I firmly believe in democracy. I’d rather live in a country where I get the opportunity to vote (and sometimes my choice wins and sometimes it looses) than a dictatorship where there is no vote. For me, part of being a citizen of my country is accepting the outcome of elections or referendums, even if you don’t agree with the outcome. The rise and rise of the “my rights come first” stance seems to override that as citizens in free democracies we also have “responsibilities”. I see one of those “responsibilities” as to accept election results. If you want a say in your democracy, you have to go out there and vote.

Of course I’m not naive to think every UK election is corruption free. Postal votes in the UK should be scrapped as they encourage corruption. There are enough examples in London boroughs and inner cities, but to date I doubt it has actually cost one side in an overall election result. I’ve no problem with voting early, but you should still have to vote in person. That way the trampled woman can vote as she sees fit, not as her husband sees fit; the fictitious person can’t vote, but the hounded or illiterate can. I also think the general voting day should be a public holiday, so those who cannot afford to miss a days work don’t have to. Imagine what society could do if we celebrated voting and everything it stands for on a special public holiday.

Once you have voted, you have a responsibility to accept the result. As soon as you start claiming other voters “didn’t understand what they were voting for” (so you really know why everyone voted) or “the result should be challenged” (agreed on postal fraud, but never to those who use the courts because they don’t like the result) or “that politician lied” (get with it, all politicians lie; or are at least, economical with the truth)

No. If you don’t accept a result, you have chaos. There are no foundations more important to a democracy than the rule of law and election. If those pillars fail, you have chaos. I’m lucky. I live in Britain. We have a good legal system. We have a free left and right press. We do have career politicians, but by and large we do get the overall result we vote for. It’s not perfect, but it is a far better than the chaos proportional representation has brought to countries like Italy or the non-elections in places like Russia.

In the recent Brexit Referendum, we were asked “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”. You would have thought that it was fairly self explanatory, but after the event it appears not. Leave doesn’t mean leave at all. Apparently it means just leave part of it or leave none of it. If you read Article 50, there is no real wriggle room; once activated, it cannot be revoked. You have to re-apply using Article 49. As soon as Article 50 is activated, we are leaving the EU. Then we have all the rubbish about “the deal”. Get with it!!!!….it doesn’t matter what the deal is, the 27 member states will tell us if they want to accept it and if they don’t Article 50 effectively gives the EU control over when they do accept any deal. In the meantime, we fall back on world trade tariffs. If any deal is put to a second vote in the UK, it is a pointless vote as we’ve left and rejecting it is saying to the EU, we reject a deal we’ve agreed with you. We would be in the same position of having to accept world trade tariffs.

The real issue in this referendum process were the message and the messenger.

The messenger – there is an echo chamber in UK politics. Parties really only talk to themselves. They get into the echo trap that “whatever I tell the electorate is correct, because I’ve told them. They are not capable of knowing otherwise. We’ve floated these ideas and they seem great”. Well Remainers, look who’s stupid now. Put out a positive message and you would have won. Stop telling voters they are stupid. I’m very uncomfortable with a lot of the Brexiteer rhetoric on immigration. However, politicians failed to articulate what actually happens with immigration and what we can and can’t do. Slating anybody who says we need to control immigration as a racist gets us nowhere. We need immigration, we just need to be advised how the system works, what the purpose is and how we can evolve it. David Cameron failed to get agreement from the EU to stop benefits being paid to migrants for two years after they arrive. In the last few months Germany is pushing through laws to have that period set at five years. The issue is we need immigration, we just need to better understand how we control it and how we can evolve our system; so we can welcome (and where necessary support) those we decide to accept. Of course the item here is who are “we”. If we leave the EU, it is us

I was recently in the US and toured Ellis Island. Millions of people flowed through that island, but US accepted everyone they could providing you could prove who you were, were healthy, willing to work and willing to accept the “American way”. Of course there were some rejected fairly and unfairly, but in general it was a process understood by all. We are fed so much dis-information about the process of getting into the UK, that I’m not sure anyone really knows what we can and can’t control and what we can and can’t do whilst in the EU. Why are thousands of people living in squalor in Calais when the French should either deport them or look after them. We don’t even openly discuss anything about the process. For example, is it our “responsibility” as a nation to vaccinate an accepted immigrant against disease to protect those already in the UK, or is it the “human right” of the immigrant to refuse vaccination. The Ellis Island process came down firmly on the former

The message – I am tired of Remainers saying “Brexiteers lied”. I’m tired of Brexiteers saying “Remainers lied”. They all lied, but all the information was there and we should stop complaining it wasn’t. That is a lazy argument from those who live in the echo chamber. I will use one example that is constantly quoted. The Brexiteers peddled the line on their battle-bus that we would get back £350M per week to spend on the NHS. There was enough information out there to show that the £350M was the weekly gross value we are contracted to pay to the EU, before our rebate and before any grants coming back. It was very easy to find out that the real contribution\cost was about £175M per week. I knew that and I only clicked on one article to find an easy diagram to show this. Why politicians couldn’t articulate this is beyond me. What was annoying was how ineffective Remainers were in budging that value out of the voter conscience, but also their insistence that any Brexiteer was clearly fooled by this value. All sides knew we don’t hypothicate taxes in the UK, so whatever we recover would be spent on all sorts of services

