Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Just listened to the Today programme discussion about this afternoon’s statement on the constitution: Lord Baker, Martin Bell and Helena Kennedy with Sarah Montague at the wheel. Apart from the welcome fact that none of them seemed to know what is going to be announced, it was dreadful. At a Smith Institute seminar in May Vernon Bogdanor argued that constitutional reforms have so far merely distributed power within and between the elite. I don’t agree completely, for example, I have been able to vote for a Mayor for London for the first time. But I sure saw his point this morning. Of course, parliamentary committees and what the second chamber does are vital to the proper functioning of the system. But this kind of change is not going to restore “faith” in politics as Montague put it at the start - a revealing phrase, as the last thing anyone wants is a return to a pious religious attitude towards our leaders. She then continued with the Today programme line that the constitution is boring and of no interest to people in “The Dog and Duck”. Helena tried to say something about the ‘non-constitutional’ language people are forced to use to talk about these matters, and at the end made an effort to drag the idea of a constitutional convention into the discussion, to little avail.
What’s going on here? First, the approach of the BBC, entirely instinctive of course, is to set the bar at an impossibly high level, eg “restore faith”, that no reforms can reach. Then, it denigrates any discussion of how we are governed as if it is of no concern to the public or listeners. (We have to have this package because it is what the Prime Minister is doing but, yawn, yawn, a) it is bound to fail and b) no one finds it interesting.)
Behind this my sense is that the political class are feeling threatened and their approach is going to be summed up in the call to “Restore power to Parliament!”. Without this we will indeed be reduced to living in nothing more than an elected dictatorship. But it is not enough, as can be seen from the way it implies the system used to work perfectly well in the past. What is needed is to give life to our democracy. When we speak of our constitution we are talking about what kind of democracy we have. This is what Brown’s programme needs to address, if it is to succeed and gain popular support. In getting this across, the BBC and not only the BBC, may be part of the problem not part of the solution.
