William Tyler
The Crisis in Liberal Democracy

William Tyler - The Crisis in Liberal Democracy

- And welcome everyone, sorry for that little glitch. This is quite a difficult talk for me to give, not in terms of what I want to say, but in terms of how you might receive it. Now, this is not history, this is constitutional law, constitutional politics, and current affairs. Therefore, we will not agree in the same way that in any group of people, whichever country you’re listening in from, there will be people belonging to different political parties with different political views and that’s bound to be the case. There’s also you well know that if you were at a party, a dinner party and you discuss current events, there will again be a difference of opinion about those events and a different interpretation. And therefore I’m doing this with that full knowledge. Now, if I was teaching children or undergraduates, I would be far more careful in what I’m saying, but I don’t think that’s valuable with adults. I’ve always felt with adults, I’ll say what I think and you can distinguish I hope easily between things that are fact and things which are opinion. The facts are facts. Opinion is opinion. And I don’t expect everyone by any means to agree. What I do think is that the crisis in democracy or the crisis in Western democracy, which is now being written about by so many people in the media of various sorts and on television, and on on all those sites that we now have on the internet. I think it is imperative that we who live in democracies should take a view about this and I’ll explain, well, it’ll become obvious why I think it’s important and why other people think it’s important as I go along. Now, let me start by saying, it is an aphorism to say that nothing in life is simple and nothing is simple when it comes to the issue of what has now been called the crisis in democracy or perhaps more accuracy, more accurately, the crisis in Western democracy.

The Russia-Ukrainian War has highlighted the gulf between autocracy, Russia and democracy, Ukraine, EU, UK, USA, Canada, et cetera. But it isn’t quite that simple. You see, democracy isn’t like a COVID test where you either have COVID or you don’t have COVID. There are degrees of democracy and various international and academic bodies attempted to define those degrees to see how far an individual democracy measures up to the highest standards. And needless to say, there is also no agreement on that. But the first point to make where almost every commentator has agreed that the Ukraine’s democracy falls far short of the democracy, for example, of the United Kingdom, and by most accounts, in fact all accounts, Ukraine’s democracy is regarded as falling short of a full democracy and it’s very often called a hybrid democracy. We’ll get to what hybrid democracy means in a moment, but I’m just trying to make the point that not all democracies are the same, not all are as democratic as each other, it differs. Now the most used and the most respected, what is called Democracy Index is produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Economist being a British non-party, political, independent weekly magazine with a wide readership and with a as objective a view on the affairs as you can possibly get. In its democracy index, it has four killer criteria and these four crit… It has a lot of criteria, but these four are the ones that really pull a democracy down from the being a full democracy to a lesser democracy. And they are, think of your own country wherever you live, one, where the national elections are free and fair.

Two, the security of voters going to the polls. Thirdly, the influence of foreign powers and governments on internal elections. And fourthly, the capability of civil servants in your democracy to implement the policies of the elected politicians. Now before I go any further, let me just give you a definition, and this is the definition used by the economist and by pretty well everybody, A full democracy are nations where civil liberties and fundamental political freedoms are not only respected, but are also reinforced by political culture conducive to the thriving of democratic principles. These nations have a valid system of governmental checks and balances, and independent judiciary whose decisions are enforced and governments function adequately, and diverse in independent media. It doesn’t say that they are perfect either because it says these nations have only limited problems in democratic functioning. Then there are flawed democracies, nations where elections are fair and free, and basic civil liberties are honoured, but may have issues. For example, media freedom infringements, minor suppression of political opposition and political critics. These nations have significant faults in other demographic aspects including underdeveloped political culture, low-level of participation in politics and issues in the functioning of governments. And then finally, hybrid regimes. Nations with regular electoral frauds, this is Ukraine, preventing them from being fair and free democracies. These nations commonly have governments look by pressure on political opposition, non-independent judiciaries, widespread corruption, harassment and pressure placed on the media. The rule of law is anaemic and more pronounced faults and fraud democracies in the realms of underdeveloped political culture, low-levels of participation and issues in the functioning of governance.

It doesn’t mean they aren’t democracies, but they are hybrid democracies. So the academic classification is full democracies, flawed democracies and hybrid democracies. And these criteria, and I quoted four of them, there are others which are applied, so they’re applied to United Kingdom, the United States, Canada is wherever, and your government, your governance is measured against those. The UK, Canada, Australia are regarded as a full democracies. Now those of us who live in those full democracies may have our concerns about those democracies, but remember what I said that full democracies have limited problems. Interestingly, the United States is not considered a full democracy since 2016. It was downgraded from a full democracy to a flawed democracy. Its score, they score on these criteria had sunk from 8.05 in 2015, a full democracy to 7.98 in 2016, a flawed democracy. And the report stated in 2016 that this was caused by myriad factors dating back to at least the late 1960s, which have eroded Americans quote, “trust in governmental institutions.” In 2020, the United States scored even lower at 7.02 and again, was seen as a flawed democracy, and it’s been that since 2016. And in 2020 it indicated why. Intolerance of COVID-19 restrictions, distrust in the government, bipartisan gridlock and especially the increasing ideological polarisation between Democrats and Republicans were cited as contributing to this flaw.

Freedom House, which is an American government-funded foundation established in the 1940s by Eleanor Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie commented in 2018, the pasture brought further faster erosion of America’s own democratic standards than at any other time in memory damaging its international credibility as a champion of good governance and human rights. The United States it went on to say, has experienced a series of setbacks in the conduct of elections and criminal justice over the past decade under leadership from both major political parties. But in 2017, its core institutions were attacked by an administration that rejected established norms of ethical conduct across many fields of activity. President Trump himself has mingled the concerns of his business empire with his role as president, appointed family members to his senior staff, filled other positions with lobbyists and representatives of special interest and refused to abide by disclosure and transparency practises observed by his presidential predecessors. But President Trump has also lambasted and threatened the media including sharp jabs at individual journalists for challenging his routinely false statements spoken distinctly of judges who blocked his decisions and attacked the professional staff of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He signalled contempt for Muslims and Latin American immigrants, and singled out some African Americans for vitriolic criticism. He pardoned a sheriff convicted of ignoring federal court orders to halt racially discriminatory policies and issued an executive order. And so it goes on and it finishes by saying Trump’s behaviour stems in part from a frustration with the country’s democratic checks and balances, including the independent courts, a co-equal legislative branch, the free press and an active civil society.

