Winston Churchill once claimed that the best argument against democracy was a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

One look at the terrifying e-petition website, and the old boy would doubtless have choked on his brandy in horror.

What a Pandora’s box of steaming excrement this ill-conceived idea has created.

For those with less time on their hands – those with jobs for example – let me explain. The great unwashed are invited to submit ideas for future debates in parliament – if 100,000 others give their backing it’s officially on the agenda.

Think of it like the Blue Peter Totaliser for nutters.

Predictably, the early entries may as well have been copied and pasted straight from the Daily Express website. Judging by the first couple of days since it was published, if this nation lurches any further to the right we’ll be speaking French by the weekend.

The British people apparently want the return of capital punishment, the ripping up of the convention on human rights and numerous other acts of lunacy.

One demand is that that jail food be limited to bread and water, a move which will surely delight messrs Warburton and Hovis but horrify prisoners with a gluten intolerance.

Of course, this entire exercise is a monumental waste of time and resources. The death penalty will never be reintroduced in my lifetime, no matter how many times some tattooed keyboard warrior may call for it. Even if 100,000 people do call for a parliamentary debate (and that seems a ludicrously easy number to round up), it represents just a fraction of the general population.

We cannot allow the nature of our society to be dictated to by those who shout the loudest.

Law-making is for the courts and the politicians. It requires a dispassionate approach free of the pressures of satisfying the general public’s every whim.

If the citizens of the UK are not happy with the approach, they have their chance to register that discontent at the ballot box every five years – although it is telling how many people still ignore that opportunity.

The rest of the time we must trust the elected guardians of the nation to do what is right – not what screaming newspaper headlines demand.

It seems anomalous to denounce democracy at a time when so many people around the world are dying for their right to exercise it.

Those who have voted in e-petitions will argue it’s about time their opinions were given a platform and properly debated.

Perhaps, but legal reforms are not to be treated like a glorified X Factor poll, with the winner decided by the most emotive back story. Sometimes we don’t know what’s best for us.

I shudder to think at what Churchill would say in response to e-petitions, but I’m fairly sure it would involve that famous two-fingered salute.

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