A young scholar of british constitution and
public law has produced a salient, topical, potentially
liberating, even explosive, academically tooled analysis
which probes vital aspects of our constitution, its
malfunction and inertia (1). He focusses on
DIRECT DEMOCRACY IN THE
BRITISH CONSTITUTION
and entitles his paper, Referenda:
Plebiscites or opinion polls
Some quotes from Dhruv Patel's analysis follow, his
text typed bold.
Direct democracy provenly
desirable for the UK !
Direct democracy has been proved to
be constitutional, desirable and feasible for use in
the United Kingdom. What form it should take
is detailed (in D. Patel's paper).
further
The argument that referenda are
unconstitutional is now unsustainable.
Source of power, authority of
parliament
In short, the arguments against
entrusting important decisions to the voters are
fallacious: the voters are sovereign – the decisions
are theirs to take. Whilst decision-making may – and
in many cases should – be delegated to a
parliamentary body, that body must always remember
the source of its authority and its responsibility
to it.
Weakness of currently
practised referendum
At law the referendum lacks binding
force, it remains an opinion poll.
Furthermore, the People have no right to be
consulted when constitutional amendments are made.
There is no legal requirement for referendums to be
held. It has been shown that if the people are
accorded their proper position in law – that of the
sovereign – then the referendum would become a key
pillar of the constitution. Simply put, embracing
the referendum will result in a better form of
democracy.
Myths and "spin" about
political power, sovereignty and limits to democracy
debunked
The argument that direct democracy is
inconsistent with parliamentary sovereignty has lost
its validity. ...... Under Blackstone’s
interpretation of the common law, the referendum is
permissible. ...... Under this analysis, both
referendums and citizens’ initiatives should be
considered constitutional. However there are no
precedents for citizens initiatives in the UK and
expression of popular opinion have been ignored more
often than not.
A note about the Origin of the Thesis
In 2004 Dhruv Patel, then a senior student of law at the
Victoria University of Manchester, contacted I&Rgb,
the Campaign for Direct Democracy. For his final law
degree thesis he had elected to consider the role and
importance of direct democracy and the instrument of
referendum for the UK, for its constitution and the
future of our public governance. In his Law School he
could rely on the knowledge and support of the
distinguished constitutional jurist Professor Rodney
Brazier. We at I&Rgb readily agreed to co-operate by
supplying sources and insights into the debates,
publications and experiences of our Campaign. Dhruv
Patel showed us his thesis in draft, asking for
comments, and soon sent a final product in the form of
an academic paper. He wrote that we could publish the
paper as we saw fit – we duly placed the document on our
Campaign web site and announced its appearance widely in
Internet. Particularly since the 2014 Scottish
independence ballot, matters of democracy, constitution
and state form have received growing public and academic
attention. Because of its objectivity and rare insights
Patel's paper is highly relevant here. So after revising
format and correcting a few mainly typographical errors
we plan to re-launch Patel's paper, presenting it to a
wide audience.
