Letter: Waving the flag for our precious democracy

LAST week’s copy of this paper carried a letter from Mr Ellis who claims to be angry that “his” national flag is being hijacked, but it also belongs to almost 70 million others, a number of which follow a party that Mr Ellis clearly dislikes and is trying to link with the Nazi party that failed almost a century ago.

We are lucky enough to live in a democracy where all views can be expressed without fear, and having watched the Reform party ‘membership ticker’ steadily climb, I have noticed that it gains a lot of new members every time statements like his are made by voices on the left. It seems that Farage can simply wait for the mistakes of others to take their toll and then capitalise on it with no effort required and offering his party’s version which is definitely appealing to lots of people.

One party is still licking its wounds after a solid rejection from the electorate while the government has been thrown in at the deep end seemingly learning nothing from its many years in opposition. The party favoured by Mr Ellis is a prisoner of student common room politics and sees all popular progress as some sort of threat with the opposition to a second Gatwick runway, and air transportation in general as the latest target.

A democracy, according to the internet, is “a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives”. If the opinion polls translate into votes at the next election, there will in all likelihood be a Reform government, but that’s democracy and the failure of the other political parties to offer a more palatable choice to the country.

Back in 2016, the main thrust of the Remain side of the argument seemed to be that anyone who proposed an intention to leave was stupid, without realising that all those ‘stupid’ people had a say in the referendum that followed. Letters to this paper show on a regular basis that this entrenched but failed attitude still exists almost 10 years later.

Democracy is all about accepting the will of the majority and is a very precious thing, but not all of the people wilt agree all of the time.

Derek Eddlestone

Dibden Purlieu