My point was that Wales might as well send MPs to Mars for all the good they can do in Westminster.
I'm not disputing how unitary states count votes, I'm disputing the conclusion that this counts as Wales having a democratic voice. A voice that can never change an outcome isn't a voice, it's an audience seat.
Of course that's a democratic voice. No voice in a democracy, acting alone or in small numbers, can carry a decision. That's how it works. That literally is the fundamental principle of a democracy. If Welsh MPs could carry a Westminster vote by themselves the UK would not be a democracy.
You could say that you wish nobody living outside Wales had any democratic input into what goes on there and that's a less objectionable position, but saying that the Welsh have no democratic voice in the UK is utterly and completely absurd.
As for your second paragraph, If there were no democratic deficit whatever, there'd be nothing for Lisvane's bill to fix, a bill died in the Lords like every federalising proposal before it.
Lacking federalism does not mean we lack democracy. Lisvane's proposing a politically savvy reorganisation of the UK constitution to encourage nationalism into quiescence, but there's nothing really more ideal from a democratic point of view about it.
That's the nationalist argument in miniature, the union's own reformers keep proposing the remedy and the union keeps declining to take it.
At some point the options genuinely on offer are the status quo or the exit, because the middle path keeps getting strangled at birth.
Yeah nationalists were saying the same thing before the Senedd was formed in the late 90s. Funny how that gets forgotten so quickly.
Democracy purely as the rule of a majority is not how modern democracies work. While majority rule is the primary mechanism for making decisions and electing representatives, virtually all modern democratic nations operate as liberal democracies (or constitutional democracies). This means the power of the majority is intentionally limited by a framework designed to protect individuals and ensure fair governance.
In my opinion the issue here is that the idea of the United Kingdom being a 'voluntary union of equal nations' needs of that fair governance in order to persist. The fact that England has no governing body or national parliament aside from the UK organs speaks volumes of this. In the end, this 'democracy' as the rule of the many merely means that England and the English can dictate what happens in any other country of the union without their representatives having much to do about it. This is hardly a 'union of equal nations'.
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u/tree_boom Sep 15 '26
Of course that's a democratic voice. No voice in a democracy, acting alone or in small numbers, can carry a decision. That's how it works. That literally is the fundamental principle of a democracy. If Welsh MPs could carry a Westminster vote by themselves the UK would not be a democracy.
You could say that you wish nobody living outside Wales had any democratic input into what goes on there and that's a less objectionable position, but saying that the Welsh have no democratic voice in the UK is utterly and completely absurd.
Lacking federalism does not mean we lack democracy. Lisvane's proposing a politically savvy reorganisation of the UK constitution to encourage nationalism into quiescence, but there's nothing really more ideal from a democratic point of view about it.
Yeah nationalists were saying the same thing before the Senedd was formed in the late 90s. Funny how that gets forgotten so quickly.