Trust

A poll commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust and reported in today’s Guardian and by Stuart Weir indicates that 75 per cent of those questioned believe either that the UK’s system of government could be ‘improved a great deal’ or that it could be improved ‘quite a lot’. A mere 3 per cent suggest that the system works well and could not be improved at all. The poll also suggests a clear majority – over 60 per cent - would be in favour of a more proportional electoral system.

The question asking survey respondents to assess the current system for governing Britain has been asked in an identical form in 15 surveys since 1973 and on a regular basis since 1991.  The ‘net’ score of -50 per cent in 2009 for faith in the system (calculated as the percentage largely in favour of leaving the system alone minus the percentage suggesting significant reforms are required) is the second lowest ever recorded (narrowly beaten only by the score of -53 per cent in 1995). The 42 per cent proportion responding that the system needs a great deal of improvement is the highest ever.

The results for 2009 are hardly surprising, other than for the fact that there are 3 per cent who somehow continue to believe that the system ‘works extremely well and could not be improved’. Likewise, nobody doubts that support for major constitutional and electoral reforms has received an enormous boost from the revelations surrounding MPs expenses. But everyone knows that these are exceptional times politically. To what extent do poll results like this reflect a deep-seated desire for system reforms?

Richard Symons (London, Ministry of Truth): The press and public response to both the Elected Representatives (Prevention of Deception) Bill and our film, "the Ministry of Truth" has been extraordinary. Somewhere along the line we must have struck a chord - the Downing Street e-petition steadily grows as I type and e-mails / comments are flooding in. A minority of these are vitriolic in the extreme. Always a good sign.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): A recent forum in openDemocracy discussed whether there should be a law against politicians lying. It was probably started because the word got out about the programme Richard Symons made for the BBC.

Dan Leighton Every so often the discretionary powers available to our politicians come along and bite them on the backside. The debacle over the snap election that never was and the oncoming car crash that is the EU ‘treatitution’ are the latest additions to the litany of constitutional blowbacks that regularly plague the UK. The point in both instances is not that Gordon Brown is inclined to act in his party’s short-term interests (despite what he may have us believe, he is of human rather than divine origin) but that there is nothing in the way of constitutional rules that restrained him from doing so. As long as politicians have the capacity to make self-serving decisions over elections and referendums, the temptation to use them will be too great to resist.

Peter Facey (with Labour in Bournemouth, Unlock Democracy): Well, I have just attended my first fringe of Labour conference with our Foreign Secretary David Milliband and Lord Neil Kinnock to name a few, on Britain’s role in Europe, organised by the Labour Movement for Europe. It was a packed and lively meeting but there was something surreal about it.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Over at the Speccy Coffee Shop Matt d'Ancona writes a scathing response to Ming's last minute call for a referendum on Europe. He makes the point I did on Thursday about trust, only more firmly and more strongly, I predict this will indeed now become the clarion call of the Cameroons.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The TUC vote in favour of a referendum is very bad news for Gordon Brown. It will push the issue into the Labour Party conference, which, in turn, will make it a perfect punch bag for Cameron to unite his party around. Yet again Ming has made the Lib Dems irrelevant by announcing that a referendum is "not necessary" as if the issue is a technical one when it has become one of 'trust'. This makes it especially potent/toxic depending on your point of view.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Fascinating long tussle between John Humphrys and Alastair Campbell on the Today programme this morning. If this is the choice it has to be Humphrys! Campbell sounds like a salesman who sweet-talks you at the front door while your belongings are disappearing out the back.

From Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour Party in Manchester today: "And it is time for a new and better relationship between government and the British people – with government the servant and more power in the hands of the people.

That’s why constitutional reform matters directly to me and to all our lives – because all the big challenges we face: the environment, raising education standards, building better communities – can only be met by directly involving and engaging the British people in their solution.

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): The democratic left pressure group Compass has published the latest in its Programme for Renewal: Democracy and the Public Realm. Democracy, it notes, is in retreat under New Labour. Government centralisation, unaccountable power and attacks on our civil liberties are familiar causes, but the report also blames New Labour’s obsession with the market, its strategy of "It’s the economy stupid". Instead it offers a social-democratic view of what a modern democracy should be stressing "autonomy and self-management" over the consumer freedom that capitalism offers. The report proposes various measures for building this "participatory democracy". Alongside familiar proposals of more powers for parliament and the devolution of power to local government, it proposes a written constitution, a citizens’ debate over PR, and ''cultural'' changes, including the enhancing of public broadcasting and ''greater workplace democracy''. The timing of Compass’s report coincides with that of Ken Clarke’s Democracy Taskforce (which I reported on this week) and adds to the sense that reform is on the agenda. Although it makes for a lively read it probably stands less chance of making the translation to policy than Clarke’s-perhaps less idealistic-set of proposals. Creating "new symbols of democracy" and getting politicians to abandon "spin" for example, may be easier said than done...

Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent, MP): It is sad to see a good MP like Graham Allen, who has a long and honourable track record in supporting Freedom of Information, falling for the non-arguments of the David Maclean Bill.

This is not about protecting the confidentiality of the correspondence between MPs and their constituents. That privacy is well covered by a combination of the FoI and the Data Protection Acts. No evidence beyond anecdote and hearsay has been produced that this privacy is at risk. Indeed the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, has not received a single enquiry or complaint about any breach of privacy either from an MP or from a member of the public. If there is evidence of correspondence being published in breach of the above Acts then there would be a case for an Inquiry, either by the Government or by a Select Committee, into how the Acts are being implemented which could, if necessary, lead to a tightening of the legislation or the issuing of fresh guidance to public bodies about what should or should not be released. If the problem is implementation, the solution is not to exempt Parliament from its provisions but to strengthen or clarify the legislation.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): 'Trust' was a shaping issue for New Labour, whose creators believed that their party had fundamentally lost trust and could never exercise power without it. I vividly recall Tony Blair launching the 1997 election campaign by telling us, in the mainly media audience and the country via the cameras, we could trust him. And sensing, viscerally, as he did so, that I did not. It wasn’t that he protested too much, it was that you could feel he utterly distrusted not just the media and the voters but also himself. “Trust me”, he said, but he knew better.