As with the USA government's shut down Brexit shows up the
inadequacies of our own system of governance in that after two years 650 MPs
have, as it currently stands, absolutely no idea how to satisfactorily resolve
the situation and meet the wishes of the people in the 2016 referendum, which
produced the biggest democratic mandate this country has ever known.
McKay Coppins of the monthly magazine The Atlantic wonders
how the American government shutdown will end and records that congressional
staffers, off the record, have said “ there may be no way out of this mess
until something disastrous happens”. They raise various “macabre
hypotheticals”, including a big food scare resulting from a lapse in
inspections, or even a plane crash caused by a stressed-out air traffic
controller. Coppins concludes that the current political dynamics
won’t change until voters get a lot angrier.
The point about getting angrier is something I have
repeatedly said is necessary here if things are ever going to change. The
trouble is the people in this country are still too comfortable to even think
about the need for political reform let alone getting off their backsides and doing
something about it like lobby their MPs.
Brexit exposes our politicians for the celebrity orientated
inadequates they all are and have made themselves the easiest of targets if we
can be bothered to lobby them. The trouble is that very few of us, as yet, have
any idea of what it is we need to lobby them about so it is fortunate that
THA’s six demands provides them with a readymade answer to that question. All
the people have to do is wake up and find us and then demand the changes we
believe in.
This is by no means a short term project and, before it
starts, things are going to have to get much worse.
Incidentally the USA’s shutdown, over the government’s
budget, would be resolved if they had our fifth demand as part of their
constitution because the approval of the governments annual budget, in this
case including the controversial $5 billion for the ‘wall’, would be subject to
a compulsory ‘People’s Referendum’ rather than left to the partisan House of
Representatives to approve.