When voting in referendums, it is doubtful that most of the people voting have a complete idea on the decision they are making. Once the public has made a decision it is left to the legislators and government to chart out how the new law is to be implemented. Faced with these tough decisions, they might decide to amend the law or completely scrap it thereby overriding a decision made by the general
This is criticised because the current political party in power have the ability to make their own decisions for the UK before listening to what the people want. This then becomes a problem because they may make changes that the majority of the population will not agree with. However, near to the next election they may decide to listen to people as they want them to vote for them (the current political party in power) during the next election. Secondly, the UK has a hereditary monarchy and a house of lords, both which are not elected. This contradicts a democratic society and is seen as a dictatorship because elections are the cornerstone of a democracy.
A voter could switch from voting for the Conservatives to vote for the Labour Party at the next election because they decide according to single issues. In general the public today is not really aligned to parties anymore. I would say that party allegiance is something which is nearly vanished in Britain’s voting behavior. There are still groups which are strongly related to one or the other party but that is not as common as was in the 50s and 60s. The important things today are which party has at the moment the right promises for the single voter and which party is better in delivering policy goals.
Cameron experienced his first defeat over the EU Budget last week, with more than 50 Tory MPs rebelling. There was majority of 13, in favour of a rebel Tory call led by Mark Reckless for a real terms cut in the European Union's budget. This proves that some backbenchers are brave enough to take action and not be unquestionably loyal to the government. The number of U-turns that the current government has done indicates that the threat of a backbench rebellion is sometimes enough to persuade them to drop a policy. In 2010 backbenchers were threatening to rebel over tuition fees.
What they mean by this is that the decisions made, may not be as well thought through as members of the public are less likely to have an understanding of the issue than elected politicians, also by seeking a majority vote referendums may undermine the minority who are generally well protected within representative democracy’s, and finally the use of referendums on some issues may cause doubt to surface amongst the public as to whether the government are fit to govern, because they don’t know what decision to make. On the other hand, an argument used by the ‘Yes camp’ is that referendums encourage political participation and act as an educational device, their reasoning for this is that it forces the government in power to explain their policies
When the Labour government implemented these laws they protected traditional parliamentary sovereignty. Unlike Germany or the USA where judges can annul legislations that are found to be in breach of the human rights act. In the UK however judges can only issue a declaration of incompatibility which sends the legislation back to parliament so that they can make changes to suit the HRA. It is difficult to declare on this subject whether or not there have been enough reforms on the Human Rights Act as through one viewpoint it is important to sometimes evade Human Rights to catch potential terrorists on the other hand millions of people have had to sacrifice their right to private life as has been found with the major scandal of NSA spying on internet records. Some people may argue that if you have nothing to hide you should not fear however people still should be able to have
The question put to the electorate was “do you think the U.K. should stay in the E.C. ?” The government argued that such an important decision, with such major constitutional repercussions, should on principle be put to the general populace for a decision. However, undermining this, the government had previously joined the European Community in 1973 without a referendum. This referendum is more generally seen therefore as a device to avoid a split in a labour government on the issue of the E.C. than as being motivated by principles of direct democracy.
Discuss two remedies for low voter turnout. What are the pros and cons of each? Our system of government, today, requires voters to turnout, because in theory any one vote could decide the outcome of the election. Many ideas have been proposed to the government to improve voter turnout, but the two that are the most likely to work out in my opinion is finning citizens who do not vote and to try to raise political awareness. Australia fines its citizens for not voting and we could do the same in the U.S.
This means that referendums therefore can prevent disputes in government and secure a consensus decision so wider use of them would ensure that the number of disputes is reduced even further. They used referendums in this way in the 2011 referendum on whether to introduce AV to replace our current electoral system, as the government could not decide the public’s vote of ‘no’ on the issue allowed them to make the decision to stick with First Past the Post therefore moving away from the idea of electoral reform. They can also be used when an important constitutional change is being proposed. This means that people can have a say on an issue that directly affects the way they are governed. Referendums were used this way in the 1998 London referendum on whether to adopt an elected mayor.
The problems with the way in which the electoral system worked, meant that the majority people wanted change and therefore pushed for electoral reform. Many constituencies were left underrepresented; As Thomas Paine explains in his book “Right of Man”, cities with thousands were receiving the same representation in parliament as small villages “The town of Old Sarum, which contains not three houses, sends two members; and the town of Manchester, which contains upwards of sixty thousand souls, is not admitted to send any. Is there any principle in these things?” The new industrial towns were also facing troubles with the services in the areas, as there was not enough to of it to cover the rising population the fact that they couldn’t not then bring this issue up due to lack of representation also led to the need for reform. The lack of representation was not the only injustice people felt with the electoral system, suffrage was also corrupt, in many cases powerful landlords in control of small constituencies knows as pocket or nomination boroughs would manipulate inhabitants with such tactics as bribery, force or even their wealth, as usually they were part of nobility, to vote for who they wanted in power. Examples of this can be seen when the Earl of Lonsdale brought 14,000 miners and made then freemen outside their