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Politics of Trust

William Hague:

the case for the referendum rests above all on the need for the House and the Government to honour commitments solemnly given. How many times have each of us in the House toured schools and colleges saying to young people that they should take an interest in politics, that their vote makes a difference, and that what is said at election time really counts? What are we to say to them in future—that the fact that they elected an entire House of Commons committed to a referendum was of no account, that the Government regarded that commitment as a technicality to be escaped from rather than a promise to be kept, and that the promises made at election time do not really matter at all?

The time for debating the merits of a referendum was before the printing of each party’s 2005 manifestos. Given that every MP of all three major parties were elected on that basis, the argument today is not “should there be a referendum?”, but “should political parties honour their manifesto commitments?”.

On another point, They Work For You really is a great website.

The thing is, manifesto promises aside (I’m not sure New Labour stuck to any of theirs from 1997) there’s little case against having referendum on a significant issue—except, of course, the selfish “it might not go the way we want”.

Everybody KNOWS that arguments against holding referendums are purely down to that selfish reasoning—no Government wants to hold one only to discover that the public actually don’t agree with it at all, but the alternative is nothing more than sticking their heads in the sand and hoping that all of the people who disagree with them will just go away and forget about it.

It can work the other way, though, of course, but no politician would complain about a referendum that showed the public wholeheartedly in favour of their policies.

Ultimately, referenda are the second basic tool (following elections) in a modern democracy, but are the one that’s used least of all. If politicians are so fearful of the public disagreeing with them, it stands to reason that there’s an extremely high chance they’re doing something wrong in the first place—otherwise, what’s the problem?