UKDemocracy

Quora Answer : With the announcement that BoJo intends to prorogue Parliament next week, is this the kind of democracy that the people of the UK voted for?

Aug 28, 2019

To an extent.

Last time people voted for any particular kind of democracy in the UK was the AV referendum in 2011.

At that point they chose to keep the FPTP system rather than an alternative.

What would AV have meant for Brexit?

Well, under AV we'd have almost certainly had a sizable block of UKIP MPs at the 2015 election.

Cameron wouldn't have promised an EU referendum in the Tory 2015 manifesto, but might have conceded one in negotiating a coalition with UKIP to form a government after it.

More Leave inclined right wing Tories would have moved to UKIP making it a stronger, "more respectable" further right party.

Assuming Leave had still won by a slight margin in 2016 there would be a real danger of Cameron resigning and Farage becoming PM.

In this scenario, the fighting over Brexit is not internal to the Tories but mainly between the Tories and UKIP in the coalition.

Farage pursues a hard, but not No Deal Brexit. Basically Canada. The Tories become more definitively the right-wing remain / soft Brexit / voice of pragmatism party, and can curb PM Farage by threatening to side with Labour and bring down the coalition. There's less stigma for Tories to rebel against a coalition than against their own government.

There's no 2017 election and Tory / UKIP have a small but comfortable majority meaning that really ONLY the saner Tories have much leverage.

Brexit goes ahead in early 2019.

Without the DUP involved, the coalition decides to accept a sea border with Northern Ireland as the solution to the border.

Bottom line : the constitutional crisis is the result of the Brexit issue cutting across the two main political blocks created by FPTP. Had the UK chosen AV in 2011, that would have been avoided.

OTOH with parliament both more effective at reconfiguring itself and able to better represent far-right impulses, it's likely Brexit would have gone ahead more smoothly.