VOCAL Brexit critic AC Grayling issued a fiery warning to a packed auditorium about its threat to western democracy.

The Swindon Arts Centre brimmed with visitors on the third day of Swindon Festival of Literature, eager to hear the philosopher give a tour de force of his book Democracy and its Crises.

Grayling has publicly criticised the passing of the Brexit withdrawal bill and took the opportunity to speak more broadly about it with an attack on the party whip system and first-past-the-post method of voting.

The author of more than 30 books, he went on to give a discussion of democracy from Plato in 381 BC to Woodrow Wilson giving his Fourteen Points Speech two thousand years later

The one-hour talk first delivered a whirlwind introduction to the ideas of political thinkers prior to the 19th century.

It then moved on to modern representative democracy and the many problems threatening it today.

Among them, the problem of fake news and the reliance on the internet for information, which according to Grayling was “The biggest lavatory wall in history and a huge barrage of noise.”

As well as the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal which revealed how millions of US voters had been micro-targeted to sway the outcome of the election of President Trump.

Before long the hour finished, and Grayling gave the audience a hint at potential solutions for people to mull over, including voters serving in parliament on a rota system, but without giving away too much from the end of the book.

Festival director Matt Holland told the Adver after the show: “I thought it was terrific. What I like is that he can take us to the past and make it relative for us now.

“He knows so much that it’s hard for him to get it all into one hour.

“The reason why we invited him back is that he has that remarkable ability to state the complicated in simple terms without dumbing it down.

“He’s got that spot on.

“As a festival organiser to have the theatre full on a balmy sunny night was special. People are travelling to Swindon to see this. The other event that’s on is the Cannes festival, but they can come here instead.”