John Jackson joins the discussion of the possible strategies for democratic reform post-expenses launched by Anthony Barnett in his recent post.
Anthony Barnett > Peter Oborne > Melissa Lane > Stuart White > John Jackson
I share Peter Oborne's feeling that ‘we' should focus our reforming energies on one objective only: parliament. But I emphatically do not share what appears to be another of his feelings: that we should do that just by ‘cleaning it (parliament) up and making it more democratic'.
The reason for this difference between us is encapsulated in something else that Peter, correctly, says - ‘There is nothing peripheral about parliament; it has always been at the heart of British freedom, democracy and governance.' But that ‘parliament' has evolved - particularly over the last one hundred years - into something invaded by a malignant cancer which has changed it into something which, on increasingly frequent occasion, endorses, with worrying passivity, limitation of our democratic freedoms and acts of serious misgovernance.
What has gone wrong? Why, to quote another of Peter's comments, is our political system ‘broken'? Arguably it is ‘we', all of us, that are to blame and have allowed that cancer to grow and spread, to produce its deadly ‘secondaries'.
Firstly, we have allowed our system of representative parliamentary democracy (in my view always more an aspiration than a reality) to be kidnapped and made captive by our political parties. We disenfranchise ourselves by voting not for representation but for the political party which will form the next government. We accept as ‘proper' that our members of parliament will engage with us on ‘constituency' matters but disengage from us and take the ‘party line' on ‘national' matters. See what happens if you ask your MP to discuss a government bill being ‘whipped' through parliament!
We accept as legitimate the ambition of parliamentary candidates and MPs to become a part of government. We are not concerned that this flies in the face of the notion that MPs, our representatives, are supposed to hold government to account. How critical or questioning is anyone going to be of a ‘club' they want to be invited to join? See what happens to those MPs who do ask questions that government, or the political party it stems from, do not like. See what happens when government is uncertain of its supporters. Diane Abbott likened parliament to a bazaar in which votes were traded for favours: brothel would have been an equally apt description.
We appear unconcerned that the grip on parliament, exercised by a government put in by the party which won the last election, ensures that the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty (The Crown in Parliament can do anything except bind its successors) is a cloak disguising the reality of executive and political party sovereignty. When Hartley Shawcross said after the Labour Party victory of 1945 ‘We are the masters at the moment' he knew what he was talking about! Is that how a representative parliamentary democracy is supposed to work? Why do we accept as a ‘fact of life' that ‘we the people' have never, ever, been given the chance to discuss the point?
And, speaking of sovereignty, why are we not alarmed when our most senior judges talk of a looming conflict between the fundamental rights of ‘we the people' protected by the ‘rule of law' and the notion that a party dominated parliament has the right to the last word on everything and anything. Oliver Cromwell said that there must be ‘fundamentals' no parliament can change. He was speaking of the ‘fundamental' that no parliament can perpetuate itself. But should it not be the case also that no parliament can remove our fundamental human rights? Should we not insist that it is ‘we' who are sovereign and that that leads to the notion of parliamentary supremacy (not sovereignty) exercised within the confines of a framework that ‘we' have determined?
Certainly parliament needs cleaning up and certainly the notion of proportionality - a logical consequence of voting for party not representation - and election of our second chamber would make it more democratic. But of greater importance, in my view, are the questions, how do we make our governments accountable to a parliament truly independent of those governments? And are there ‘fundamentals' insisted on by a sovereign people that no parliament can touch?
If we follow that part of Peter Oborne's ‘feeling' which is right and focus our energies on parliament, it could give us a parliament with the wisdom and courage to take leadership, acknowledge the legitimacy of popular sovereignty and spawn a process that will open up debate on its own role, composition and powers in which all of us can properly participate. That would be real change. And ‘we' would have created it!
