There is no spirit of democracy, only rules

It is perhaps reflective of a set of elections in which much of the public is unhappy with the overall result but there is an enormous amount being said about problems in democracy which aren't there at all and perhaps not enough being said about problems in democracy which are.

Professor Ailsa Henderson explains the factor which has made this a slightly unusual-feeling Holyrood election here – there were a remarkably high number of split votes where people cast their constituency and the list vote for different parties. That creates disproportionate outcomes but it also suggests a degree of public dissatisfaction with the main offers they have been given in the election.

An odd outcome of this is the idea expressed in one article today that because a party or individual is elected to the Scottish Parliament it is 'anti-democratic' not to include them in governing. In this case it is the progressive parties each saying they will not work with Reform which is being presented as against democracy.

Importantly, no-one is suggesting it is against any rules, and that is the problem here. People are over-interpreting the 'spirit' or 'intention' of democracy. It is happening at Westminster as well where it is yet again being suggested that changing Prime Minster is somehow anti-democratic because the new Prime Minister would have no personal mandate in the way the current one does.

This is all a misreading of how parliamentary democracy works. In a parliamentary democracy you elect a group of people who stand on and are meant to stand by the content of manifestos – but it is the people that you elect, not the manifesto. You are selecting people to exercise their judgement on your behalf for five years based on a philosophy and approach define by a manifesto.

Those people are then tasked to choose one among them to be a Prime Minister or First Minister and it is that vote which grants the leader democratic authority, not the public vote, because we do not have a presidential system. From there, everything they do within the rules of parliament is by definition democratic, even if it appears to work against what citizens voted for.

For example, there has been some debate about how we can have a situation where the citizens of Scotland are now governed by a non-citizen, with one Green MSP only being in Scotland on a student visa. The answer to the question is simple; in our democracy the democratic body can change most of the rules that govern it.

So it is democratically legitimate to elect a not-citizen because in 2020 the existing democratic body (Scottish Parliament) voted to make it democratically legitimate to elect a non-citizen. Likewise most of the country voted for broadly progressive political parties and if they don't want to work with Reform, that is their democratic choice.

A lot of people invoke 'anti-democratic' when all they really mean is that 'I don't feel like this legitimate behaviour feels like it is in the spirit of what I understand as or want from democracy'. They may well be right about the spirit of democracy but not the rules.

It would be helpful if people could stop operating from the idea that if a party gets ten per cent of the vote it should get ten per cent of what it wants, or that ten per cent of what the parliament does should be what it wants done. We may have (fairly) proportional elections but parliament remains absolutist, a body of majorities.

There are three options if anyone wants this changed. First, we can make the voting system even more proportional and so ultimately fairer, but that doesn't solve the other problems and in fact may make them worse.

If we want to protect democracy from the whims of any given group of people redefining that democracy (which keeps happening in Scotland – the politicians have already extended their parliamentary terms from the four years set out in the initial legislation to five years, without any public consultation), we would need a clear written constitution with a super-majority or referendum required to alter it.

And if we want parliament to be more reflective of what the public actually wants we need to involve the public in government via participatory democracy, not assume that 'more respect' for Reform is somehow achieving that.

If you think the spirit of democracy is not being respected, you can't sort it by asking people to respect it because it isn't defined. You have to define it in law and practice or you have to accept the compromises we have.