MY colleague, Councillor Pearson, appealed in this paper for people to respect the democracy that our forefathers fought for and complained at the poor turn-out at the recent EU election.
I too value democracy but I don’t think you will find any in the European Union.
The voting system does not allow us to elect an individual MEP or, more importantly, to vote one out. We are permitted to vote for a party and then to be told by the party leaders who has been elected.
Had Den Dover not been sacked by the Conservatives, he would have been near the top of the list and be back in the EU parliament by now. We the voters had no choice and would have been unable to remove him unless his party agreed.
As for the election of a BNP candidate, which has shocked the ‘great and the good’, I do not believe that the majority of the 900,000 or so who voted for him are outright racists.
They are more likely to be decent people who, in despair at the feeble efforts of successive governments to control or stop mass immigration are sending a message in the only way they can.
Coun Brian Gordon, Meadowhead Ward Blackburn.
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