These institutions remain fairly resilient in 2017, but the administration’s statements and actions could ultimately lead them weakened with serious consequences for the health of American democracy and America’s role in the world. Now, there may be some people here who voted for Trump and that’s where I have some difficulties because that’s Freedom House. It’s a very careful analysis, an analysis based upon an international view that America dropped from being a full democracy to a flawed democracy under Trump and a concern that that might continue. Now, I sought out American sources. This is a new book called… I put a book list on my blog. This book is called “How Democracies Die,” and it’s my two senior Harvard professors, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, and they write this to Harvard Professors of Politics and they published this book. Let me tell you the year that they published it, they published it in 2018. So the same time as that report from Freedom House. Over the past two years, we have watched politicians, and they’re talking about America. We have watched politicians say and do things that are unprecedented in the United States, but that we recognise as having been the precursors of democratic crisis in other places. We feel dread, as do so many Americans, even as we try to reassure ourselves that things can’t really be that bad here. Our thought, even though we know democracies are always fragile, the one in which we live, the United States has somehow managed to defy gravity. Our constitution, our national creed of freedom and equality, our historically robust middle class are high levels of wealth and education, and our large diversified private sector. All these should inoculate us from the kind of democratic breakdown that has occurred elsewhere. In a very short and worrying sentence, yet we worry. Two Harvard professors. The challenge is to liberal democracy. Now, let’s have a look at this word liberal. This is again, an American professor, Francis Fukuyama.

Fukuyama is the man who wrote the book back in 1992, “The End of History and the Last Man,” he’s now written a new book called “Liberalism and its Discontents.” And he begins by explaining what he means by liberalism. So as not to confuse either Britain and British-style legislatures like Canada and Australia, and also in America, where liberalism can mean all sorts of things and they say by liberalism, or Fukuyama says, “By liberalism, I refer to the doctrine that first emerged in the second-half of the 17th century that argue for the limitations of the part of government through law and ultimately constitutions.” He’s referring back to the Britain or to the England of the 1640s and 1650s, the Civil War, the execution of the king and so on. And I’ve talked on lockdown before now of how that was important not only to Britain, therefore by the train of history to Canada and Australia, but also to America because of those who left England to go to the states. It goes on to say, “That argue for the limitation of the party governments who law and ultimately through constitutions,” as in the states, but not as in Britain. “Creating institutions, protecting the rights of individuals living under their jurisdiction, the right of the individual as against the government that they elect in democracies. "I do not refer to liberalism as this is used today in the United States as a label for left to censor politics.” Right, has nothing to do with political parties either in the states or anywhere else where there are liberal parties, Canada, Australia, and indeed in Britain. “Nor does it refer to what in United States is called libertarianism, which is a peculiar doctrine founded on hostility to government as such. I’m not using liberal in the European sense either where it designate centre right parties sceptical of socialism.” Well, it normally in Europe actually means center-left parties.

I’m sorry, but I think he’s not quite accurate. “Classical liberalism is a big 10. It encompasses a range of political views, but nonetheless agree on the foundational importance of equal individual rights, law and freedom.” I’m free within limits. I can’t murder, I can’t say things about certain groups of people because society as a whole through their governments, whichever country we’re talking about says I can’t. But other than that, I’m free and I can challenge the government in a court of law. And I can challenge anyone in a court of law and I’m equal before the law. You may be cleverer than I am, you may be more important than I am, but in the eyes of the law, in the countries that are listening to me tonight, tonight here in Britain, those of you, we are equal before the law. We cannot be found guilty except by the due process of that law. That’s what he said. So then what exactly is this crisis in liberal democracy? Well, in Europe, we’ve seen the rise in recent decades of the far-right in so-called democratic countries, countries that belong indeed to the European Union where democracy is one of its founding principles. So we have, for example in Europe, the position of Hungary and Poland who are decidedly moved to the right despite them being members of the European Union. But we also have significant far-right parties in Austria, in France, in Germany, as well as those in and in Italy as well as in those in power in Poland and Hungary. And the EU doesn’t deal with this question or hasn’t dealt with this question. And then of course, we’ve got Russia, which will only for a blink of time under Yeltsin, not as though become democratic, a flawed democracy, a hybrid democracy. Yes, yes, we know that. But it looked as if it’s going in the right direction until enter Putin in 2000. And Putin has become increasingly autocratic and you cannot describe Russia today as a democracy in any sense.

So we have the far-right, if not in power, at least within our body politic. And that is worrying because it erodes the very concept of democracy. In the EU, it certainly erodes it, but it’s also eroded by a lack of interest by many, particularly younger people. I worry deeply that we don’t teach democracy properly to our young. One incredibly worrying fact is in a survey undertaken in the states, the proportion of young Americans who believe it is absolutely important to live in a democratic country has dropped from 91% for people born in the 1930s to 57% for those born in the 1980s in the research conducted by the Washington Post. I don’t imagine the figures would be much different in Britain, Israelis, Canadians and Africans, Australians must answer that question for themselves, but that statistic is worrying. We know in Britain for example, that older people turn out to vote much more conscientiously than younger people. It’s not worth it, they say, whoever you vote for, everything will be the same. We have a problem about voter, what’s called Voter Negativity. There are many types of democracy, not just full democracy, hybrid and flawed, but there’s proportional representation in the way that you vote. There’s various systems of voting. And what does it all boil down to? Well, it all boils down to the simple statement of Lincoln. “Democracy is the government of the people by the people, for the people.” Simple. But in practise, it’s not quite so simple. And why is democracy important anyhow? Well, it means that the individual is placed at a position of importance, and that position of the individual arose out of the puritanism of 17th century England and the Puritanism of 17th century America, which left England for America. It’s the emphasis upon the individual. It’s Protestantism. Catholicism says you reach God via the priest.

