Excessive whip use

I asked my MP, Fiona O’Donnell, to defy the whip and vote for an EU membership referendum. She said that she would not do this because, in general, the EU is a great thing for the UK.

This missed the point. The vote is about allowing the electorate to decide whether or not we should continue as is, on revised terms or withdraw altogether. Her views on EU membership are valid but so are those of the rest of the population.

What we are witnessing is a disgraceful denial of the wishes of a significant majority of the voters. When parliament ignores the wishes of the electorate, it becomes an object of contempt. It is already held in low regard. The “we know what is best for you” attitude the whipped vote on this debate portrays exacerbates this.

Successive governments are very keen on interfering to introduce “democracy” to other nations but nearer home, we, the Westminster electorate, can have only a very specious form of democracy which is a limited, bivariate choice of parties (with proven failed policies) which operate a quasi-dictatorship regime of MPs being whipped to vote the way that the leaders decide and which is often widely at variance with what the people, the “demos” of democracy, want.

This generates cynicism in the parliamentary process, which is leading to fewer people voting and engaging with politics. MPs must not close their eyes to this – when the public are alienated, democracy fails.

David K Allan

The Square

Haddington, East Lothian