Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

Concentrating power just concentrates power - you concentrate power in a few hands with no checks in balances to fight the rich and suddenly you have created your own enemy.

Checks and balances are annoying when your guy is being checked and balanced but the best system invented so far to maintain a democracy.

[Sheilbh]

Sure but the classic left view does not centre on courts and judges and lawyers. The far end is a unicameral legislature, electing mandated delegates (not representatives) and annual election - it's not about building in circuit breakers but shortening the space between the people and power.

And what you say is true of all state power - which is I think where we are now where we have so disarmed the state that it is incapable of responding to democratic imperatives. And at the same time it's demobilised people who think they can rely on checks and balances as a deus ex machina.

I think what you're saying is true but I also think it's true of the institutions too. There is no reason to assume that courts, police, military, civil society etc will be where they are now - and plenty of historical experience of them aligning with all sorts of political orders. I think John Ganz had something of a point of this of the liberal vision which I think has dominated over the last few decades - exemplified by Soros and the Open Society Foundation (very influenced by Karl Popper) - emphasised the view of society as being about mediating bodies. It's the robust civil society that is the key feature of democratic politics - and that democracy is created through the existence of these spaces outside of politics. In its way it's quite conservative in the Burkean "little platoons" sense. And I think at an extreme this is the view of modern liberal democracy as basically being judges plus NGOs.

I think we've seen the limitations of that in recent years (not least in Soros' projects through the OSF). I think as Ganz has suggested that the better argument is the Gramscian view. Civil society does not organically check government power or support democratic power - it is a site of political fights over power and political conflict. And that it is, arguably, in and through the conflict that you produce democratic politics.

[crazy canuck]

Concentrating power just concentrates power - you concentrate power in a few hands with no checks in balances to fight the rich and suddenly you have created your own enemy.

Checks and balances are annoying when your guy is being checked and balanced but the best system invented so far to maintain a democracy.

Where are the checks and balances to which you refer? Sounds great in theory - it's in practice that it starts crumbling.  Take the US as the most recent tragic example.