Protestantism says you reach God as an individual and if you can reach God as an individual, then you can reach a king, a prime minister or a president as an individual. Government of the people by the people, for the people. That’s what it’s about. Democracy has defined in that way, which is of course, accurate. In practise, what does it mean? Well, in Athens, where the whole concept originated, it meant that everybody voted. Everybody. Everybody voted in person, direct democracy. Except they didn’t. No women voted, no slaves voted, only men voted. And as Plato criticised Athenian democracy, this direct democracy, do you want William as president? Hands up. And what he said was that direct democracy is the triumph of the uneducated over the educated. They believe, or will guff that I’ve said in the run up to the election. I’ll give free sweets and a bottle of champagne every Sunday, vote. And people says, Plato didn’t see behind that. And the same is true today. My goodness, we had a very divisive referendum in this country where we were divided in very strange ways. And a lot of concern here in Britain over how that referendum was conducted on both sides, but particularly on the winning side with things that were simply not true, but the truth disappears in direct representation. So most of us, all of us have representative democracy. We vote for a member of parliament, we vote for a senator or for a congressman or woman. We vote for someone to represent us, not someone to simply sit and say what we want them to say, but to represent us, to represent even those who voted against them. And if we don’t like it, we can vote them out at the next election. Now, whether referenda, direct democracy is a good thing or not, you must judge.

I personally am dead against referenda for Plato’s reason, but also because it undermines representative democracy if you get a referendum vote, which is entirely against how your legislature itself would’ve voted, which happened to us here in Britain with the Brexit referendum, direct doesn’t work. And it’s frightening because we obviously, we can’t have everybody in America or Canada voting by hand. Of course you can’t. Huh, or can you in our world? So tune in tonight, this is your voting. This is your vote, direct vote. Will America leading NATO drop bombs on the Russians in Ukraine? Vote now. How many people? How many people in Europe and America would vote yes, bomb them without taking into account why we aren’t bombing them? Because there will be politicians arguing we should bomb them. Direct democracy is a dangerous thing to get involved in. Democracy itself is never sits still, it’s always involved. And if we take UK, US, Canada, Australia and so on, Israel, South Africa, then the electorate has been widened. And in the 20th century, began for the first time to include women voters. And in doing so, women politicians could be elected and even become leaders. Think Golda Meir in Israel or in Britain, Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May. And surely it can’t be long before the United States has a female president having had a female secretary of state in Madeleine Albright, who sadly died so recently, and a female vice president at the moment. In British politics, the power of the executive that is the prime minister and his cabinet has grown at the expense of the legislature, the two houses of Parliament, House of Commons and the House of Lords. And even in recent years, the expense of a judiciary, the very criticism made of Trump’s presidency that he was undermining the judiciary is a concern for many here who are constitutional lawyers in Britain, the undermining of the rule of law by cabinet ministers. The moves in Britain, which are often called presidential government as an illusion to United States, which I think is not a helpful illusion, but it’s being described now as we have an executive democracy or even an executive dictatorship.

That’s not what I think, but an executive democracy looks as though that’s what we’ve got without the checks and balances of the legislature, the Houses of Parliament and the checks and balances of an independent judiciary. I’m sure… Well, I know precisely because I’ve been following it that that’s a debate in the States and those of you living in other countries, other democracies must say how much you think your own country has a problem within this area if you think it is a problem? It’s not so long ago that we had great hopes when Francis Fukuyama produced his first book, the End of History. The End of History, we thought the world would be, well, at least the western world would all become democratic. We didn’t worry anymore about threats from the far-right or the far-left. The Berlin Wall had come down, everything was wonderful all over again. Interestingly, Margaret Thatcher was one of those politicians who doubted whether that was actually true. She was one of those who was not caught up in the euphoria of the moment, and she cautioned against German unification too quickly. Well, of course, we’ve had German unification or reunification and we’ve seen the rise of the far-right in Germany. What Fukuyama was really saying was this, his book centred around the idea that now with the collapse of Eastern Europe, fascism and communism had both been defeated. Fascism in 1945, communism, 1989-1991. There should now he said be no serious competition to liberal democracy and the market economy. He believed that the ideas of 17th century liberalism had proven triumphant.

The ideas of England and America in the 17th century, the ideas of a French revolution and the enlightenment of the 18th century had won. We had won. Some people doubted that was true at the time, and now of course, we know that that argument was, shall I say, naive. Why was it naive? Well, it failed to take into account, if I may use a theological term, it failed to take into account the fall of man. Human beings have a great propensity not always to do the right thing, but to do the wrong thing, to shoot themselves and others in the thought. Freedom House published this, “Democracy is in crisis. The values it embodies particularly the right to choose leaders in free and fair elections, freedom of the press and the rule of law are under assault and in retreat globally. A quarter a century ago at the end of the Cold War, it appeared that totalitarianism had at last been vanquished and liberal democracy won the great ideological battle of the 20th century. Today it is democracy that finds itself battered and weakened.” It is democracy that finds itself battered and weakened. In the book that I referred to a moment or so ago by the two Harvard professors, How Democracies Die, they they claim this right towards the end of their book. Previous generations of Europeans and Americans made extraordinary sacrifices to defend our democratic institutions against powerful external threats, the two-world wars, he’s referring to, and the Cold War. Our generation, which grew up taking democracy for granted now faces a different task. We must prevent it from dying within. We must prevent it from dying within. It’s always easier is it not? And history shows that to face the external foe, to face an internal foe is much more difficult. And I remind you that these are two highly regarded Harvard professors, and they’re not young men. These are men that have studied all of this for their whole lives. Now, so far my talk could have been given in January, no problem. But that ignores the new elephant in the room, namely the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

