Election petition risks plunging new political depths

Her public policy pronouncement presupposed that that Nobel prize-winning economists and CEOs of the highest performing businesses could be forcibly co-opted into government without demurring, and that voters need not be consulted on what they might think.

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As well as summarily abandoning two centuries of representative democracy, it also ignored the reality that politics is primarily about making choices.

Having the best information to hand, which her panacea implied, should be a given in any political system, done by civil servants, not politicians.

My grandmother was a lovely woman who baked a very decent fruit scone, but I would no more have gone to her for political advice than to, say Michael Westwood, the pub landlord who launched an online campaign, calling for an immediate general election, less than six months after the last one.

Mr Westwood emerged briefly from behind the bar at the Wagon and Horses in Oldbury, to have a go at running the country and… well, the early signs suggest he should perhaps stick to pulling pints of wallop.

That his petition has been signed by three million people and shared by Elon Musk and Michael Caine, prompting a tsunami of media coverage, suggests that political debate in the UK risks being infantilised to the point of absurdity.

It is a childish stunt, demonstrating a profound misunderstanding of parliamentary processes. The petitions system, while well-intentioned – designed to highlight public concerns – was never meant to circumvent parliamentary democracy. Instead, it's become a platform for online trolls and the uninformed.

Mr Westwood launched the campaign because, he said, he felt betrayed by the Labour Government, which has broken several of its manifesto promises.

It has been supported by several Conservative and Reform MPs, including Nigel Farage, who say that – because it has surpassed the 100,000-signature threshold for parliamentary consideration – this should somehow pressure Sir Keir Starmer to dissolve parliament and seek permission from the King for a fresh General Election.

At Prime Minister’s Questions last week, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called on the Prime Minister to resign, pointing to Westwood’s campaign.

Debating the petition would be an egregious waste of parliamentary time but, more importantly, it would signal that the lunatics really have taken over the asylum.

This year’s General Election was unusual for the lack of promises made by all political parties. The Conservatives, as the incumbent government, sought to distinguish themselves by being more prudent than the opposition, while Labour was conspicuous by its avoidance of hyperbole and generous pledges.

Anyone with the scantest understanding of the state of the economy and the fiscal challenges facing the incoming government of whatever shade it might be, cannot now claim to have been misled, if they were paying attention.

We can argue about the scale of subsequent tax measures introduced by the Government, and about where the axe has fallen heaviest, but no-one can reasonably claim to be surprised or disappointed that, as a country, we face a sustained period of belt-tightening.

Calling for another General Election, so soon after the last one, presupposes that the Tories – as the only potential alternative Government to Labour – have somehow used the past six months to identify and solve all of the problems they failed to address in the previous 14 years.

It also suggests that Ms Badenoch has mastered her new brief in a matter of weeks and is now better placed than her five immediate predecessors to lead the country out of the economic paralysis that they helped to create.

Democracies generally don’t fail because of actions by leaders, but more often by the licence given to them by voters. Mr Westwood’s gesture exemplifies a dangerous trend towards believing that the solution to every ill is by having more frequent votes.

Those now arguing for a General Election may have forgotten that, following the 2016 Brexit vote, six-million people signed a petition seeking to have the result overturned.

While arguably more significant due to the unresolved policy matter, it was rightly ignored.

The UK isn't a direct democracy. There are 46 million voters and an online petition with three, or even six, million signatures don't constitute a mandate for constitutional change.

Dissatisfaction with Keir Starmer's leadership should be addressed through established channels – including voting him out at the next election. Encouraging petition-signing undermines the proper consideration of policy and serious debate and it reflects worrying aspects of the times in which we live.

The first is belief by some people that politicians are entirely responsible for improving their lives, and that they can absolve themselves of blame, when they don’t see improvements.

At a society level, there is no doubt that people’s standard of living, health, education, and access to services is directly linked to where they were born and brought up. But the quickest, and most effective way to improve any of those, remains through personal action – by bettering one’s own prospects through individual behaviour.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has called on the Prime Minister to resign (Image: PA)

Politicians can only ever set better conditions, to make it easier for individuals to improve their own lives by becoming better educated, finding a better job, and working harder.

The second worrying aspect is growth of “clicktivism” in place of genuine political engagement, and the misguided belief that sufficient retweets or loud enough online pronouncements can effect instant change.

Such behaviour was previously seen as a feature of the progressive left and its obsession with identity issues, but we are now seeing the right using viral trends to circumvent the governance structures and constitutional norms that protect us all.

Collecting three million signatures to force a snap election is as meaningless as naming an autonomous underwater vehicle "Boaty McBoatface" or declaring yourself to be a Jedi in the national census.

I have no doubt that my granny would have signed Mr Westwood’s petition, if she could have torn herself away from the racing pages, but it’s also true that she’d have been equally unhappy with whoever was in power.

Carlos Alba is a journalist, author, and PR consultant at Carlos Alba Media. His latest novel, There’s a Problem with Dad, explores the issue of undiagnosed autism among older people