Monday, January 14, 2019

A democracia implica o Brexit?

We must stop 2019 being the year of the antidemocrats - delivering Brexit is only the start, argumenta Simon Cooke (um autarca local do Partido Conservador) - a crítica dele ao elitismo parece-me mais interessante que a parte especifica da defesa do Brexit:

The depressing thing about all this is that it is only going to get worse - 'despite Brexit' as the phrase goes. Indeed, it worries me that the response to us leaving on 29th March 2019 from putative philosopher kings with columns in the Times or the Guardian will be to double down on "don't trust the people" and to argue for more limits to democracy so such a terrible thing doesn't happen ever again. (...) Plus an endlessly repeated patronising mantra - "stupid voters got it wrong, stupid voters got it wrong".

At the heart of all this are two linked beliefs - first, that most people (not you and I, obviously but most people) are too stupid to make the right choices; second that there is an absolutely right choice and it can be determined by looking at the evidence. Now it's plain that we all (not you, I know, but exceptions prove the rule) make stupid choices from time to time, it's part of the human condition and it's also true that looking at evidence helps to make better choices. But this doesn't mean that you can eliminate "stupid" choices or that the evidence you have will necessarily lead to a better choice. (...)

 Not that democracy will be abolished or the franchise limited but rather that, in the manner of the EU, complicated pseudo-democratic structures will be put in place to give the illusion that leaders are elected and decisions are democratic. Alongside all this the real leaders (or "senior leaders" as we now call them) will carry on in their appointed and unaccountable world - the police, NHS, social services and transport will be managed in a supposedly businesslike manner by boards of wise folk who aren't actually accountable to anyone.

The irony in all of this is that, in Britain, only the loopier parts of our politics understands just how the current system threatens democracy - a few of the Corbynistas (when they're not pretending to be communists) and the libertarian parts of the pro-Brexit right understand that the Brexit vote was about saving democracy.

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