While driving to Frome yesterday I heard the Labour MP Stella Creasy speaking, on the Jeremy Vine show, very eloquently and passionately that the way out of the Brexit stalemate in Parliament would be to hold a Citizen's Assembly (CA) of 250 people.
These people would be picked at random, as one would a jury, to listen to expert witnesses, over around three weekends, and to then, after due deliberation, give direction to our 650 MPs at Westminster, who of course have already had two years to sort this out.
So after the result of the referendum in 2016, the biggest mandate in election history, two election manifestos by Labour and Conservatives, in 2017, stating they would honour the result and two full years, under Article 50, the likes of Stella Creasy and others, who support this idea, believe 250 citizens, over a few weekends, can achieve what 650 MPs have failed to do in two years - I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Can there be any clearer sign, as to how clueless and incompetent our MPs are, that some believe the answer to the Brexit conundrum should lie with this idea.
So lets just suppose the Assembly's conclusion was that we should leave with a No Deal would our MPs implement such a disastrous policy?
Of course the permanent solution is for all six of our demands be enacted with our fourth, 'The People's Consent', enabling all of the electorate to have their say on any government's policies. This would be real democracy in action which would be far better than some gimmick, though up by a group of useless politicians, who like the rest of those in Westminster have never undertaken to do any serious homework on the issues surrounding Brexit.
The only general point I do take from this idea, as stated in our first demand, is that ultimately it should be the 'People' that are sovereign and not Parliament as only in this way can the 'People', when there is enough support to do so, demand answers and action form our politicians at Westminster.
But would the voters do serious homework either? Could they, if they wanted to? The 2016 referendum was characterised by disinformation, not information. There needs to be some way the people can demand truthful information and cross-examine witnesses. The TV news networks etc. seem to be as ignorant as the MPs, and the newspapers sell saleable copy, not news.
ReplyDeleteYou cannot overlook the fact that the people who voted to leave had up to 45 years of observing how the EU works and impacts on us and they decided they didn't want to stay in it.
ReplyDeleteThen you need to also appreciate that our fourth demand is largely about the 'People' having the power to say NO to government proposed legislation and all government legislation gets a fair airing before it goes through parliament so the people are pretty well informed as to whether they want to object to the bill or not.
My stance is simple, I generally trust the overall good sense of the 'People' more than the 650 partisan MPs in Westminster.