The Commentary

The present troubles in the Middle East and North Africa should make us very thankful for our system of democracy.

Since the turn of the year, the ‘Arab Spring’ has brought demonstrations in many Muslim countries as people seek freedom. Whereas governments have been toppled in Tunisia and Egypt, popular protests elsewhere are being brutally suppressed. It is arguable that such uprisings indicate deep weaknesses in Islam. Theodore Dalrymple* has highlighted two. The first is political. Within Islam ‘the legitimacy of temporal power could always be challenged by those who, citing Muhammad’s spiritual role, claimed greater religious purity, or authority... With power constantly liable to challenge from the pious, or the allegedly pious, tyranny becomes the only guarantor of stability’. It is such oppression which has triggered the demonstrations. The second problem for Islam is intellectual. ‘In the West, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, acting upon the space that had always existed, at least potentially, in Christianity between Church and State, liberated individual men to think for themselves... Islam with no separate secular sphere where enquiry could flourish free from the claims of religion, if only for technical purposes, was hopelessly left behind.’ We wish the Arab Spring well. However, there is a danger. History teaches us that those who start revolutions are not always the ones who come to power.

Significant UK results

In May the UK population voted producing two significant political results. First, the Scottish National Party gained an outright majority in the Scottish Parliament, which could lead to Scottish independence and the eventual break-up of the UK. As the main political parties wring their hands, surely the lesson is not difficult. The SNP has concentrated on getting the best deal for the Scottish people — free university tuition for example. By contrast there is a feeling among ordinary British people of not being looked after by successive Westminster governments and that other agendas have dominated Tory and Labour administrations — political correctness and Europe included.

The second significant democratic decision was the rejection of the Alternative Vote system in the referendum concerning how we elect MPs to Westminster. First-past-the post stays. Though I did not see it myself, quite a blow was struck against AV by an item on the topical TV talk show Frank Skinner’s Opinionated. A group of prisoners was asked to vote, using the AV system of ranking preferences, on the colour to paint a room. The result was yellow. When asked who in the group put yellow as their first choice it turned out that none of them had. That’s AV for you.

As Christians we should not think that a particular voting system will fix our country. What is required is leaders of real calibre, no matter which style of democracy brings them to power. Our difficulty is that there does not appear to be an abundance of such men and women in hedonistic Britain. Every politician says: ‘I went into politics to serve’. But words are cheap these days. God is sovereign. We need to pray that the Lord will not give us the political leaders we deserve, but in his grace raise up good leaders for us. ‘Woe to you, 0 land, when your king is a child, and your princes feast in the morning! Blessed are you, 0 land whose king is of noble birth and whose princes eat at a proper time — for strength and not for drunkenness’ (Ecclesiastes 10.16,17). May we be delivered from incompetence and the gravy train.

* Our Culture, What’s Left of It by Theodore Dalrymple, Ivan Dee 2005, p.289

Delight in democracy

Significant UK results

John Benton

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