Which is the conservative way in all things. Well, not so much glacial reform, but slow progress through measured and planned steps rather than huge radical leaps into the dark.

“We are not allied to the continental view that the perfect constitution can be dreamt up and written down by the nations chief intellectuals. Britain doesn’t go in for intellectualism.”

It’s true that we haven’t traditionally gone for this continental view, but increasingly it seems we are – as with the EU constitution and the supposed “Bill of Rights” which just about every party is dreaming up these days (even though we already have one which they choose to ignore or a regular basis). The reason for this is that Britain increasingly does go for intellectualism – take Cameron’s belief in the “nudge” agenda for example.

Democracy is a hard thing to define. It’s far easier to say what it isn’t – and it isn’t simply about more and more people having the right to vote for more and more things. If it were then the Soviet Union would have been a democratic paragon. There are four things required for democracy to exist in my opinion.

One: A demos – a group of people with a shared set of interests (monoculture).
Two: Real political choice – two or more parties with a realistic possibility of winning who have ideologically opposing views.
Three: A system of voting that delivers popular sovereignty – the belief that the government in power is there as a result of the true will of the people and governs with their true consent.
Four: A check and balance on the abuse of power of an elected government.

As things currently stand, we fail on most of those points.

In the main, we are less citizens than we are vassals of that plutocracy, which in turn is reliant upon regional mafias in the same way our former Kings exploited manorialism. What is the point of and what will be achieved by the sacking Gordon Brown to replace him with another leader of a thoroughly corrupt Establishment, following political tinkering to appease the masses?

‘Citizens’ are rapidly losing faith in the major political parties. Long before apathy and disgust make voting an irrelevance, existing positions of power appear to have little recourse other than extend the might of a police state. This is the more likely outcome than the wonderful daydream of one million citizens marching on parliament to close it down and symbolically demolish the building.

Stu – thanks, only a few typos and grammar mistakes. I blame the wine.

P – indeed.

On Friday, I listened to the election results and then heard Brown saying that (in essence) he still had work to do. I was left wondering just how much more clearly the electorate could have stated that it did not want Brown to do that work.

One really interesting point about the ‘recall elections’ idea that’s been suggested is that any effectively organised campaign could theoretically trigger a general election. If enough people in each constituency signed a petition, the whole House (or at even just 50% of its members) would have to face a recall by-election. This could easily turn a majority into a minority in a political climate like the current one.

Giving us the power to recall MPs would effectively give us the power to recall the entire Government if we wanted to. Just imagine the power!

The fact is that it is not the good of the country that is in the politician’s heart, but what is good for them.