Do we really live in a democracy? Our rulers seem to be scrambling to revert to a pre-democratic age. Our institutions, and government itself, are to be insulated from ‘populism’, which the philosopher John Gray has aptly defined as ‘a term liberals use to describe the political blow back against the social disruption that their policies have created.’ Plans to realign with the EU treat democracy with open disdain.
Much is badly wrong in many of what were once confidently called ‘mature democracies’. Their malaise has common features, but each country has its own particular symptoms. Ours now include an assault on democratic legitimacy – not a frontal assault, but a contemptuous determination to ignore public wishes and even to subvert a legally expressed democratic decision. Ignoring public sentiment is most evident in the whole establishment attitude to mass immigration and its consequences. Subverting a democratic decision is blatant in the present government’s ‘reset’ with the European Union.
After the referendum vote, as all readers will recall, Remainers campaigned for a second referendum. That at least was open and honest. But they were decisively defeated again in 2019, and their campaign fell apart. Their tactic now is to avoid a popular vote and even to evade parliamentary scrutiny by using so-called ‘Henry VIII’ powers. The effect will be to nullify the 2016 referendum without a public debate or consultation. That is the avowed intention.
Do we really live in a democracy? Our rulers are scrambling to revert to a pre-democratic age. I keep thinking of the so-called Great Reform Act of 1832. The weight of public opinion, often violently expressed, forced parliament to accept constitutional reform as a first step towards a transformation of the state and society. But those in power made sure it had the opposite effect. Their ‘reform’ deliberately made the system less democratic, disfranchising working-class voters, explicitly denying women a vote, and buttressing the dominance of the propertied elite.
As in the case of Brexit, the intention was to stifle a popular initiative. This was not done by reactionary Tories but by arrogantly progressive Whigs convinced of their superior right to rule. A leading Liberal of a later generation, Robert Lowe, speaking for ‘every cultivated Englishman’, vehemently opposed ‘a democratic basis’ for government as it would affect ‘all your other institutions.’ Lowe was once ridiculed by progressives, but now his view coincides with theirs. Our institutions, and government itself, are to be insulated from ‘populism’, which the philosopher John Gray has aptly defined as ‘a term liberals use to describe the political blow back against the social disruption that their policies have created.’
A few months ago, I took part in an international conference on ‘Populism’ at the European Parliament, in which I was in a minority of one. I was wryly amused to observe that indignation towards populism was particularly heated when what the populists were saying was true. How dare they tell people that Euro-MPs have chauffeur-driven cars!
As for the British Left, their anti-democratic reflex goes back at least to their repeated inability to win over the public during the Thatcher era. The clearest sign was their change of mind over what became the European Union, to which Labour had traditionally been hostile, seeing it as an undemocratic capitalist organization. In 1988, Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, won them over by promising European laws to counter Thatcherism. They realized that ‘Europe’ could provide Left-wing groups with the means of importing laws that the benighted British public would not vote for. This remains their hope.
As Tony Blair realized, Labour could only win elections by pretending to be something different. That has now changed. In a most extraordinary way, the Starmer government are behaving as if they are doomed, as if this is their last ever chance to force through legislation that they, but not the country, want. The ever-more-nonsensical Chagos Islands fiasco is a small example. The stubborn pursuit of Net Zero during a global energy crisis is a much bigger one. Alignment with the EU will be their way of binding future parliaments, ending a fundamental part of our democratic constitution. These three policies will cost vast sums of public money, not to benefit the country, but to damage it.
A backdoor entry to the EU will be the culmination of a ten-year campaign aimed at nullifying the Brexit vote. It is of course the essence of democracy to argue the case for what you want and against what you dislike. But a sustained campaign of propaganda and obstruction – involving not just political parties, but also paid lobbies, universities, the BBC and public bodies aimed at shifting public opinion by blatant misinformation — is not democracy. It is a form of authoritarianism. We have not seen anything like this in Britain, I think, since the Puritan Republic under Cromwell, also adept at witch-hunts and sanctimoniousness.
