The greatest and oldest democracies are the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States of America. The UK, in the early period, and the US, in the present one, acted and act as propagators and supporters of democratic movements across the world. However, all democratic political entities evolve, and in the process strain the relationship between the electorate and their democratically elected rulers. What is surprising is that the UK and the US are simultaneously in major constitutional crises.
The issue in the UK was increasing dominance of the European Union, of which it is a member. The growing operations of European institutions override the power and authority of national institutions of the member states. What precipitated the crisis was the EU’s decision to allow entry of millions of refugees from Muslim countries in the Middle East. This move worsened the existing problem of legal migration to the UK from the poorer central and eastern EU member-states.
When jobs and livelihoods were at stake, and cultural issues became prominent, the electorate began to assert its rights. To settle the matter, the UK Parliament decided to seek the sovereign will of the people through the direct referendum of June 2106. While the majority was in favour of “Leave”, a significant section voted to “Remain”.
The map illustrates the results by geographical spread. Scotland in the far north voted to “Remain”, but its population was much smaller and counted for less. In the region around the international and metropolitan city of London, the population voted to “Remain”. The United Kingdom was clearly not united on this issue.
This result stunned the EU and the political, economic, judicial and other state organs in the UK, including the mass media. For nearly three years the government has been negotiating with the EU to reach agreement for orderly withdrawal.
None of the agreements approved by the UK cabinet and the EU was acceptable to the UK Parliament. As a result, after an election, a new government took over determined to leave the EU with or without an agreement.
This strategy triggered open opposition within the ruling and opposition party MPs, the media, the judiciary and the bureaucracy, which were anyway opposed to leaving the EU. This situation in the UK has resulted in unseemly conduct in Parliament, judicial interference in parliamentary affairs, and an incredibly graceless, rude and violent discourse across the country.
In the United States of America, there is an almost similar situation. The general economic, political and social crisis for a large proportion of the American people — largely working-class and lower-middle-class sections and living mostly in the middle of the country — had come to a tipping point.
The presidential election of November 2016, instead of resolving the issue, seemed to have complicated it further. The Democratic Party’s candidate was a veteran politician, former secretary of state and former senator as well as wife of a previous president. Her gender also made her attractive to the female electorate.
An unusual candidate stepped in and secured the nomination of the Republican Party. He was a seasoned and veteran businessman and had a major media presence in the entertainment sector. Over his long career, he had made an enormous fortune, lost much of it, regained most of that, and was still a billionaire. As a result, his name was well-known to the American people. His style and forthrightness of speech, as well as his robust, politically incorrect views on the problems besetting the US and his unusual and unprecedented solutions appealed to the electorate.
He secured a massive win in the Electoral College, which is the constitutional body that elects the president. But he did not get a clear majority of the popular vote. The geographical spread and population are illustrated in the maps below — red for Republican and blue for Democratic. The geographical spread of the president’s support was massive, but the heavy concentrations of the population on the two coastal fringes voted against him. The United States was clearly not united.
The opposition Democratic Party did not accept the loss with grace. The economic, political, judicial and bureaucratic elite and the mass media control the levers of power, authority and opinion in the US. The new president threatened to overturn established policies in trade, immigration, foreign policy, employment, health, and education. These had been built up over the past decades under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
The president had an unorthodox way of speaking and acting. The permanent state bureaucracy, especially the CIA and FBI intelligence agencies, were against his continuation. This opposition sees his presidency as a threat not only to the existing cultural, political and economic traditions but also to the livelihood, positions and income of those who managed the US government in the past.
The opposition effort has been to try and remove the president by impeachment. The president is now an unpredictable and formidable force domestically and internationally. The extraordinary success of his tenure in promoting economic growth and employment — both for the majority and also for minorities and women — may ensure his re-election in 2020.
In democratic politics, the people choose their rulers in periodic elections and the losing side accepts the results. The state apparatus has to be neutral between the political parties and implement the policies of the elected government.
Currently, in these two democracies, this principle does not hold and has led to sharp and vicious divisions between their regions, voters, and even families. Hopefully, better sense will prevail and they will be again “united” as their names suggest.