this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
35 points (97.3% liked)

UK Politics

3023 readers
155 users here now

General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both [email protected] and [email protected] .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

[email protected] appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

This may seem a strange thing to say: Democracy isn't actually about finding out what the people want and just trying to do it. Democracy is about setting out a vision and a plan for the country and persuading people to follow it.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Respectfully, I didn't ignore the rest of what you said.

I agree that representatives need to explain to the electorate why they are best placed to elect them for what comes ahead.

But the key point is that we don't actually know what comes ahead. They have a manifesto, etc, but there will always be unforeseen circumstances which arise.

In those moments in a representative democracy the representatives make the decisions. Your vote for them has allowed you to have your person at the table, but they don't need to consult with the electorate again.

If they do, you're moving towards direct democracy.

There are good arguments why governments should look to keep the electorate informed, explain actions, and justify decisions, but the popularity of a measure shouldn't be the sole factor.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

My statements in no way indicated our mps should do what popular opinion wants.

It said not to compleatly ignore.

Your comparisons of devastates and representatives has no value in the quote you copied.

We both agree depict democracy is not the solution. But my statement is true.

Representative democracy is less democratic then direct. And "completely ignoring" poplar opinion is anti democratic. By definition.

My comment was opposing the whole idea of politicians using the term populist to belittle ideas they disagree with. Rather then challenging them on merit.

Sorry lots of typos. I'm legally blind and using a tablet atm. Its difficult.