IN THE SNJ of August 17 Lee Prescott tells us that “democracy is where the people decide”.

If that is the case and we have a government that was chosen by less than one quarter of the electorate and a prime minister who was chosen by less than 200 of her chums we clearly do not live in a democracy.

I have little doubt that Mr Prescott would contest that the election is democratic in that everyone has the opportunity to vote but many choose not to so that is just their hard luck.

The trouble with that surely is that the resulting government is not representative of the vast majority of the population.

Isn’t that called a dictatorship?

Can one have a democratic dictatorship?

Fortunately of course, every five years we have the opportunity to elect someone else claiming to represent all of us.

Our decisions may be based on many issues and we may even believe some of what is written in the party manifestos but at least we know that there is a chance of a change.

With the EU referendum that isn’t the case.

In the same way as for a general election all sorts of claims and counter claims were made and we had to try and sort out what the truth was.

I think it has become apparent that a whole load of lies were told by both sides.

The trouble with the lies from the Leave campaign is that enough people believed them and have now created huge uncertainty in so many ways even though the actual process of leaving hasn’t started.

If everybody had believed the remainers we would have just carried on as before.

I assume that is what Mr Prescott was voting against, carrying on as we were, but he doesn’t actually say.

Maybe it was something else.

The phrase “taking back control” is one that has been used a lot by the leavers but they don’t seem to know what we have lost control of.

They claim it is our borders but that is nonsense.

Everyone coming to this country has to show a passport, even us when we return from a holiday, and it is at that point our border control staff can refuse entry to anyone who is deemed an undesirable.

Of course, if they are going to do a job that none of us want to do, on minimum wage and pay tax etc into our economy that’s fine.

Could it be that we are going to take back control of our electricity generation or will we leave that to the Chinese and the many other countries running our utilities.

The reason we have lost control of so much is nothing to do with Europe, it’s that the Tories have sold it all off and all their mates could become shareholders.

Others will say we can’t make our own laws but none of them can tell us what laws made in Europe have adversely affected them.

Personally I would rather have our laws made by a consortium of European views than by by a bunch of millionaires in Westminster.

The Europeans are far less likely to be concerned about upsetting vested interest when passing legislation.

This government is regularly getting large injections of cash from people who feel they should have some say in the way our country is run.

Perhaps that is what they mean by ‘taking back control’.

Those who make the biggest donations should have the biggest influence.

If the vote to leave the EU was to give the political establishment a kicking I certainly sympathise with that view but the trouble was that as no-one expected it to happen there is no plan for the future.

If anyone ever comes up with a list of conditions for our exit that have to be approved by a majority it is then I think when we will need another vote; maybe call it a referendum.

Hopefully no-one will ever come up with an acceptable list.

Howard Price

Nailsworth