The Grieve affair and democracy

I am sure that many people will have seen the news that Dominic Grieves membership have started the process to deselect him as a candidate for the next election. I have found that this subject seems to have split many people’s views and not always along the line of whether you are a fan of Brexit or not.

The split is roughly as follows.

Dominic Grieve should be deselected as he effectively lied to get elected as he clearly never believed in or nor was willing to implement the main plank of the Conservative party manifesto.

Or.

Dominic Grieve is a good MP who works hard for his constituents, is a nice man trying to do the right thing as he sees fit and the party should be a broad church which should be able to accept a range of views.

I have some sympathy for both views but don’t necessarily think they are incompatible. This is really a debate over the difference between delegate or representative democracy.

So what is the difference?

In a delegate democracy you vest your voting rights into your delegate i.e. they vote on your behalf and they vote the way you want them to, this is extremely good in situations where it is normally a single issue and the complexity is quite small. Where it tends to fall down is in a parliament where you are voting across many issues making it nearly impossible for any delegate to vote on behalf of all their electorate on every single issue. Hence why we have a representative democracy which simply means we elect MP’s to represent our views in parliament, but they are effectively on their own and are held accountable via the democratic process.

So far so good and Grieve has done nothing but do that in a traditional sense.

Where this starts to breakdown is his problematic behavior during the Brexit process.

• Grieve was photographed leaving the European Commission HQ in London in June 2018 where a meeting of key remain supporters was taking place – this was during the reading of the European Union withdrawal act with efforts underway to derail it (Link)
• Grieve decides to go to Brussels with other MPs to directly lobby the Commission which seemed to change its behaviour (Link)
• Grieve was reported by the Telegraph as having secret meetings with French ministers in attempt to get time for a second referendum (Link)
• Grieve met secretly with John Bercow in his chambers and directly after Bercow went off the reservation and overruled his own clerks and allowed the Grieve amendment which was a clear effort to torpedo process (Link)

Now remember that Dominic Grieve was re-elected in 2017 which was after the EU referendum had taken place in June 2016. The manifesto that the Conservative party produced for the election and was sent out clearly stated:

• As we leave the European Union, we will no longer be members of the single market or customs union
• We will seek a deep and special partnership including a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement.

This is where the problem starts to emerge in our democratic process.

Though he is a representative should people not expect him to stand by the key plank of the manifesto that he was got elected on? If so then is not the anger that is being directed at him by his own constituency members fair. If that is the case, then efforts to deselect him are both right and fair and reflect democracy in action within the Conservative party. It is their membership attempting to hold their candidate and now MP to account for his actions over the last 2 years.

Now many I am sure will be saying that Dominic Grieve was elected to represent all his constituents and not just the Conservative ones. This is true and when there is an election, he will have to explain to the electorate his actions (if he stands again). But he was also selected by the Conservative party and those members are the ones that went out campaigning for him and they have a right internally to ask questions and hold him accountable and if they feel he hasn’t performed his duties deselect him for any forthcoming elections.

Dominic Grieve does have a democratic choice – he can choose to run as an independent. In this situation he could stand based on his hard work as a constituency MP and explain why he has made the choices he has during this parliament. This would allow both the Conservative party membership their democratic say, whilst then allowing the voters of Beaconsfield their say – I can see nothing more democratic than that.

Except perhaps if Dominic Grieve decided to call a bye-election to get a new mandate now.