Douglas Carswell's Blog

e-Petitions show the people are not a mob

So the people are not a mob after all. Just folk like you and me.

For all the hype about e-petitions leading to angry “populism”, I can’t help notice that most of the top ten proposals seem pretty measured.  Many are actually liberal in the sense that they want to rein in Big Government.

1.       Convicted rioters to lose benefits - 217,921

2.       Disclosure of all government documents relating to 1989 Hillsborough disaster - 109,482

3.       Cheaper petrol and diesel  - 60,045

4.       Make financial education a compulsory part of the school curriculum - 40,069

5.       Petition to retain the ban on Capital Punishment - 24,822

6.       Keep Formula 1 Free To Air in the UK - 21,301

7.       Referendum on EU membership - 21,252

8.       Restore Capital Punishment - 16,996

9.       Public & Private Pension Increases - change from RPI to CPI - 16,756 

10.    Increase policing  - 9,366

(Hattip Conservative Home)

Two weeks after an outbreak of mass looting, there is – unsurprisingly – a lot of support for the idea that those involved in looting lose some of their benefit entitlements. Far from being draconian, this merely tells us ordinary folk want accountability before the government doles out public money.

The second most popular proposal demands that the government release data on the Hillsborough disaster – open government. It is followed by a demand that the government take less money from our pockets each time we fill up the car – smaller government.

Yet when the e-petition initiative was launched, remember how the BBC covered it almost exclusively in terms of trying to restore capital punishment?  The Corporation, like so many others, simply took it for granted that more democracy would mean less liberty. 

Yet look at what has actually happened. The e-petition demanding we maintain the ban on capital punishment is beating the proposal that the death penalty be restored by a massive margin.  As I tried to explain to several BBC researchers ‘phoning up in search of someone to say what their producer had already scripted, the death penalty has actually been abolished by plebiscites more often than it has ever been imposed.

Far from demanding the persecution of minorities, one proposal wants to change the way state pensions are calculated to help older folk.  Only one proposal – financial education – is about compulsion.  

Another suggestion is for a referendum on our EU membership. Hardly radical, this merely reflects what was in the Lib Dem manifesto at the last election.  Who – other than those fearful of the outcome – believes that we should not have a vote on whether we remain in the EU?

e-Petitions shows that if people are given responsibility, they behave responsibly. Far from driving the expansion of big, arbitrary, illiberal government, democracy allows us to rein it in.

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