Democracy? Dictatorship?
As I type, 6,063,356 people have signed the petition to revoke Article 50*.
You’d have thought that given the number of signatories — around 5.8 million I think it was at the time that they decided to hold the debate — it would be a major meeting in the main chamber, something that all MPs should be encouraged to take part in, and the front benches to at least listen to.
But no.
It was punted off to a committee room that can barely hold 100 people**.
After everyone had had their say, the government’s representative stood up and read the pre-prepared rejection of the petition.
He might as well have stood up and said “la la la la they/we’re not listening”.
In what way was that a meaningful debate? It looked very much like a decision being handed down from on high to a loosely-allied collection of people who felt like they had to be seen as offering a token resistance on the record.
Nobody mentioned the elephant in the room; it just wasn’t a debate. It was diktat.
*yes, we can argue about bots and hostile state hackers another time
** I’m pretty sure it can’t hold many more than that — it looks very much like the same room in which a big groups of us early political bloggers had a REAL debate about the future of political blogging. Ironically, Theresa May was speaking in the main house at the same time, and Tom Watson was in the room with us. Funny old world, innit?