How does the Russian invasion of Ukraine affect the crisis in Western democracy? There was an extremely good article in this week’s edition of “The Economist” in which it faces that question and it says, “The struggle between autocracy and democracy is the defining challenge of our time. So said President Biden in December at a virtual summit for democracy. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine offers evidence that Biden was right. With missiles and tanks and autocrat is trying to snuff out a freely elected government. The pushback against Mr. Putin would seem to fit Mr. Biden’s framing of a battle between democracy and autocracy, as he said in his State of the Union speech.” But geopolitics as the economist is never so neat. “Though Mr. Putin’s biggest backer is China is authoritarian, it also has backing from India, a big buyer of Russian arms. India has refused to condemn Putin. South Africa who’ve had strong leaks through their ruling party with the Soviet Union and true to Putin says, the blame for the war is NATO’s fault.” In other words, Putin’s argument. And then the West hands aren’t clean because we’re dealing with Turkey, and Erdogan is hardly a Democrat. When the devil rides needs must. So it isn’t as clearcut as you might wish it to be. There are autocracy supporting liberal West Turkey. There’s democracies supporting autocratic Russia, South Africa, India, and Israel with Russian tanks on its border. Russian tanks in Syria has chosen to sit on a fence neither applauding nor condemning for fear of what it might bring down upon Israel itself. Nothing is ever that clear cut. And we are now seeing on our television screens a support in Poland and we think, Oh, is this marvellous! The Poles taking all these people in. And yet Poland is under investigation by the EU or Poland’s ruling party is for being undemocratic. And Hungary, so we are informed by the media has been negotiating with Putin, that should Putin win the war, perhaps they could get back a bit more of Hungary that they lost in 1918, Oh goodness sake.

And remember the very town in Ukraine from which the Ukrainians are fleeing to Poland, Lviv was previously Lvov and it was a Polish town under the Habsburg empire and it was called Lemberg. And then under Poland, when it’s called Lviv, and Lvov, oh, sorry, Lvov, until the Ukrainians killed or forced out the Poles in World War II. Nothing, nothing is absolutely clear cut in this. Finally, the economist concludes, “The result of the war is unpredictable and so too albeit effects on global democracy. If Mr. Putin achieved something resembling a victory that could inspire strong men everywhere. If he loses, that could inspire those who stand up to them.” But I think the threat from within for democracies is greater than the threat from without. The fear of immigration in Western democracies, we will be swamped by immigrants, has led to a diminishing of our democracies. A voter apple thing, which I’ve touched on before. What’s the point of voting? They’re all the same politicians. They’ve all got their hands sticky in the barrel from cash. And then there’s a retreat into what we can call populist nationalism, even isolationism, America under Trump and NATO. The United Kingdom turning its back on Europe in Brexit. We need always to be on our guard to safeguard our hard won freedoms within the democracies in which we who are here listening" and I’m speaking tonight, and there’s a concept for this that we’ve got to be careful of. The concept is called Democratic Deconsolidation. “Democratic Deconsolidation, and that phrase, Democratic Deconsolidation means the transition of a democracy into an authoritarian state. Political scientists now use this term to believe that a democracy, however well established, can move in peace, in peace time towards autocracy. Poland, Hungary are two very important examples.” And never, ever, ever forget the lesson of the 20th century is that Adolph Hitler came to power through the ballot box. Ballot boxes do not make us safe from authoritarian from authoritarianism replacing democracy as it did in 1933 in Germany. Democracy is important and this is a parable that was used by the American author, David Foster Wallace in 2005 when he gave an address to the graduating class of Kenyon College. And in that he stated, he began with a parable.

He’s talking about democracy and his parable goes like this, “There are two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming in the opposite direction. He nods and says to them, ‘Morning boys, how’s the water?’ The two youngs fish swim on? And eventually one of them turns to the other and says, ‘What the hell is water?’” The message is clear, if we do not teach our young what democracy is, then we are failing. We’re failing as educators, we’re failing as parents, we’re failing as adults and politicians above all else are failing. We need to look at school curriculums. But this isn’t just school curriculums. Democracy should be seen in action. I’m a great believer that students at school, secondary school, even though should be absolutely involved in the governance of their school. There should be children on governing bodies. There should be children present at the appointment of staff. That may seem very radical to some, but it’s how adult education has always looked at education. Don’t just talk about democracy. God, William, you’re being so boring tonight about democracy. Okay, but let’s be democratic in our schools. Let the children challenge. Why are we fighting the children, for goodness sake? That’s how they will learn about it. I’m aware that some schools in all our countries do that, but they are precious few. Now finally, of all of I’ve said, you can take a positive view, a negative view or sitting on the fence view. A positive view was given recently by Matthew Syed in the British Sunday Times newspaper. “The West has finally noticed what Edward Gibbon called the poison introduced into the vitals of the system, the torrent of dirty money in our financial centres, the infiltration of university and think tanks, and the broader corrosion of our values by Russia,” he means.

