How to poach a democracy

Delia Smith, on last Sunday's Food Programme, said that her "big moan at the moment is: I think party politics is long, long past its sell-by date". "We have a politician that makes a decision about what's needed and we have no say in it at all, none of us. You know, we have a vote once every four years. It's absolutely ridiculous. We're intelligent. And then I'm told you can't. [...] You don't know about politics. You can't change it. Well, I'm saying that 'can't' isn't a word. And at this very moment people in Iran are leading the way."

There are many things wrong with the UK's current politics, but surely the answer is to remove the malign features, not to throw over the whole system which has served us and other free nations reasonably well for over a century-and-a-half. Which people are showing the way in Iran? The primitive religious thinkers who are at present in control? Or the people on the street, protesting the perverted view of Islam which has led to gratuitous state killings? In theory, demography is on the side of the growing younger population of Iran against the ageing ayatollahs, but what would victory consist of, and would people have to go out on the streets every time they wanted to change a policy? For a time, the Arab Spring looked as if it might put more decision-making in the hands of ordinary people, but now Tunisia, where it started, is now back in the hands of an authoritarian politician. Egypt after a brief period of a freely-elected government is now a dictatorship again. Admittedly, it is the army rather than party politicians which is in control.

Perhaps the idea of replacing decisions in parliament with referendums appeals to Delia. She may not be aware that this system has been implemented in Europe twice in history. The two instigators were Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler.