance, it tells the people of Northern Ireland that we no longer have the right to ‘pursue democratically national and political aspirations’ (see the Good Friday Agreement) with respect to all the laws to which we are subject which inevitably makes some people look to other means of securing change.
In the second instance, this inevitably sends the message to the rest of the UK that democracy is not all that important. You cannot tell some UK citizens that it is OK to not have the right to stand for election to make all the laws to which they are subject and simultaneously tell other UK citizens that having this right is vital.

Moreover, we greatly compound the problem by using a process masquerading as democracy to secure its negation, suggesting that it is OK for representatives within part of the UK to go into their legislature (Stormont) in December and vote to renounce the rights of their citizens to be represented in the making of the laws to which they are subject not just in relation to one law or 300 laws but three hundred areas of law for six to eight years.

Second, the above takes effect at the worst possible time for the UK because the integrity of UK democracy is now under greater pressure than at any time since the introduction of universal suffrage.

The July UK General Election results mean that we now have a UK government with the smallest ever proportion of the vote for modern times, just 33.8%, meaning that of the 59.9% of people who voted, over 65% did not vote for the government.

In the second instance – placing this precarious arrangement under the greatest possible strain – we have a government with the largest majority of seats since 1832, suggesting it has the greatest mandate of modern times, when what we actually have is a government whose mandate is uniquely constrained.

It is not the purpose of this article to suggest that this outcome is the result of any abuse of the system. It isn’t. But it is to acknowledge that in the past, the ‘first past the post’ election system has never placed itself under as much pressure as it has through the July 4, 2024 General Election results.

It will not be easy for the UK body politic to navigate the twin challenge to the integrity of democracy resulting from the creation of a government with a huge majority that nearly 70% of those who voted (let alone those that didn’t vote) did not support, at the same time as it is asking a UK legislature (Stormont) to engage in the obscene charade of using democracy to negate democracy.

Rather than seeing democratic strength in the size of its majority, the new government should see in the yawning mismatch between its limited share of the vote and huge Commons majority an unusually strained and in some ways vulnerable expression of democracy.

In this context it should go out of its way to pursue a path of moderation, especially where democracy is concerned.

To this end, it should move urgently to repeal the misguided legislation of the previous government that is currently poised to deploy democracy before the year is out, both for the purpose of its negation and for recklessly forcing the first majoritarian Stormont vote on a matter of deepest controversy in over 50 years. It should instead press for mutual enforcement which disenfranchises no one.
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This is the fourth of five essays by Dr Dan Boucher, who is a former Director of Policy and Research for the DUP, and now aide to the leader of the TUV Jim Allister MP