The Failure of democracy?

I have often claimed that the best Government I have lived under was in Hong Kong in the 1980s. I admit that I am being a tad provocative (!) but there is more than a little substance to my claim. The provocation comes from the fact that Hong Kong did not hold elections and that its Governor and officials were all appointed. Not an elective democracy then. The defence is that it worked – the government did a good job.

Hong Kong was a benevolent dictatorship – at least it was when I lived there. There were important freedoms – of Speech, the Press, of Association etc. etc. After Tiananmen Square in 1989 my staff asked me if they could join the mass protests underway. I of course agreed.

So nobody had a significant vote in Hong Kong in my time there , but it was a liberal and civilised place. And rich – the lightly regulated financial sector encouraged investment and businesses of all sorts flourished.

The colonial government of Hong Kong built or started huge capital projects in the territory. Two cross harbour tunnels, a magnificent new airport. A state of the art Metro system, and much more.

Defenders of the magic of the ballot box argue that voting out leaders you don’t like is a cornerstone of democracy. The ballot box is the guarantor of democratic freedoms. Well up to a point Lord Copper. But what if the electors get it wrong? Hitler and the Nazi Party won 37% of the vote in 1932. He promised a dictatorship which he delivered. Donald Trump promises to be a dictator on “Day One” if elected. We saw what Trump supporters can do in 24 hours on January 6th 2021. Day One is all he needs.

Brexit supporters argue that the Referendum result in 2016 was conclusive, but of course it wasn’t. The New York Times put it well:

“Though such votes are portrayed as popular governance in its purest form, studies have found that they often subvert democracy rather than serve it. They tend to be volatile, turning not just on the merits of the decision but also on unrelated political swings or even…on the weather. Voters must make their decisions with relatively little information, forcing them to rely on political messaging — which puts power in the hands of political elites rather than those of voters.”

In 2019 Boris Johnson was elected Prime Minister on a single issue and the reservations the NYT had can equally be applied to that election.

In 1932 Hitler told the German people who the enemy was. For the Leave campaign in 2016 and Johnson in 2019 it was, of course, the EU. IN 1932 the Nazis were no less unequivocal:

So voting is no guarantee of democracy and the absence of elections is no guarantee of totalitarian dictatorship. Which begs the question as to what democracy actually is and how can it be achieved.

As we have seen superficially democratic electoral systems can be manipulated to benefit the elites. The only real beneficiaries of Brexit were the rich, which is why the campaign to leave the European Union was mostly funded by five of the UK’s richest businessmen.

The extent of the corruption in Government in Britain over the past five years or more is unprecedented. The true story of government contracts during the pandemic is yet fully to emerge but if you wanted proof of the adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely it’s not far away.

So the ballot box doesn’t always deliver outcomes that with hindsight can be seen to have been desirable. But, of course, proper democracies have to have elections and choose the parties and leaders to run things. In 1933 Hindenburg sought to restrict the Nazis by forcing a coalition with moderate parties of the Right under Hitler’s chancellorship. This failed and we know what happened next. A similar process is underway in The Netherlands at the moment. An attempt to tie the hands of the neo-Fascist Geert Wilders, who won the last election, by forcing coalition with the rather more moderate centre Right. The Dutch do have a history of pragmatic compromise. There’s no guarantee that this will apply this time around however.

In Germany the AfD a Far Right party is strengthening, especially in the former East Germany. Again the likely outcome is that the centre will hold, possibly with the formation of a “Grand Coalition” and the protests which remind Germans of 1933 have been encouragingly strong. But these are uncertain times.

In Britain we should study carefully what is happening in The Netherlands and Germany (and France where Marine Le Pen has surged in the polls). Nigel Farage and UKIP had a profound influence on British politics without ever having an impact in a General Election. We should be cautious of being complacent now despite Labour’s strong lead in the polls. UKIP’s successor party Reform UK and it’s Geert Wilders like leader Richard Tice are currently at 10% in the polls – ahead of the LiberalDemocrats!

Ultimately it’s about policy and competence rather than ideology , the battle for the Centreground. But as we saw in 2016 and 2019 votes can be won by politicians who reduce complex issues to simple (and simplistic) binary choices). Trump won the New Hampshire Republican Primary by doing just that. Be scared, Democracy may not be all it’s cracked up to be !