Published on 25th March 2025

Introduction

Ruling elites are perfectly happy to go along with constitutions, electoral systems, timing of elections and all the other paraphernalia of democracy as long it suits them and lands them or their peer group back at the controls of power.

‘Peer group’ often means the nominal opposition, in countries where you have a Uni-party. Uni-party is where one party and its main rival deliver small variations on the same thing once in office – like the Conservatives and Labour in the UK. Or Uni-party form a coalition – like CDU/CSU and SPD in Germany – after projecting themselves during an election campaign as diametric opposites of one another.

Now voters are having the temerity to answer back. To nullify that threat to their status and power, ruling elites are more than willing to look at the fine detail of the wording of this paraphernalia of democracy, find loopholes in it, and discover ways of denying the voters their voice and keeping their own hands on the controls.

Government is appointed, not elected

Mark Carney is appointed as head of the Canadian Liberal Party, a position that automatically entitles its holder to become Canada’s prime minister, without the necessity of holding a general election and even of his submitting himself for election as a Member of Parliament in a by-election.

President Macron of France appoints the technocratic Michel Barnier as his prime minister, without Barnier being a parliamentary deputy. When Barnier is pushed out because he cannot get a budget agreed, François Bayrou of Macron’s partner party Mouvement démocrate is appointed, without there being serious consideration given to the calling of a general election. Mouvement démocrate holds only 33 out of 577 seats in the National Assembly, belying its name: there is no ‘movement’, and the appointment of its leader as prime minister with such a thin base of support is undemocratic.

Pick-and-choose which bits of the constitution to abide by

Germany does hold a general election but then releases its Debt Brake using the deputy numbers in Bundestag before the election, not the numbers afterwards, in order to assemble the required 66% super-majority to alter the German constitution. The party driving this forward – CDU/CSU – represented to the electorate that the Debt Brake would not be released, and then promptly did a policy pirouette once it had gained voters’ backing.

On 24th November 2024 Călin Georgescu appeared to be placed first in the first round of voting in the Romanian presidential election, with a 23% share of votes cast. Instead of his being permitted to proceed to the run-off against the second-placed candidate on 8th December, the Constitutional Court cancelled the results over concerns that Russia had targeted Romania with an ‘aggressive hybrid action’ to affect the vote. ‘Concerns’, rather than proof, seem to have been good enough.

A second ‘first round of voting’ is scheduled for 4th May. The Constitutional Court has barred Georgescu from standing after it ruled that he had not complied with electoral rules during his campaign running up to 24th November. How convenient.

Forget manifestos

As noted above regarding the release of the German Debt Brake, CDU/CSU does an immediate policy pirouette away from its election manifesto.

The UK’s government under Keir Starmer enacts policies that were not in its manifesto (like cutting pensioners’ winter fuel allowances) and reneges on promises that were (like pension compensation for women who had missed out).

The manifesto was careful to conceal that its financial plans were stated for one year only, in a parliament with a life of five years. Labour’s expenditures and borrowings turn out to be five times higher than the casual reader of their manifesto might have imagined.

Labour alleged that they had discovered a financial ‘black hole’ upon assuming power, whereas the UK’s deep financial issues were obvious for all to see. Having then promised to ‘fix the foundations’ of the UK economy, they start off by digging the hole deeper, awarding major pay rises to public sector workers.

Forget constitutional roles

King Charles does not want to be left on the sidelines. He went out of his way to eulogise Canada in the same week that Mark Carney was appointed as its prime minister, when arguably, as Canadian head of state and guardian of its constitution in trust for the Canadian voters, he should have stepped in and precluded it.

Charles has hosted Starmer for a sleepover at one of his castles in a way that his mother never did, as well as getting all over (like an ill-fitting suit) the same European leaders that Starmer is all over.

Charles is committed to Net Zero and is a dedicated EU Rejoiner, so he gives overt support to politicians that espouse the same aims. Starmer is his blue-eyed boy because Starmer’s EU Re-set could be the stepping stone to rejoining the EU, a cause that Charles robustly supports.

