ACCORDING to Professor David Nutt, mere democratically-elected politicians cannot be trusted to implement important policy decisions. Instead, dead brainy types – like him, for example – should be allowed to run the country without all this democratic accountability and such stuff and nonsense.

Nutt said:

Until Gordon Brown took office there has never been a recommendation about drug classification from the council that has been rejected by government. Gordon Brown comes into office and soon after that he starts saying absurd things like cannabis is lethal… it has to be a Class B drug. He has made his mind up.

We went back, we looked at the evidence, we said, “No, no, there is no extra evidence of harm, it’s still a Class C drug.”

He said, ‘Tough, it’s going to be Class B.”

The damn cheek of these pols who have opinions of their own! Don’t they realise that the job of government and parliament is simply to rubber stamp the decisions of their advisers?

Advisers advise – ministers decide. It’s a fundamental principle of democracy. We cannot and should not farm out every policy decision to unelected advisers. Ministers should treat the advice they receive seriously, of course. But then they should apply their own political judgment. Some will be horrified at the suggestion that politics should even come into it, but that’s what democracy is about – elected politicians being paid to exercise their political judgment on behalf of their constituents and the country.

When the government (rightly) rejected advice given to it by the Electoral Commission a few years back, the LibDems in the Commons were outraged. Well, of course they were – that’s what they’re there for. What’s the point of setting up a body like the Electoral Commission when you don’t accept its recommendations, they asked, their collective bottom lip quivering. For a party which never stops whining about how undemocratic the UK allegedly is, the LibDems are surprisingly eager to delegate sovereignty to other people.

The actual arguments about cannabis reclassification are another issue. The point is that if politicians are seen to make the wrong decision, after listening to all the advice, then they will pay the price for that at the ballot box. Appointed advisers can’t, by definition, be held accountable in that way. All they can do is throw their toys out the pram, ignore the collective responsibility that’s necessary for government to work and encourage their fomer colleagues to throw a strop as well.

One last point: Alan Johnson could so easily have kept this controversy alive by equivocating about whether or not to sack Nutt. “I have complete faith in Professor Nutt,” you can imagine him insisting to reporters as the saga wore on, inflicting more and more damage on the government during the three or four weeks leading up to Nutt’s inevitable dismissal. Instead, the Home Secretary acted refreshingly quickly and decisively, and he should be congratulated for displaying the smack (no pun intended) of firm leadership.