“Some pundits described last week the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a reset for western policy. But what we are seeing is I think infinitely more consequential.” This is a reawakening of the West by which he means liberal democracy. We can’t go back and forget that Russia-Ukraine war didn’t exist. Biden was clear about the division between autocracy and democracy, even though it was, as I’m trying to explain tonight, as somewhat crude division. It’s a necessary division and maybe that reinjects life into western democracies. If you want a middle view, Kenneth Rapoza’s written a good news is that big picture democracy is not dead. The bad news is it’s totally stagnating. “Western democracy isn’t dead, but it’s stagnating,” he says. And Anne Applebaum has written, “Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy.” Well, that’s what I was saying just now. That’s exactly the worry. Now I’m going to read from a book called “Fascism.” It’s the very last book that Madeleine Albright wrote and what she wrote in it at the end, towards the end, I totally agree with. Now, if you are American and you didn’t vote for Madeleine Albright, I think you can at least accept that this is a woman of substance and not someone you can dismiss. In other words, it’s someone who you have to, if you don’t agree, you have to find arguments against. I agree, well, what a surprise to many of you that won’t be. She wrote this at the end of the book. Some may view this book on fascism and its title as alarmist because the title was “Fascism: A Warning.” She was Warning against the rebirth of fascism in the modern world. The book actually was printed relatively recently. The book was actually printed in… I’m trying to find the actual date. Oh, why can’t I see the date? 2018 originally. As she writes, “Some may view this book, fascism and its title as alarmist. Good, we should be awake to the assault on democratic values that has gathered strength in many countries abroad.” She’s writing as an American, “that has gathered strength in many countries abroad, and that is dividing America at home.

The temptation is powerful to close our eyes and wait for the worst to pass. But history tells us,” she’s thinking of Germany, of fascist Nazi Germany. “But history tells us that for freedoms are survived, it must be defended and that if lies are to stop, they must be exposed.” By that, if you were undergraduates doing me an essay on the Ukrainian situation, I would give that as the quotation for you to write under. “History tells us that for freedom to survive, it must be defended. And that if lies are to stop, they must be exposed.” I think that short paragraph says everything. Now, I’ve been very aware that I’ve been, I hope not boring, but certainly serious this evening and I thought, well, I can’t let you all go without a smile, and I’ve got a smile here. The English writer, novelist Geoffrey Household in 1939 wrote a adventure story called “Rogue Male,” which was popular on both sides of the Atlantic. And in the book Rogue Male published 1939, Household wrote this, “The Swiss, the Swiss of people, my dear fellow of quite extraordinary stupidity and immorality, a combination which only a long experience of democratic government could have produced.”

Thanks for listening. I’ve stopped I purposely about 10 minutes early, so there’s an opportunity for you to make your point. What I thought might be better this evening instead of saying, William, you didn’t say this, or William, you got that wrong, or I agree with you, maybe people should feel free to make their own points to, I can’t run it as a discussion on lockdown, but I can at least invite you to put your points and other people can… I will read them and other people can think about and I think, yes, I think that’s sensible or I think that isn’t sensible. Hang on, I’ve got lots of people with…

Q&A and Comments:

Q: How does the existence, the House of Lords impact the democracy rating in UK?

A: Oddly enough, it doesn’t, but it should, you might think. Now we have a peer with the title Lord Lebedev of Siberia, and don’t joke for those who who aren’t British, we do actually have a Russian oligarch who took that as part of his title when he was made appear by Johnson for his contributions to the party. I’m dismayed, that’s was Peter.

Q: Arlene says, sorry, I’m dismayed that democratic countries seem to be led by ineffective rulers. The electorate seem to be living on stupid pills. How can democracy survive?

A: Well, you see, that is a very interesting question. I don’t know which country, Arlene, you live in. It doesn’t really matter because I think it’s right. We are led by ineffective rulers. If you look at the major rulers within NATO, if you think Biden, Macron, Johnson, it’s hardly reassuring. It’s hardly reassuring. I don’t know what we do. You see, young people who would’ve gone into politics now go into IT, we become across the Western world obsessed by money. Maybe we should pay politicians more. Maybe we should have fewer politicians. We should certainly in Britain stop them doing second jobs. Lots of people won’t agree with what I just said.

Maya, peaceful transfer par post-elections question mark. Yes, that is a criteria of a democracy, but it doesn’t always happen. Look at the horror around Biden taking the presidency, which the rest of the world looked on was shock. When in time did Britain, United States and France become democracies in terms of definition, define… Oh, well, democracies it have evolved. Britain’s began with the execution of the king in 1649, or if you prefer with the Bill of Rights in 1688, or you can go back to the 13th century in the establishment of the first elected parliament. We have evolved. France has came very easily, I can answer that 1789 French Revolution, although there it stuttered along the way. And America, well, American democracy comes with Britain. Americans won’t agree with that, but the colonies had enormous independence. So you can date it from the very beginnings of European society in what became the United States or if you prefer, you can date it from 1776, but they have not stayed the same, they have advanced. The problem is, is the advance juddering at the moment? That’s the question, that’s the crisis.

Q: What is the nature of the corruption in Ukraine to which commentators continually allude?

A: Oh, there’s corruption in terms of the elections or fraud and so on, and there’s a strong far-right and yeah, it’s not good news in Ukraine. To start with, there’s Hunter Biden with Julia, to start with this, Hunter Biden receiving money for favours plus a job and salary from Ukrainian energy companies he had no qualifications for. In Britain, we can cite all sorts of people getting contracts from the government during the COVID crisis to provide equipment for which they had no experience whatsoever, including one cabinet minister’s publican, inn keeper, owner of a pub in his constituency. Corruption is sadly… We’ve always had corruption. That’s true. Always, but it does seem to be in both the states and in Britain of a higher order today than in the past.

This is Clive, I’m talking about Britain. I know Clive, hello. I don’t approve of Michael Grade’s view on the licence fee and channel four, and I’m coming… Yeah, I won’t get into that if you don’t mind, Clive ‘cause it won’t mean anything. We’ve had a new person headed in charge of our national body that monitors the media and he’s got a background, which is, he’s appointed by the government and a lot of people here think he shouldn’t be.

Q: Where does democracy sit on the democracy index?

A: Flawed democracy. Tory governor been putting supporters into multiple key cultural roles. Yeah. Yeah, there’s a lot of people from Britain replying because this is a big issue in Britain.

Q: In which issue of The Economist?

A: This week’s issue. I can’t, can I quickly find my… I throw all my papers on the floor. It’s the issue on March the 26th, 2022.

Q: Are presidential term limits a definitive factor?

