Hmm that’s kinda the price of democracy though. It’s a lot of money for sure I’m not denying that. But we can’t have a system of democracy whereby we ignore the rules (I know I know how stupid that sounds given the UK, but we can try and be better 😂).
As a counterpoint, we held EU parliament elections in the UK in 2019 when we were leaving the EU. We could make the same argument there. But we did it to follow the rules that underpin good democratic governance (I know I know Brexit bad, grr shakes fist).
Yes. And it is the law to conduct the elections. It wasn’t the law to “conduct regular elections unless you can’t be bothered in which case YOLO”. That’s why the courts ruled against the government.
Are you suggesting that if the government doesn’t find the law convenient it should just ignore it?
No I’m saying that the British government could pass primary legislation if it really wanted to and cancel the elections. Parliament is sovereign, but they just cancelled these elections in a really cack-handed way that forced them to backtrack (although they could in theory still take this route).
They didn’t really have that choice for the EU elections.
Hmm that’s kinda the price of democracy though. It’s a lot of money for sure I’m not denying that. But we can’t have a system of democracy whereby we ignore the rules (I know I know how stupid that sounds given the UK, but we can try and be better 😂).
As a counterpoint, we held EU parliament elections in the UK in 2019 when we were leaving the EU. We could make the same argument there. But we did it to follow the rules that underpin good democratic governance (I know I know Brexit bad, grr shakes fist).
We did it because the EU made us.
They made us on a whim? Or because it was the law? Now apply that thinking here.
Difference here being we make the UK’s law.
Yes. And it is the law to conduct the elections. It wasn’t the law to “conduct regular elections unless you can’t be bothered in which case YOLO”. That’s why the courts ruled against the government.
Are you suggesting that if the government doesn’t find the law convenient it should just ignore it?
No I’m saying that the British government could pass primary legislation if it really wanted to and cancel the elections. Parliament is sovereign, but they just cancelled these elections in a really cack-handed way that forced them to backtrack (although they could in theory still take this route).
They didn’t really have that choice for the EU elections.
Agreed. But they didn’t. It’s absolutely the cack handed way they’ve gone about this which is troubling. Yup 👍🏼.