"Where dangerous ideas can take us"

Denis Cooper's letter in today's FT:

"Sir, Donal O’Brolchain (Letters, June 11) quotes Pericles and Swift to support a dangerous idea: that ordinary people should be able to understand how they are governed. It is easy to see where that kind of thinking could lead.

Unfortunately, it proved impossible to stop the spread of universal suffrage to most countries around the world, but is Mr O’Brolchain seriously suggesting that hoi polloi should be allowed to assume a real, rather than a notional but almost entirely fictitious, control over public affairs?

If that was seen as acceptable, surely our wise political leaders would not have worked so hard to establish this new and incomprehensible system of government, “government by international treaty”, which has been specifically designed to neutralise the harmful effects of excess national democracy?"

This is up to his usual high standards, I particularly like the phrase "government by international treaty", which is ^TM Denis Cooper.