Cameron confirms UK is an electoral dictatorship

This afternoon the House of Commons received a Prime Ministerial Statement by David Cameron about last week’s meeting of the European Council. The statements are followed by questions from MPs, and because these are not scripted and responses rehearsed the answers tend to be quite revealing.

So it proved today when Labour’s Kate Hoey, a genuine EUsceptic unlike Cameron, asked a question about what CCHQ must consider the dreaded ‘R’ word in her last sentence (in italics):

Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab): Did the Prime Minister get a chance to discuss with any of the leaders privately or publicly the ludicrous European Union embassies being set up all over the world at huge expense? Does he realise that the public do not want that, but want well-staffed British embassies? Can we do anything about it, and is there any chance of a referendum in the next five years on whether we stay in or go out?

Cameron’s answer in reproduced in full below, but it is the first 21 words (also in italics) that show the British public just how much of an arrogant and anti-democratic control freak their Prime Minister is:

The Prime Minister: I do not believe in an in-out referendum for many reasons. I think we are better off in the European Union—we have to fight our corner very hard—but I would grant a referendum if there were any proposed transfer of powers from Westminster to Brussels. On the European External Action Service, the hon. Lady knows that we opposed the Lisbon treaty, that we thought the creation of the EEAS was a mistake and that we have pushed as hard as we can within Europe to keep its costs under control. There is an argument that because of the combination of the previous High Representative and Foreign Minister roles, the posts and the budget should cost less, and we push that case as hard as we can.

Those 21 words can be used in isolation because the words that follow do not alter the context of what Cameron said. The message is crystal clear… Cameron thinks we are better off in the EU and therefore, like it or not, the British people have to lump it. All hail Dave!

Cameron does not want we mere proles to rock his apple cart and he is putting his own personal wishes before those of the people he was elected to represent. The political class fears and loathes the public it rules over and will deny us any opportunity to determine for ourselves whether we are better off in or out of the EU. Perhaps they believe they can ‘change the way citizens think’ by ‘offering incentives, by “priming” us with subliminal messaging, by changing the “choice architecture” of our daily lives so that we are influenced, sometimes unconsciously, to behave in what the government considers to be the right way.’

Cameron’s control freakery and the public’s lack of recourse to challenge him is another example of the disturbing and self referential electoral dictatorship that exists in the United Kingdom, which is supposedly a representative democracy. Today Cameron confirmed the reality for us. The New Politics is infuriatingly identical to the old.