Is England really a democracy?
Democracy means literally, ‘rule by the people’, so this begs the question, do the people rule in England (or should that be the UK) and how much power do they have? Imo, although we have democratic rights such as freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of association and equality before the law (well, in theory at least!) the people of this country can do very little to influence the government once the MPs have been elected to power. Witness the recent massive demonstrations against the ‘War on Terror’ – I would take a fair bet that most of the electorate are against it, but the government carries on. I am sure this example could be applied to other burning issues of the day. When I compare the UK with other democratic states I see its elected representatives behaving as if they are far less accountable to the electorate than in other countries. In fact MPs vote almost always not according to the wishes of the electorate, nor even their own conscience, but according to what t