Why is there this persistent determination to ‘re-align’ with the EU? It appears irrational. The 2016 threats of economic damage have been repeatedly disproved by the data on trade and growth: post-Brexit Britain, in spite of self-harming governments, has done better economically than the EU. The prediction that we would be left isolated has similarly proved nonsense. Britain was first in Europe to help Ukraine, is contributing (as far as its weak armed forces permit) to the defence of northern Europe, and even as I write Sir Keir Starmer is in discussions in Paris on opening the Straits of Hormuz. The EU is irrelevant to a defence strategy, and is even an obstacle.
There are two obvious explanations for the Rejoin resurgence. First, the Labour government wants to have Brexit as an excuse for its own failures, and to parade a ‘reset’ as a meagre triumph. Second, it wants to please Remainers, whose devotion to the EU is essentially an emotional rejection of Brexit ‘populism’. There is perhaps a third reason. Brexit was above all a call to revive a flagging political system, to ‘take back control’ by the British state and its people. For many politicians and officials, this was an alarming prospect. They feared responsibility. They preferred being feather-bedded by Brussels. If things went wrong – as they did, most obviously in 2008 – they would not have to carry the can on their own. And – as the career of Peter Mandelson reminds us – the EU is a rich gravy train.
In short, opposition to Brexit draws on many things: snobbery, political opportunism, careerism, lack of self-confidence, visceral suspicion of the masses, shirking of responsibility, and downright fear. It rests on acceptance of national decline. Not the Tory declinism of an exhausted post-war elite stunned by the loss of empire, as in the days when Harold Macmillan applied unsuccessfully to join the Common Market. Rather, today’s declinism is that of a Left-wing political alliance whose policies are all collapsing in a country where nothing seems to work and the plebs are increasingly truculent. An activist part of that alliance is a nihilistic radicalism which sees national decline as an opportunity.
Do Starmer and Reeves really think that rejoining the EU, openly or furtively, will benefit Britain? That, surely, is not the object of the exercise. The true object is to try desperately to stem the flow of middle-class voters to the Lib Dems, nationalists and Greens. Britain’s democratic sovereignty is a price worth paying.
The Remain/Rejoin campaign is only one example of the unashamed subversion of democracy. What has been called ‘hyper-liberalism’ – the transgender lobby, the apocalyptic Green movement, hysterical anti-Zionism, ‘critical race theory’ – aims openly to alter the way people think by incessant propaganda, intimidation, and censorship. They have succeeded to an amazing degree. George Orwell’s deadly satire 1984, attacking manipulation of language, rewriting of history and prosecution of ‘thoughtcrime’, has become their blueprint. Poor Orwell, a democratic socialist, must be spinning in his grave.
A minority of the country cheers them on – essentially the university educated public sector class. Polling indicates that they have a negative view of Britain. Those controlling many of our institutions – schools, museums, universities – take a perverse pride in doing harm to their own country in the service of some Higher Cause – one might call it the Guy Fawkes syndrome. But unlike Guy Fawkes, they are not risking their lives or even their jobs. On the contrary, they advance their careers by pleasing those who agree with them.
If our undeniably serious problems have a solution, it must be through the reassertion of democratic and patriotic national politics. This is very easy to say, but dauntingly hard to do. It will require a government willing to trust the electorate with hard truths, and of course an electorate ready to listen. Even if that fairly miraculous combination came about, the government would have to fundamentally reform its own machinery. It would have to assert democratic control of our great institutions, many of which are unaccountable recipients of public money. It will need if necessary to stand up to striking civil servants and teachers. It will have to fight and win the ‘culture wars’ as a vital step towards repairing national unity and promoting true integration. The task is as hard as that undertaken by Margaret Thatcher over three parliaments. The alternative is that the ship of state will drift rudderless into ever stormier waters.
This article was first published in the Sunday Telegraph (19 April 2026).
