A festival of disbelief

Dan Leighton (Hay-on-Wye, Power Inquiry): A fascinating debate occurred at the Power Inquiry sponsored debate at the book festival at Hay-on-Wye yesterday between Henry Porter, Billy Bragg and Phillippe Sands. Henry Porter summed up a general agreement that the government has sliced away our liberties: citizens are being forced to become more and more accountable to the state, while the state is less and less accountable to parliament and citizens. Billy Bragg said the best way for Gordon Brown to confront this, if he wishes to, is with a Bill of Rights. “Accountability”, Billy said, is going to be the watchword in the next round of constitutional reforms. Only this could ensure that liberty and security can go together, thus he'd be OK with carrying an ID card, provided it had our Bill of Rights printed on the back. But who writes the bill of rights and who will interpret it? Porter argued that guardianship of our basic rights could not rest with an utterly executive dominated parliament. He described how he had witnessed MPs voting away their anyway limited powers. Therefore we have to move beyond parliamentary sovereignty to a federal constitutional system. Phillippe Sands objected that parliamentary sovereignty must remain at the centre of the British system or an entrenched a bill of rights would just give power to the unelected judiciary. Even to disagree like this meant there was a guarded optimism among the speakers. This was true of other events I went to. I liked the way, for example, Simon Jenkins said it was possible for Brown to change his mind because he knew where he came from, whereas Blair was an aspirant seduced by his belief in the power of others. But the mood among the audiences everywhere was one of disbelief. Political parties manipulate their members. Attempts at activism are crushed with restrictions. Brown says that people should have more say while the planning white paper sets out to abolish the influence of local people. Once burnt, twice shy? Those whose hopes were raised by the advent of New Labour seem thoroughly alienated.