Who should our MPs work for?

The answer of course should be us.

However, if you really think about it most of their efforts seem to go into promoting and working for themselves or collectively in government working to keep, often vocal minority, pressure groups off their backs.

This is simply not democracy by any measure. While we are so generously granted sovereignty for the day of any election, to chose our representative in parliament, they then generally ignore us, so often the majorities opinion, until the next election.

This cycle clearly leaves sovereignty in parliament which is not what democracy should be all about.

Representative democracy came about in an era when MPs travelled to parliament by horse or coach and therefore the only way the government could function was to send a representative there to carry out the wishes of their electorate. As we can see over time, they increasingly ignore our views and the relationship has become one of a ‘master and servant’ where their priorities are to themselves, their party and last of all us.

Modern communications and especially the internet have enabled a completely different relationship where we are able to let our politicians know exactly how we feel and what we want them to do on any given subject.

When I next see my MP in October I shall be asking him the question “What is his understanding of democracy” and whatever his reply I sense it will not involve real democracy, or people power, and hopefully he might just be left reflecting that at the moment our representative democracy is not real democracy.