Owen Jones has decided to take on this Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership thing. You know, the treaty that says that governments must live up to the contracts they sign, further, that it won't be the courts controlled by governments that decide whether they have or not? Marshaling his arguments Jones tells us that:
And if our political elite won’t budge, then it’s up to the rest of us to organise. Criticisms of the EU have been surrendered to the xenophobic right for too long: a democratic People’s Europe has to be built. But TTIP is also a reminder of the constant threat from those in power. When they steal chunks of our democracy away from us, we may find that it is far from easy to win them back.
The argument is not that the TTIP or that arbitration set up are themselves anti-democratic. Rather, that they might curb the ability of the electorate to vote for something in the future. On the grounds that a government might have signed a contract. For example, a contract that asks a private company to provide some medical service or other. That contract stating that if the contract is cancelled then there will be some compensation to be paid. Jones and his ilk are arguing that the payment of such compensation will make renationalisation more expensive and that thus this is a denial of democracy.
Hmm, well, we might recall this also said by Jones:
The Aids crisis was building; more than half the population believed homosexuality was “always wrong”, peaking at 64% in 1987 when just 11% opted for “not wrong at all”; and later that decade the homophobic legislation, section 28, was introduced.
Jones is, of course, against that section 28 stuff even though it was obviously democratic. He opposes it on the grounds that some things are more important than the will of the majority. But once that principle has been conceded we've then got to decide what are those things that are more important than that majority will?
And the TTIP is saying, essentially, that the rule of law is more important than whatever it is the howling mob wants this week. That's certainly something that we would agree with around here.
There really are areas of life that have to be protected from democracy. You can argue, to your taste, as to whether the teaching about homosexuality in schools, the holding of governments to contracts they have freely signed, are such or not. But once we've the basic principle, that democracy is not the sole and over riding factor then we've got to have all of those arguments individually.