Gary's views

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

BRITISH DEMOCRACY

Name three countries in the world with better systems of governance than Britain. Can you? Of course there are some in Europe with roughly equivalent arrangements and it might be hard to judge between us. But I can’t think of a evidently superior system. Our democracy works pretty well, although it is certainly far from perfect.

And it just got a whole lot better last week! Why? Because one of the in built requirements of our system is that an elected government, especially if it has a sizeable majority, needs a very strong opposition to keep it in check. After ten years of scratching around in a parallel universe, my own party has finally signalled its hunger for office once again. Under new and exciting leadership, we should now give people a real choice at the next election and hold the government properly to account along the way. At last!
Out of our healthy democracy flow our essential freedoms. The ability to speak our minds, live and work where we want, travel freely abroad, worship whichever deity we choose, sleep at night without fearing a visit from the secret police and elect a government and chuck them out when we want to. It was hard won, took a long time, needs careful protection, but we should thank our lucky stars that we live in such a country.

Sadly, about two thirds of the world’s population do not live under the same set of rules. Tin pot dictators, political corruption, human rights abuses and no real freedom of speech– all everyday reality for the vast majority.

In our increasingly globalizing world, where political activity in even a tiny corner affects us all, Britain has both a responsibility and an opportunity to do something about it. To help individuals in each of these nations, wherever possible, to put in place the same framework of freedom, obviously coloured by their own cultural experience, as we take for granted over here. Which is why I have agreed to take on this challenge for my party, heading up both our democracy building programme and our human rights commission to take forward this long-term, painstakingly slow, but ultimately essential work. This is not philanthropy; this is in the national interest.

As our democracy has just got even healthier, wouldn’t it be great if we could now see progress in many other countries.
It would certainly make the world safer for my rapidly growing grandsons!

posted by Nigel on Monday, December 19, 2005