ABSTRACT
Political acceptability to the electorate represents the strongest external basis of restraint. All governments are accountable to the electorate, albeit in terms of a direct vote only periodically. But elections do not of themselves always provide the means of sanctioning governments, nor do they guarantee that government invariably acts in accordance with the electorate’s wishes. Still less can the electorate be regarded as exercising any power to enact law. Whilst the electorate may be correctly regarded as politically sovereign, and can, at the ‘end of the day’, oust a government which violates its trust, on the exercise of the franchise the electorate conditionally transfers sovereign legislative power to parliament. As Dicey puts it:
Whereas, therefore, the power of the electorate is great at the time of a general election, it is a more limited power during a government’s term of office – most particularly where the government has a strong majority in parliament. It is the task of parliament as a whole, both Commons and Lords, to scrutinise government policy and legislative proposals, and that a range of procedural devices exists which facilitate such inquiry. It is through parliament that the will or wishes of the electorate for the most part find expression. Parliament may be seen as the sounding board of the nation. As John Stuart Mill observed:
No government can afford to ignore parliament and, ultimately, a government can be brought down if its policies are such that it loses the confidence of the House as a whole. On votes of confidence, see Chapter 6. If parliament is truly the ‘sounding board of the nation’, parliament must reflect the political morality within society.56
