A Question Time audience member and panelist clashed over the claim “democracy doesn’t exist” following the High Court’s ruling that MPs will get to vote on what Brexit looks like.
During a particularly heated debate from Watford, one audience member became incensed by what he perceived are attempts to undermine this summer’s referendum.
Looking thoroughly peeved, he said:
“Democracy doesn’t exist. We’ve lost it. Now is the time to say we’ve given up. It’s in name only.”
He added:
“We voted out and they still don’t accept it.”
But he was taken to task by Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of the Economist magazine, who corrected the gentleman. She said:
“What the High Court said was there has to be vote in Parliament, because we are a parliamentary democracy. I don’t think Parliament should overturn the will of the people.”
But that didn’t seem to be enough. The man responded:
“Where’s the democracy?”
So Minton Beddoes went on:
“There’s a difference between direct democracy and referendums, and parliamentary democracy. And we are a representative democracy. You elect an MP to form a government. That is parliamentary democracy.”
Minton Beddoes added while the UK voted to leave the EU, it did not vote to vote “for any particular direction”. She continued:
“What we need to have is a serious debate about where we want to get to.”
While the debate may seem crude, it probably reflects what is going on across the country - as social media suggested on the same night as it reacted to pro-Brexit newspaper front pages.
David Dimbleby presented the weekly topical debate from Watford. Panellists included Conservative communities secretary Sajid Javid MP, Labour’s Lisa Nandy MP, talk show host Charlie Wolf, radio presenter Huey Morgan, and Minton Beddoes,