Reflections on a referendum (II): I do not think democracy means what you think it means (with a short discourse on sovereignty)

This campaign has been dogged by a discussion of Democracy (capital D). I find this inexpressibly tedious, partly because I have at best a lukewarm attachment to democracy, but mostly because so does everyone else.

Not that you would know it. It's long been an annoying habit in public discourse to conflate everything one likes with democracy. As a result, things we don't like tend to be labelled undemocratic, when they are often, for example illiberal. Absurdly, when Obama intervened in the referendum, Leave called it undemocratic, as if having a view is equivalent to having a vote. Obama wasn't being undemocratic; he's doing something the Leave campaign didn't like.

This conflation leads to confusion, bad policy and poor outcomes. It also leads people to believe that pure democracy is something that is both desirable and present in the UK. Neither of these statements are true, though not for the reasons that have been advanced by Brexiteers. We have a democratic system, in that it's a system where most levers are decided by election, but not all. The judiciary is not (see America for why this is a good thing); the civil service is not (also good, even the US seem to believe this is mostly a good idea). Rather excellently, even parts of our legislature are not either (for the avoidance of doubt, I am talking about the Lords). We certainly don't live in a pure democracy - not every decision is put to the vote or taken on the basis of popular opinion. Thankfully. If they were, we'd have Hanging back; we'd also have a mess. California is a good example of what happens when politicians are overridden by referenda - governments cannot govern. Like every other "democratic" country, we have a system for balancing popular views with the need to govern.

The European Union has another one. I don't think it's a particularly good one, though it's not bad, and the task is complicated. It's plain to me that every major appointment in Brussels is effectively selected democratically. Power is vested in the Council of Ministers (all elected), the President (chosen by elected heads of state), the commissioners (appointed by elected officials and then confirmed by the elected Parliament) and the Parliament (elected, albeit by a system that I don't like). We may not like the role of the Commission, i.e., that they can propose legislation, but they can't pass it. Both the Ministers and the Parliament can block it. All of these are institutions with problems, in large part because we don't take them seriously as institutions (note who we send and how we vote for MEPs and who we select as commissioners). But they are democratic.

That they are democratic does not mean they are desirable. It is entirely legitimate to reject institutions for lots of reasons, including that it's badly designed. We may feel that the UK is misaligned with the rest of Europe, and that it should be separate (a version of the SNP argument at home, i.e., a single demos does not exist). But that is to make a claim about appropriateness of structure, not democracy. To conflate them is unhelpful. I'd make the same point about policy. By all means object to EU policy, but then object to EU policy, not its democratic credentials. As an aside, the UK is overwhelmingly in line with EU policy on almost everything that passes. Insofar as these things can be counted, we have been outvoted about 2% of the time since 1999, though a higher number recently. I struggle to think of major elements where we have been heavily defeated, though there may be. Of course, that the UK is outvoted is not undemocratic; the clue is in the name.

I feel there are echoes of this in the debate about sovereignty. If I'm completely honest, I find the debate here bewildering. Last time I really considered sovereignty, I was studying the Dutch revolt and it meant William of Orange, as a sovereign prince, could license piracy. I understood that. What I don't understand is the suggestion that we are not sovereign now. That we are having a referendum is obvious and literal proof that we have sovereign power to change the terms of our treaty relationship with the other EU members. We don't stop being sovereign if we choose to vest decisions in supranational bodies, just as we do with NATO or the ECHR. I think what people mean when they talk about sovereignty is that they think the EU is making bad decisions and possibly that they believe our Parliament would be better at making those decisions. In many cases that's impossible, some decisions can only be made effectively at a supranational level, for example the recent changes to mobile phone roaming charges. More generally, I'm pretty sceptical about our own capacity to deliver, but it's a reasonable position. I wish we were having a debate about institutional capacity, rather than "Freedom." That sounds technocratic, but the EU debate is about how we do the running of things; or rather, it should be. If it was ever in doubt, we resolved the sovereignty debate the moment the referendum was called.

One more tomorrow, on consequences.