Comment: What Has Our Democracy Become? Of Course the Elections Should Go Ahead

Published on: 5 Feb, 2025
Updated on: 7 Feb, 2025

By Martin Giles

News that our county council election is to be postponed is as depressing as it is troubling.

Postponing inconvenient elections is the kind of tactic we expect to hear from countries with only a tenuous or non-existent grasp of democracy such as Russia or Belarus – not here in the UK.

Excuses given are as ridiculous as they are disingenuous. The Secretary of State says it will save money and that we would be voting for a council with a limited life.

Well we can save even more money by scrapping even more elections?

As for the limited life of the county council, it has only been limited by rushing ahead with the government’s desire to exercise even more power over what goes on locally – a desire the Labour Party shares with its duopoly partner the Conservative Party.

The Conservative leader of Surrey County Council says that we need experienced councillors over the next twelve months. Is that so? Where is the evidence that all this experience is giving us good local government?

I don’t give a damn what the national government wants. Given its 33 per cent of the popular vote in the last general election, to claim a democratic mandate for anything seems far-fetched. Of course here in Surrey, Labour has very little support. They had only 10 per cent of the popular vote in the last SCC election.

Nor do I care what the leader of SCC wants or the leader of any political party, nationally or locally. I only care what the people of Surrey want. That is how we should decide things in a true democracy.

Unfortunately, our political class has sunk to such depths that their sole ambition is to take and cling on to power, power for its own sake, power for their pathetic, failed party ideologies.

The joke is a lot of politicians think they know better than the electorate. They are contemptuous of the public apart from when they want our votes. Have they not considered their abysmal track record in recent decades?

No, the elections should go ahead. Candidates and parties should lay out how they believe local government should be reorganised. Then we can vote for the manifesto we prefer.

And the pace of change needs to be slowed down so it can be properly considered. The new system is likely to be in place for a considerable time. The last reorganisation was fifty years ago, so it needs to be properly considered and have popular support.

But will enough of us care? Probably not. Less than 50 per cent of us even bother to vote in local elections. It is no wonder that the politicians feel they can do whatever they want with us. Sadly they are probably right.

By the way…

If one wanted an example of just how unprincipled and spineless our political leaders have become consider the reaction to news that Trump was starting a trade war with Canada. What did our prime minister do? Like a timid schoolboy he kept his head down and hoped that he would not be noticed by the new imperialist in Washington DC.

How truly pathetic. What have we sunk to?

World War 2 Royal Canadian Air Force Recruitment Poster

In the last century Canadians twice, unhesitatingly, came to our assistance when facing a far more dangerous threat than Trump. In the two world wars, over 110,000 Canadians died – many of them having been stationed and trained here in Surrey.

Surely they should now be able to count on a little more loyalty from us?

They died to preserve our democratic freedom.

Now, even though we share the same head of state, the same system of government and many cultural and familial ties, we cower in a corner and suck up to a bully, some of us smarmily pretending we didn’t say all those nasty things about him.

Responses to Comment: What Has Our Democracy Become? Of Course the Elections Should Go Ahead

Jeremy Holt Reply

February 6, 2025 at 8:36 am

Perhaps all Surrey residents should refuse to pay the SCC portion of the Council Tax.

If every resident did this the cost to SCC would far outweigh the cost of the removed election.

The argument that elections cost money and should therefore be postponed could be applied to every future election.

Taxation without representation was the primary grievance that led to the American Revolution.
Jules Cranwell Reply

February 7, 2025 at 7:24 am

This is absolutely spot on. I thought I was alone at being shocked at the PM’s grovelling, snivelling, response to the orange monster threatening our closest ally, Canada.

As a sometime resident of Canada, I know they would not have hesitated to leap to our defence, in similar circumstances.

This is particularly galling to residents of the Horsleys, which were the main hosts for Canadian troops during the wars. The West Horsley Motors shed was the cook-house for their troops.

Unfortunately, Starmer is just desparate for “His Orangeness” to find him “nice”.
David Roberts Reply

February 7, 2025 at 7:27 pm

It’s worth pointing out that some local elections were postponed during the recent pandemic, to very little public protest, so little do people care about local government. But that was arguably a case of force majeure and is no excuse in this case.

I doubt if Mr Holt’s suggestion of withholding council tax would cut much ice. More likely, public apathy would combine with the new repression of civil resistance and he’d end up in jail with the Just Stop Oil protesters. As for the Americans’ so-called Revolution, look where it got them!

The editor overdoes his comparison with the Prime Minister’s quiet reaction to Trump’s threats against Canada. No tariffs have yet been imposed and the story is still unfolding. And while no-one would disagree that our government is being dismally timid, it is in an objectively sensitive situation, trying to negotiate complex new trading relationships with both the US and the EU from a weak position without offending either. Blame Brexit, not Starmer, who I hope knows that Johnsonian Battle-of-Britain bluster would only make matters worse.
John Lomas Reply

February 9, 2025 at 8:32 am

I have an idea that postponement has occurred on a number of occasions when a council would have sat for only one year before a reorganisation was to take place. For example in 1974, the creation of the non-metropolitan counties, and in 1996, the end of that system, spring to mind. Can anyone recall if that was so?