While all eyes are on the war in the Middle East, neutral Switzerland will be holding a distraction by going to the polls on Sunday to ensure its coins and banknotes stay in circulation.
It is one of three or four referendums the Swiss hold every year to decide national policy as the world’s most enthusiastic direct democracy.
Don’t expect this to catch on here. The previous decade saw two referendums, one in 2014, which almost lost Scotland and another two years later, which delivered a Brexit result opposite to the one David Cameron’s Tory government wanted.
Which is why we are unlikely to see another anytime soon. The British government, of whatever colour, does not like being told what to do by the people it governs once it has been elected into office.
Our MPs say they are not delegates but representatives – picked to exercise their judgement, not be hidebound by a changeable and fickle electorate.
Voters get to choose them every few years, and after that, they’d like to be left alone to get on with it, thank you very much.
Fans of referendums claim they are the best way to challenge unpopular laws and ensure ruling politicians are moderate with their plans. Critics argue binary yes/no answers are not the best way to settle complex issues.
But Nigel Farage and Reform UK are likely to be looking more closely at Switzerland in June when it holds a referendum on capping the population.
The proposal by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, which is already hoovering up popular support, is to keep a population of 9.1 million below 10 million.
Should numbers reach 9.5 million, that would trigger measures to ban migrants from entering the country and deport others already there. This is because one in four Swiss residents are not a citizen.
While superficially attractive as a way to curb migration, there are economic consequences. Switzerland relies on migrant labour for its construction industry, healthcare would struggle to find staff and universities lose out on the money international students bring in.
With all eyes on Iran, Reform's plan for a ballot box makeover has slipped under the radar - Nigel Nelson
|Getty Images
But the biggest downside of all is that Switzerland may be ejected from its free movement agreement with the EU and lose access to its biggest export market.
Such an involved piece of social engineering requires more than the populace simply saying yay or nay, and that is the trouble with democracy – it’s tough to put right when it goes wrong.
Which is what Nigel Farage says happened in the Gorton and Denton by-election. He reckons that if Reform had to rely on only British-born voters, his candidate Matt Goodwin would have won.
Now the Reform leader is proposing that if he becomes PM, Commonwealth citizens will be banned from polling stations and the right to postal votes restricted to the elderly and disabled.
This is chilling.
It would mean the disenfranchisement of 1.2 million people just because they are less likely to vote for Reform, denying them any say in how their taxes should be spent, or how the public services they use should be run.
And I’m not the only one outraged by this. My wife, Claire Pearsall, is hopping mad. For starters, she is not British-born, having popped into the world on a British army base hospital in Cyprus. Is she any less British for that?
She is also a postal voter, though neither disabled nor, despite being slightly chastened by a recent milestone birthday, elderly.
She has a postal vote because she works for a Conservative MP whose constituency is 100 miles away from the one we live in. Which is where Claire has to spend polling day. And a couple of days before it. And the one after it.
Voting in person is not possible for her. Would Reform disenfranchise her, too? Or ask her to give up her job?
Perhaps it could get around this by supplying her with her own personalised ballot box for collection and delivery. Like a lot of Reform policies, this one may require a little more work.
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