By Whose Authority?

I would like to formally make a statement to the British government defining my relations with the group of individuals who claim the lawful right to exercise that authority.

I am reliable informed that their official position is that I can do this.
For now, anyway.

You are claiming that you have been chosen by the British people to administer us and determine how the laws of this country are to be implemented. That the body of men and women who form that little clique of people we call the cabinet was chosen by the people residing in the territorial unit known as the United Kingdom to implement the laws they live under. This is the mandate you claim.

Only- this isn't so. I do not believe the British people would ever have chosen you, had the choice been theirs to make. From a free choice. And they didn't choose you. Your authority does not proceed from the British people, it proceeds from commanding a majority in the House of Commons. That isn't the same thing.

Your lawful right to govern, if you call it such, proceeds from the fact that the Queen appointed one of you as Prime Minister and he gets to hand pick all the rest of you.
It actually proceeds from nothing else at all. The Queen, technically, can appoint Gary Glitter as Prime Minister. The authority of all of you derives from an unelected woman who holds that position because she is the the most senior Protestant descendant of the ultimate victor of centuries of dynastic transitions involving various people claiming descent from a Saxon warlord named Cerdic.
So you do not any of you govern because the people chose you, you govern because a woman who wears a funny metal hat and who bases her right to wear that on descent from a pirate gave you the job.

Ok, I admit, in practice her choice is limited. A woman in a funny hat appointing whoever she pleases to run the country doesn't work. Because of this thing called parliament. This passes laws. And because laws have to be passed a lot and budgets have to be passed every year, it helps if she only ever appoints the leader of the party holding a commons majority.

So- in a practical sense, your authority is dependent on that. That you lead the party with a commons majority.
Indeed, pretty much everything comes down to that. If you have a commons majority, you can do what you want.
Now this is interesting, this House of Commons Majority thing. This is the democratic bit, apparently.
The House of Commons passes laws. It also decides, by inactivity, what NOT to change.

Now I know you're going to say, that it's composed of 646 elected representatives who we all got to vote for, but that's pants and you know it.
There's only a certain amount of independence they have. If you have a party majority, your laws will usually get passed.

The reality is, every four or five years, we the people get to vote for an elected representative.
The question we're really being asked is; 'Here is the list of proposed changes my lot will do, here is the list of proposed changes their lot will do. It's not a pick and mix, you choose one or the other. Because if you vote for me, I'll vote for all these things and against all these things. And so will every other representative of my party.'

In case you haven't realised, this means that the statistical certainty that at least a minority of the programme of ANY 'government' are actually passed WITHOUT popular consent, is inevitable. And an even greater amount of laws that the public WOULD repeal, will never get repealed. Because it isn't in your 'programme'.

If you promise to run the country better than the others, we'll hold our noses and vote for you EVEN IF your manifesto contains a promise to pass a law outlawing driving purple cars.

So- you DO pass laws WITHOUT consent. Because you don't actually pass laws by popular consent. Laws are not made by the people, they're made by their elected 'representatives'.

Ok, you concede. We don't actually govern ourselves by consent, you say. But we're still a democracy because the British people have consented to delegate their power to elected representatives who then choose a government from their majority who...



When?
When did we consent to this?
I don't remember us ever voting on this transfer of our popular sovereignty in this way.
I don't remember the time the British people were ever asked if they wanted to hand over their right to democratically vote on the laws that govern them to 646 people chosen every five years.

I actually don't think your power comes from the British people at all. I think your power comes ultimately from the Crown. These elections every five years or so are a concession, a concession to the people. But power, power we have none.

Because this system was never voted on in my lifetime. These laws you govern us by, these laws you pass, I question how any of them can be said to have legitimacy, because they were voted on by only 646 people, and the people who they affect were never asked if they wanted to vest the power to make laws in a mere 646 people.

These 646 people are members of one or other of two organisations which basically exist to fight elections and fill seats in the House of Commons. These organisations are not democratic organisations. Within them, no dissent is tolerated. If you don't tow the party line, you're out. Internally, both of you, red and blue, are run the same way as any political party, call yourself National Socialist, ZANU-PF, New Labour, whatever. Political parties existed before Universal Suffrage. I doubt we'd have tolerated their creation in the first place, had we had the power to prevent it.

What we the people get to do every five years is a tick a box saying 'Which Tyranny would you like, red or blue?'

And you only have to preserve some semblance of ethics about the whole thing, because if you govern too tyrannically, we'll vote for the other tyranny in five years.
And you have to follow the laws you make, because otherwise when you lose, the other lot will prosecute you.

But your authority most certainly doesn't come from the people.
The people never gave it to you.