THE POISON OF SIMPLE MAJORITARIANISM
At the height of the Arab Spring, I remember the dismay as the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt and immediately began an assault on that countries secular institutions and the modern secular tradition in that country. At the time, I remember writing, possibly rather patronisingly, that the Brotherhood had mistaken majoritarianism for democracy. That they were not the first to make this mistake and would not be the last. The idea that the winner takes all and ‘losers’ no longer count is just as poisonous to a democracy, pluralism and democratic institutions as any authoritarian demagogue.
The favourite tool of the majoritarian, as we have discovered recently, to our cost, is the plebiscite since this provides the either/or question that enables highly complex issues to be reduced to a simplistic good/bad formula. Moreover, a simple majority is all that is required to cast the ‘losers’ into the outer darkness of the bad. One vote will do. An attitude emerges, best encapsulated by the moronic statement, ‘you lost, get over it.’ We are surrounded by the poisonous climate that such a state of mind creates.
In a way inconceivable only four years ago the country has been split asunder into two camps, Remain or Leave, with the government seeking to enact ‘the will’ of the latter, effectively governing for half the country. As I say, in the Manichean world of majoritarianism, losers do not count.
To be absolutely clear simple majoritarianism* is incompatible with a modern pluralistic democracy. Institutions based on compromise cannot cope, the procedures of legislative chambers are rendered redundant, mere slaves to the ‘will of the people,’ -remember losers do not count.
The legacy that the fanatic Europhiles have bequeathed us is a society bitterly divided and looking increasingly incapable of resolving these divisions any time soon. Whatever happens next we have been introduced to the language of civil war. Weimar and the France of the 1930s are our only guides to what may happen. Pandora has been set free and the third-rate politicians of the Westminster parties are clueless as to how to get it back in its box. Theresa May mouths platitudes about bringing the country back together, as if all her language about ‘citizens of nowhere,’ and saboteurs could be unsaid. Few things sound more hollow, more fake, more artificial, than contrived calls for unity from the partisans of division.
One hope remains, and we saw it on the Streets of London in Mid-March. It is the good humour and passion, of ordinary people mobilised angry and determined.
I close with a few words by the American poet William Stafford.
‘And so, I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.’
William Stafford, A Ritual to Read to Each Other.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Abraham Lincoln
*Rather than, for example, required percentages of the electorate for major constitutional changes.