Charles is partial when his role as constitutional monarch requires impartiality.

Charles’ role as a constitutional monarch is well understood, even if it is not specified in a written document or constitution. Part of the understanding is that the monarch him- or herself understands it. Queen Elizabeth did; King Charles does not. He re-writes his mandate to suit himself and citizens have no avenue of redress against him.

Vying for control of a direction-of-travel the voters rejected

Now Charles travels to Rome to put 700 years of the schism behind him (or rather us). When was this action put to the electors to vote on? Henry VIII cut us off from the Catholic Church and several wars were fought to keep us cut off, in a sense a precursor of Brexit. Charles is head of the Church of England, but instead he prefers to snuggle up to the cardinals.

Charles sucks up to the European lords spiritual, while Starmer sucks up to the European lords temporal – turning up at every EU summit like a bad euro cent, calling his own summits about the Ukraine, organising a ‘coalition of the willing’ to deploy into Ukraine if a peace treaty happens to be signed, and seeing how he can sneak his EU Re-Set in under the radar.

Neither Charles nor Starmer conducts himself in thought, word or deed in line with the voters’ decision to leave the EU and permanently.

Ambition level of Charles and Starmer

It would be a mistake to underestimate the level to which Charles and Starmer, each in their own way, believe they could dominate European and global proceedings.

Charles’ delusional sense of self-importance might even lead him to eye up an opening that could be available before long, as Pope, although the vow of celibacy might be a cause and just impediment precluding that, not that a vow to keep himself only unto her as long as ye both shall live has gotten in the way in the past.

In the meantime he might have to be content with Holy Roman Emperor, although in that Starmer would be his arch rival, with his messianic fervour for change, his colossal self-belief that his interventions are benevolent and automatically welcomed, and his conviction that whatever he says, because it is he that hath spoke it, carries the full force of the law.

Cancellation of elections when the timing does not suit

When the unwelcome intervention of voters threatens to get in the way, an avenue can be found to thwart them.

On 9th January 2025, former European Commissioner Thierry Breton told French television channel RMC Story that if the German AfD party won the elections in Germany in March, they could also be annulled by the European Union, ‘as was done in Romania’. Now a question about this has been put before the European Parliament by deputy Matthieu Valet.

Meanwhile in the UK our local shire elections are cancelled. Labour plans to merge several historic counties into new mayoral authorities. These authorities will each have a province to rule over, a sort of ‘Gau’, and the ruler will be a leader, a sort of ‘Gauleiter’. Since these authorities may emerge over the next year or two, it is deemed uneconomical for elections to be held into the existing councils – even though councillors’ terms-of-office have expired. Councillors will continue to sit despite this, for up to two years supposedly, although there is no fixed end-date to the interregnum.

They will sit without a popular mandate, whilst making taxation and spending decisions. Taxation increases by as much as permitted, naturally, and services are reduced, and those making the decisions are answerable to no-one. What happened to ‘no taxation without representation’?

Summary and conclusions

When it suits authority to let sitting deputies and councillors hold sway, a way is found to enable it.

When it suits authority to waft in new prime ministers, or to alter a constitution, a way is found to enable it.

When election mainfestos are turned on their head within hours of electoral votes being counted, the voters apparently have no protection.

When constitutions are altered or constitutional norms ignored, voters find they have no avenue of redress.

But at all costs no proposition can be put to the voters that, when they vote for or against it, is binding on ‘authority’. It is essential to build in wording or to create avenues to ensure that the expressed will of the people can be ignored or reversed: ‘authority’ rules at its own behest, not at that of the voters.

And no risk can be taken that ‘populists’ might replace one or more of those from the number of the elect (which means the elite who nominate and appoint one another, not people whom the voters might decide to choose of their own accord). If the voters are foolish enough to elect a populist, there is always the Romanian solution.

This is the extent of the contempt in which the ruling elite hold the voters.