The words of William Hague following yesterdays predictable referendum in Ukraine who said “Nothing in the way that the referendum has been conducted should convince anyone that it is a legitimate exercise. The referendum has taken place at 10 days’ notice, without a proper campaign or public debate, with the political leaders of the country being unable to visit Crimea, and in the presence of many thousands of troops from a foreign country. It is a mockery of proper democratic practice. The UK does not recognise the referendum or its outcome, in common with the majority of the international community.” It is clear that Mr Hague is right to challenge the integrity of the referendum process, but also that the voters in the Crimea are entitled to expect their votes to be respected and this is a dilemma for all of us. Many of these voters had been unhappy with their own Government for nearly 30 years and see Russia as their Government of preference. In rejecting the outcome, there is almost nothing that our Government or any other Government can do to persuade either the Crimeans or the Russians to act in a different manner, that has already been made clear by Mr Hague. The problem implicit in the argument that he is making, is that improper practice becomes subjective to a large extent. Whilst no one could confuse a referendum with an occupying Army present to decisions taken by our own legitimate but unpopular Government in Parliament there is still plenty of subjective concern about the nature of our own democratic practices.

I believe that without drawing unnecessary parallels between the Crimea and Westminster or even our local council chambers, that we can take the questioning of democratic practice and standards and use them to spur our own practice to be better than it is. We have a bicarmal system with a second chamber that has been in the process of reform for over 100 years, and yet almost nothing has changed. We have a Government that promised to reduce the size of the first Chamber and bring greater democracy into the second, which will end their term without achieving either. We have a Government that promised to ensure there would be no top down reorganisation of the Health Service, which did the very opposite, and there are signs that this ill conceived and poorly thought through change is already needing modification. Some of our MPs continue to earn more in their second and third jobs, than they do from Parliament, and the men concerned constantly claim this helps to give them a perspective outside of the square mile of Westminster. In the case of one MP he spends the equivalent of 32 hours each week on his second job. These examples may not be our best democratic practice, but their existence cannot assist any of us from having confidence in a system that is in places much more robust.