A: Yes, there has to be a way of removing presidents and prime ministers, and there should be a limit. Now in Britain, there has been debate over how many election or how many governments a prime minister should lead. Now that’s being resolved in the states, but not in Britain. The report from Freedom House should be published in the US, it may wake some people up.

Says who? Susan. And Ellie says, justice bias is a partisan media. And Susan says, we obviously do not agree, which is passed our freedom. Yes, it is. I think there are some Americans now coming in.

And Sherry says, be honest, Trump is a fascist. Well, you have to define fascist. This is where life gets difficult. I said in my talk yesterday, which some of you may have heard that the new right goes from popularism to neofascism and somewhere along the line is nationalism. Now, clearly, Trump is on that continuum, but he isn’t as far as fascism, but he’s further than Johnson’s populism and there are criteria for judging fascism, which incidentally have been rewritten by academics guessing which country in the states because of their fear that Trump was heading that way.

Ruth says 81 million voted for Biden, thank goodness. Otherwise the United States will be in a worse shape than he is already. The Republican parties will do everything it can to stop people from voting 'cause it knows it will never win again if people could vote freely. Well, America’s always had this problem of America’s always had the problem of there being free and easy access without intimidation at the ballot box. In Britain, the only place we’ve had that is in Northern Ireland, but we have had it there. Nobody’s hands are clean on all of this. Oh yeah, I’m glad… I’m sorry, I’ll have to read all these.

Clive says do for do, 51.43% for Biden, and there are only 46.8% for Trump, 1.8% for others.

Q: Harriet, the political affliction in the US seems poised across the border into Canada lightly with truckers and has started to manifest in pandemic illiteracy and lack of civic consciousness. What has to be done?

A: Yeah, I mean we’ve all seen the pictures in Canada about the COVID-19 protests. I mean we had them here, but nothing like you seem to have had in the states or in Canada. Ging says, you should be honest and tell the people who is growing in the democracy in US and it isn’t President Trump.

Ellie says, absolutely agree. The Trump bark was worse than his bite. His behaviour was atrocious. His policies were ultimately much better for the US and the world, and certainly for our economy. Let’s not forget the media’s constant attack for parties, for party reasons, and the current administration is undermining our democracy to a far greater extent. They’re much more adept to elegant lying, and our world has become much more dangerous. I think the divisions in the states are worrying. This bipolarity between the two political parties in the states and we haven’t seen that quite yet in Britain, but I can see a time when we will be, and it’s one of the things that’s a problem in both British and American democracy is a two-party system. On the other hand, do you want proportional representation? And if there’s Israelis listening tonight, you probably can give the answers of why we don’t want proportional representation. So it’s back to the question, how do you get democracy to function properly in the 21st century?

Q: Has the word Margaret, has the word liberalism changed its meaning since the mid 17th century or expanded its meaning? As, for example, the word humanities has changed?

A: I’d have to think about that. That’s a very difficult question. I can’t answer that off. To be honest, Margaret, that is too difficult a question for me to answer off the cut. It’s an extremely good question, but it’s not one I can give an instant reply to. I’d have to think a long time before answering that, but you can read about liberalism and come to a view.

Who’s this? Rosalyn. Our notion of democracy is questionable. We have ever growing repression of free speech with speakers routinely been banned from so-called intellectual institutions, more and more laws about what we can and can’t do, and when we can and can’t do it, and explicit sexual details being taught to young children, which I find appalling and dictatorial. I don’t recall being asked my opinion, not surprised our system is not university adopted. Now, I’m guessing Rosalyn is British, but she may not be.

Ellie replies, I’ve always been a liberal, but today’s progressives are not liberal, they are fascists undercover. I have a problem Ellie with that, but I think that’s an American issue rather than a democracy issue across Europe.

Barry, I would argue that one of the major problems with the liberal democracy is the ili… Oh, I can’t get that word. The illiberalism that exists on both sides of the political sector. The old attitude that, I don’t like what you are saying, but will defend to the right death, your right to say so is long gone. I think that’s probably true and this is polarisation as I mentioned the politics and that isn’t only American, the polarisation is across Europe as well.

Q: So why are you so against Brexit? Surely Britain was right not to want to belong to an organisation which has so many countries with far-right parties.

A: Well, the answer is because of that, Valerie, because I think Britain should be there arguing for democracy, taking its stand, leading those countries in Scandinavia and northern Europe that look to Britain for leadership. That’s one of my reasons for it. I think we are weaker and I think Europe is weaker and that’s not saying anything about the economy, which by all reckonings now is suffering badly. I don’t trust our present government not to undo liberal legislation from Europe, and we’re seeing that beginning and our attitudes towards immigration has been nothing short of appalling. It’s also been, it’s been illiberal, it’s been appalling. I can’t even bring myself to think about it. The home sector has been, in my judgement , the most right-wing home set since Lord Sidmouth at the time of the Peterloo massacre at the beginning of the 19th century in Manchester.

Oh, Marilyn good, South Africa. I always tell Black people in South Africa to teach their children how they fought for democracy and democracy is not a right, but a privilege and the importance of voting. Absolutely right. I so drummed it into my daughter that women fought hard and women in my family fought hard for women to get the vote. I had a aunt who actually went as a teacher to South Africa after graduating in science before the first world war. She went to South Africa after the war to teach and she couldn’t have a vote. She didn’t have a vote until after the first world war because it was considered that women weren’t steady enough to vote it. So my daughter now votes in every election she can, I don’t mind what she votes, I just mind that she votes. I can’t believe young women who don’t vote.

No is not the economist who is constantly resisting Brexit, either will of the British people democratically expressed. Well, no. Yes, it was resisting Brexit, but it was resisting it on the grounds. The arguments for it were flawed and the British people who voted for it were voting for it in a very flawed way, and as I said before, our representatives in parliament, duly elected would’ve voted against it. The whole referendum business was badly handled. It was only 51% of those who actually voted, who voted to leave, not 51% of those entitled to vote. There were various ways that referenda can be skewed and that was the way that referendum was skewed, just before it even began.