What worries me most about the Brexit aftermath is the damage we are doing to ourselves. I may or may not like the result, but you get on with it. That is part of our “responsibility” to our country. Obstructing such a large vote only causes more distrust and loathing of the political and news class. After all, in their echo chamber “you voted incorrectly, stupid” and by doing what they are now doing, it only reinforces that view

I had a few days in the US in the immediate run up to the Presidential election. I watched some local and national news broadcasts and the appalling election adverts. I really do hope we never ever get those adverts in the UK. When I got back to the UK, what was immediately apparent was that the UK coverage was slanted. The prevailing view in the UK was that Hillary Clinton was the go to candidate and that Donald Trump was a racist misogynist disaster. She was going to be the first woman to be President. She was so qualified it would be a surprise why anybody would not vote for her. What I took from just a week in the US was the cumulative effect of thirty years of Clinton scandals. Never mind her husbands impeachment and his own scandals, there was the Whitewater scandal, Benghazi, Commercegate, the emails, the Clinton Foundation, the cattle futures scandal, the White House travel office scandal and thirty years of ignoring and taking her constituency for granted. You could see it when she spoke; the sense of entitlement. She had ample opportunity to find some tag lines and promote herself, but she failed. She was the wrong woman at the wrong time; and because of the arrogance of the Democratic echo chamber, they let Trump in. Many voters were so desperate for a woman President they overlooked the candidate. Don’t even get me started on Donald Trump. He is probably the worst candidate ever to run for President. His views on women and minorities are abhorrent. He is also not quite the businessman he is portrayed to be. I’m still confused why this line was never challenged. His bullying persona clearly pervades his whole corporate empire. From an article in the NY Times, his companies have been involved in around 3500 lawsuits. Far far too many for any normal business. Trump or one of his companies were plaintiffs in 1,900; defendants in 1,450; and bankruptcy, third party, or other in the remaining 150. These include defamation, the Trump University, properties, assault claims, rape claims and more. He is not a fit businessman, never-mind a candidate to be President. For us in the UK, he promised thousands of jobs into the Aberdeen market with the impact of his golf course infrastructure. So far there are less than a hundred. What made me laugh was on a day he again talked about his “wall”, as I walked past the Trump hotel in New York; there were Mexicans cleaning the hotel’s ground floor windows

The messenger – there is a massive echo chamber in US politics, far more insular than in the UK. It screams at you when you watch TV. They really do believe that “whatever I tell the electorate is correct. They are not capable of knowing otherwise”. Well this attitude caught up with Hillary and the Democrats big time. She polled significantly lower than Obama as voters just didn’t believe her. She might have had the stamina to sit in front of Congressional Committees for hours on end, but why was she even there in the first place. Scandals. She is probably not even fit to be a Senator. As a silly small example, she wont release transcripts of fundraising speeches made to Wall Street investment banks. This again adds to the trail of unease that there is something to hide, something she never shifted from the public impression of her. I think that Mrs Obama is the right woman and the one who really could be the first female President. Eight years under the closest scrutiny from a hostile press and not one whiff of a scandal. I can’t see her ever running though

The message – I saw highlights of the television debates. Hillary was sidetracked so often defending herself and throwing mud that she forgot it was her opportunity to tell America what she could offer, in excess of being a woman. She never did. Trump was good at one liners. Most were pretty disgusting or just lies, but the News media love one liners, so she lost the battle of getting messages out there. Hillary had no compelling narrative and Trump was very good at letting voters know “she had something to hide”, “they don’t listen to you”, “I’m listening to you”. He won that battle and unfortunately he won the race

The political echo chamber in the UK and US has handed us these two results. The Remainers and the Democrats believed their own hype. That arrogance means we get to pick up the pieces. I only hope Congress can water down this one term President.  California and New York may be “Democrat”, but there are a lot of states you fly over between those two that were not convinced. Next time, fix the message and offer a better messenger. The EU has had numerous occasions where it has either asked a country to vote again (Ireland Lisbon Treaty. 53% against then 67% for) or has just ignored the result (France 55% against and Netherlands 57% against the EU Constitution). It is no wonder the Brexit result happened and why politicians want to ignore or overturn it. “You don’t understand, stupid”. Maybe the 52% do. Next time, fix the message and offer a better messenger

You’d hope social media could help this situation, but the more I see, the more social media just amplifies the echo chamber and shuts down debate. Abusive screaming rants put a stop to any meaningful conversation about real facts affecting real people.

Rant over