Referenda are very much in the air at the moment: with Greece’s Prime Minister first announcing and – then withdrawing – a proposal for a referendum on continued Greek membership of the eurozone; with British Euro-sceptics pressing for a referendum on the UK’s continued membership of the EU; and with Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, promising his SNP Party conference a referendum on Scotland’s continued membership of the United Kingdom.
The joy of referenda is that they bypass the messy and complex compromises created in and by the mechanisms and institutions of government within Parliamentary democracies, and instead give ‘the people’ the power to choose.