Yes, Robin, you are right. The British electorate was not educated. Interestingly, in Denmark, when there’s were referendum on anything in the EU, they run adult education courses to enable people to understand, nothing was objective here. It was a horrendous thing.

Q: Has the spread of the woke culture in the west contributed as a backlash to the rise of the far-right?

A: No, I think the woke… I don’t know, that’s James, that’s a very good question. Again, that is a really good question. Has the spread of the woke culture in the west contributed as a backlash to the rise of the far-right? I can’t answer that quickly. It’s a really good question.

Q: What is your thoughts about compulsory voting?

A: I believe Australia has it. Yes, and I would support it even if you write across your ballot paper for none of these candidates, which I have actually done not in a general election, what I’ve done in an election for police commissioners, I wrote not for any of these candidates. Why? Because it has to count. If you do that, there has to be a list of voting slips that show were filled in, but not with a cross against a candidate. And so you can get the percentage of people that didn’t want any of the candidates, and I think that’s democracy.

All men are equal, but some are more equal than others. From animal farm, that is Andrew have been told, yeah. It’s Orwell. Orwell is an old Etonian who turns socialists, interesting. Monica, you mentioned young people. They tend to listen to what they’re indoctrinated with on campuses in the media, which is no longer impartial. It is sad that there is no longer civilised conversations that people listen to their favourite TV channels without really doing their research. I’m not sure that we should lumber all the young in quite that way. My point was the young don’t vote. Why they don’t vote is a further question.

Bobby says, I think it goes back even earlier that’s what is taught in acting and rewarded in the home. I’m with you on that.

Q: Is Switzerland referendum take place often?

A: Yes, they do. They’re mad on referenda in Switzerland. You only have to have a certain number of people ask for it, it has to be held. Whereas in Britain, it’s not for the people to decide if there’s a referendum, it’s for the government and it’s normally for the government to get something off their back, which is why the two referendums on the EU are both to try and save government skin. The first one under Harold Wilson, do we stay in or come out. We were already in, the government ran it very successfully and people voted to stay in. This time, the government held a referendum and wanted to come out because it thought by so doing, or Johnson thought by so doing he could obtain power and I don’t like referenda. I really don’t like referenda.

Q: Who is this? Peter. Is the problem not a failure of citizens progressing in their understanding of human understanding to a level of abstraction to epistemology, something as central to the function of democracy. To understand the opposite or left-wing idealism is not right-wing idealism or vice versa. Absolutely true. The opposite of idealism is empiricism. How you think is more important than what you think. This has led to the polarisation idealism, leads to empiricism is convergent not divergent?

A: My God, you’ve got a lot in to a small paragraph, Peter. I’m terribly impressed, look, I’ll give you well for plus and move on. I think that’s a really interesting statement that’s… I don’t wish to be patronising, but that’s very, very good.

Brian, absolutely agree that referenda go against the British principles of parliament, but we don’t have direct much… Yes, Brian, that’s what worries me. We don’t have a constitution which fits it. We don’t have a written constitution. And that’s of course, as the Americans will point out to us, is a failing of Britain that we don’t have a written constitution. And if we did, we’d have to have rules about referendum, we couldn’t allow a prime minister to change the rules, like it has to be 50% of all those entitled to vote as we had with a labor-held referendum in Scotland, or it has to be just simply a large majority, or it has include younger people. The whole thing is a model.

Oh, James, great. I don’t agree with you that the winning side in the 2016 EU referendum were greater thought in the losing side in telling lie. No… Oh, well, yes. Now both told lies, remember all those apocalyptic predictions of Cameron Osborn government? Virtually all of those prediction improvement will be totally unfounded. Well, I think James, at that point, we have to disagree. I think we have to disagree. That’s the glory of living in a democracy. God, if I’d said that in St. Petersburg’s tonight on a Zoom, there will be people knocking on the toilet. I’d be dragged out and you would never hear of me again. You know, somebody would say, well, how’s William? Please don’t mention William. It’s not a subject we can discuss. So at least we live in a democracy and we can discuss things.

Greda, not sure it’s correct that far-right passes a threat to democracy. Some of their positions may be objectional to many of us, but those positions too should be allowed to be represented. Let public debate defeat the objectional ideas. Yeah, in theory. In Quebec, 32 writings decided to send MPs to Canada’s federal parliament as part of the Bloc Quebec qua, a party that wishes take Quebec out of the Canadian confederation. Their anti-Canada position too is, and should be represented. Yeah, that’s a bit different. The Canadian position with Quebec is different. This is can be seen in Scotland with the Scottish Nationalist Party. It can be seen in Spain with the Catalonian party. It can be seen in Italy with the league party in the north. These are people who wish legitimately to put forward a claim to break away from the country they’re in. I don’t have a problem with that. If in a democracy a group in an area like Quebec win a majority to leave Canada, there is nothing in the democracy that can be done. If Scotland vote to leave, there’s nothing we can be done. Britain, England is not going to send troops into Scotland to reconquer it, and Canada is not going to send troops into Quebec. I’ve got no problem with that. My problem is with the attack on things like the rule of law. That’s what worries lawyers like me. That’s the problem with Trump’s America. That’s the problem with Boris’s Britain. It’s the attack on the rule of law, which is really frightening because most people have no idea about the rule of law. And you might say, why should they? Well, that’s why we have representative democracy. But sadly we have representatives in our parliaments, in Congress who are not clear about the rule of law. And that’s something else that I think should be taught in schools.

Sorry, who is this? Harriet. Was Hitler not elected by the nation? Yes, yes, yes. With the highest level of education in the world, yes. Yes, and that’s the worry. That’s always, always my concern at the back of my mind is 1933. We’ve got to do better in terms of education. Democracy has to be defended. That is what Madeleine Albright said in the book and in the quotation I read, and I am in the last ditch with Madeleine Albright saying that we have got to defend democracy.

