| Twelve angry men |
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| Written by Dr Eamonn Butler |
| Tuesday, 06 January 2009 06:03 |
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I've often said that I'd prefer to be governed by the first twelve people in the phone book than by 650 career politicians and hundreds more party placemen posing as peers. But only so long as none of them actually want to do the job. The problem in any system of government is not how to choose our leaders, but how to restrain them. An elected government with unlimited powers is no better, in my book, than a government chosen by lot with unlimited powers. And I don't think that members of the general public, taken jury-service style off the street for a short stint in government (it couldn't be a long one, because they've all got jobs and businesses to look after) would make better decisions than career politicians. At least the careerists know there are limits - they may be in office now, but eventually they'll have to live in opposition. But people who are parachuted into government for a few weeks or months will be focused entirely on the present. The future won't be their concern. However our leaders are chosen, we need rules to keep them in their place. In Britain, we developed these rules over many centuries, largely through struggles between kings and commoners (or kings and aristocrats). Trial by jury, habeas corpus, double jeopardy - all the rules that ensure our leaders can't just grab us, torture us, stick us in jail and forget us without some form of due process of law that involves ordinary people as well as officials. The trouble is, in the last ten years all that has been torn up. However we choose our leaders, those basic rules of personal liberty need to be reasserted.
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Comments (3)
Twelve Angry Men
written by Derek W. Buxton, January 06, 2009
And the rest of us. How did our protection from the executive get torn up? It was a "Constitution" not for losing. The executive did not have the power to overturn it, so who collaberated? The major problem is that there does not seem to be a politician with the backbone to take it on. At the next election it is going to be very difficult to know for whom to vote, the three main parties are too close to each other and the small "others" are not going to make a difference. It is probably a case of voting conservative whilst holding the nose and praying, in the hope that no one could be as bad as Zanu-lab.
The rules are more important than the choice
written by MarkE, January 06, 2009
Many people seem to see "democracy" as some form of panacea, that will guarantee enlightened government, acting in the best interests of the governed all the time. Sadly this is not the case; I would prefer to see government weakened at the cost of less "democratic" accountability, than greater "democracy" at the cost of stronger government. The NuLabour government elected in 1997 was perfectly convinced that everything done by government was for the best in the best of all possible worlds (presumably, being logically consistent, they believed everything done by the preceeding government was equally enlightened), therefore any constraint on the exercise of that power had to be removed. This is why parliament has been emasculated, the Lords all but abolished and we now live in an elective dicatorship.
The government should fear the people written by Miraj Patel, January 08, 2009
As Thomas Jefferson once said, "people should not fear their government, the government should fear the people." To ensure liberty it is important that the government knows that the people control it so that it doesn't overstep its boundaries.
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Should we elect our leaders by lot? There's an ad in the current edition of Standpoint magazine saying just that, and calling for a 'people's parliament' and 'citizens' juries' which apparently, we are told, make much better policy decisions than so-called experts.
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