Q: Who do you think Putin’s… What do you think Putin’s effect on Brexit and on the US election in 2016?

A: Sadly the truth in neither case has come out, but in both cases I think the answer is it has been negative and it has been unacceptable. And we already have a report in Britain which has been largely buried and I think the same thing has happened in America. This is not good. Remember, one of the criteria of a democracy is that there should be no outside interference in elections. Well, there is serious doubt in Britain about that, as well as serious doubt in the state. Oh, that’s very nice of you, Annette 'cause I’m easy to follow. I don’t mind if you disagree, but as long as you understood what I was trying to say, you can argue against it. Worse is to argue against somebody you’ve not quite understood. I do not, did not support Brexit, but actually the referendum was a useful check and balance against the executive. No, it wasn’t because the executive actually fix the Brexit election when it was held.

Q: What the question was, how the debate was conducted and what majority was needed? The Johnson and his government, it was actually, or rather before that they, it was the right-wing Tories who actually did that?

A: Not Johnson as prime minister, but yes, I don’t agree with that, I don’t think, or I think if you said the legislature then that’s different. Parliament would’ve voted against Brexit and then felt and said they couldn’t vote against a referendum. That’s the problem of the constitution. Our system of representative government against direct representation. No one had ever taken into account what would happen if the representatives disagreed with the direct vote and it remains an unsolved problem. India is a faltering democracy.

Q: Oh, can a country, the large proportion of population who are illiterate be considered a democracy?

A: A very good question, who is that? Lawrence, that’s a good question.

Q: Can Britain or USA be democratic when politicians are sponsored by industrial trade unions?

A: Again, a good question. I’m in favour of political parties being funded nationally and it being restricted on what they can spend, but that’s a minority view in Britain and I guess a minority view in the states, and a minority view probably everywhere. Can a country be democratic when religious leaders are automatically given places in a parliament. That’s the House of Lords, I am not going to defend the house of Lords, it’s indefensible. It’s not just religious leaders, the problem is it’s church. It’s not even Christian leaders, it’s Anglican bishops with a fallen attendance. No, no, no, no. The House of Lords is indefensible. I personally am in favour of unicameral government, that is to have one parliamentary tree chamber. I would, in Britain only have a House of Commons and I would get rid of the second chamber entirely. This is the New Zealand model. I think I’m right in saying. And if there’s someone from New Zealand here, you can comment. No, you can’t defend the House of Lords. If you want a second chamber, then it has to be elected like the American Senate, but by God, I don’t know that that improves democracy either.

Somebody has said, Michael, I’ve always liked Margaret Thatcher. Now she saw things clearly and said it no PC with her. Well, I actually agree with you, although I never voted for Margaret Thatcher, although I’m a conservative, mainly because of what she did in education, and I find I found her strident. But you are right, and I agree with you now, totally. The rise of the far-right says Ellie is a direct result of uber liberal leftist policies and natural response and naive liberalism such as land several million refugees into Germany, for example. That’s no, no, no, no. The refugee problem is a serious global problem. And the West cannot turn its back on it. Britain has been, had open doors and tolerant for communities. Jewish communities who came in the 19th century, French Protestant communities who came in the 17th century. Protestant communities from the Netherlands that came in in the 16th century. We’ve always opened our doors. We are trying now to close them. America was based on the basis of open doors of the Statue of Liberty. This isn’t liberalism, this isn’t uber liberal, this isn’t leftist, this is actual common decency.

I’m sorry, Ellie, I shouldn’t be so rude to you. You make a perfectly valid point, I don’t agree to gather, and we’ll have to disagree.

Judi, you should read Kathy Martin’s biography of Angela Merkel. In fact, her immigration policy has been successful. Only a small number have not integrated. Well, we’ve had… I was principal of the College of Adult Education in the North of England in Manchester in 1980s, and we had race riots. And I thought, this is going to go on. We’re not going to win, but we have won. We have won. And we do not have, we have an integrated society. Of course, we should be more integrated, of course, we should be more tolerant, more equal, all of those things. But we are largely that. One of my colleagues, when I was principal in London at the City Lit, who was a young Black woman, I asked her where she was going on holiday and I suggested somewhere and she in Europe where I was going, and she said, “Oh no, I couldn’t go there.” And I said, “What do you mean you couldn’t go there?” She says, “I’m Black.” She said, “You don’t understand unless you are Black.” How different Britain is to most European countries? Well, we have a… Tolerance is natural in Britain. And I don’t like the idea that we’re not any longer a tolerant nation.

Kalmen, the internal foe is the changing capitalism. The new capitalists want to influence power. The old capitalists would not have treated employees like P&O. That’s a situation in Britain where P&O, the shipping ferry line has sacked its in employees against the law and employed people who are untrained. That was also not good.

• [Judi] William, I think we’re running out of time.

• Right, I must stop. I’m sorry.

• It’s almost seven o'clock.

• Everybody, I’m sorry.

• I didn’t want to interrupt you because you know, we need more hours.

• Well, obviously this has been of interest. If Trudy’s listening, she will have noted it’s of interest and we may come back to it in a different form. But if not, if she isn’t listening, I will pass on. Maybe it will be a good idea if we could find somebody else, not me, somebody else to speak on a similar theme so you get a different view. Maybe Trudy can find an American to speak on the subject or at least a non-Britain to speak on the subject, so that you get, as I say, a different view. So thank you for participating this evening. I’ve appreciated that enormously. You’ve been really good in response to being asked to, and everyone’s been very polite and that is a bonus, a real bonus I can assure you in adult education. So thanks for joining me. I’ve enjoyed tonight and I will go on thinking about this, my book list, and it’s a very personal book list, and you won’t agree with some of the stuff you read, but there is a book list on the blog. So I’ll say goodbye, Judi.

• Thank you so much, William, and thank you to everybody who joined us. Stay safe. Bye-bye.

• Yeah, bye-bye.