Steve KelseyThe mess we are in today was inevitable because British democracy is, and always has been, a sham.
We are taught Parliament is sovereign, it creates the legislation that controls our lives. The MP’s that form Parliament are our representatives, voted into their roles by a majority vote. They are there to represent the views of their constituents and take decisions on their behalf.
What could be more democratic than that?
Let’s take a closer look at what actually happens.
Party Rules
To become an MP you have to be selected by a political party. This is essential, as independent MP’s have no access to the systems and processes employed by parties to promote candidates and capture votes.
The parties have selection criteria based on their ideological preferences.
The parties are small relative to the size of the general population and have specific societal and economic objectives which can be, and often are, markedly different from the views of the man or woman in the street..
To be selected as a candidate for election you have to abandon your personal ideology and objectives in support of the party’s.
Once an MP you are expected to follow party guidance when voting. This guidance can be contrary to your personal convictions and your constituents preferences.
All parties operate a Whip, a party enforcer to ensure the directives given by the party leadership are followed. A whipped democracy is no democracy at all.
Leadership
The party leader is selected by mechanisms particular to that party, typically by a competitive vote. However, to be eligible as a candidate for the role as leader, one has to be selected. Parties have different mechanisms for this but they are all a form of selection by influential groups within the party, each group forming essentially a concentration of the party’s ideology.
Ministers of state are selected by the Prime Minister to form the executive. As a general rule they are selected on the basis of their loyalty to the party ideology first, their loyalty to the leadership second, and then their ability to manage a civil service department.
It is the executive that proposes legislation for Parliament to vote on. Although in principle individual MP’s can bring a private members bill before Parliament, it is rare for such a bill to succeed. The government is the sole arbiter of any major legislation that will guide the development of the country’s economy and society for their term in office.
First Party Dictatorship
The Government is formed by the party that wins a general election. In Britain we run the First Past The Post system (FPTP). In this system winner takes all and the votes of the electorate who voted for the losing side are for all intents and purposes thrown away.
The losing party forms the Opposition. The role of the Opposition is to hold the Government to account for its actions and to vote on legislation. The ideology of the Opposition determines how it approaches this task. Although several parties win seats in an election in practice one ideology dominates opposition thinking. The leader of the Opposition is the leader of the largest party after the governing party and their selection subject to the same internal processes described above. Independent they are not.
A Government with a strong majority can do more or less what it likes, irrespective of the views of the opposition or the electorate that voted against them. The current Johnson Government is an example of how damaging that sort of power can be.
Polar Opposites
The effect of the FPTP system has been to polarise politics in the UK to a marked degree. There is no need to seek compromise or cross party support within the FPTP system. After generations of combative politics there is little to no common ground between the two main parties which ensures degrees of extremism emerge in the parties. This is evident today with the existence of the ERG on the right and Momentum on the left. It his highly unlikely that, should these two ‘parties within a party’ stand on manifesto’s reflecting their extremist beliefs they would win an election. However, within their host party, each extremist group is highly active and influential, driving each party to extreme positions.
The Second House
We also have a Second House, the House of Lords. The Lords are made up of people who are hereditary peers, owing their position to fate, or granted to people who have provided notable support to previous governments, i.e ideologically sound candidates. Although the House of Lords have influence and a measure of control over legislation, they have not been democratically elected.
The Machinery of Government
Neither have the Civil Service that provides the ‘machinery of government’. The role of the Civil Service is to detail legislation, to affect the direction given by their minister, and or to provide advice and direction where the minister is in danger of causing unintended harm to the country or to the government. The Civil Service is the functional government of the country. They are not democratically elected.
The Privy Council
The members of the Privy Council are appointed by the Queen. We are not told much about the Privy Council and this should not be a surprise, because the powers of the Council include the following.
Issuing Royal Prerogatives, which are primary legislation, and do not depend on any statute for authority. Issuing Standing Orders for civil servants. Appointing heads of Crown corporations, the governance of British Overseas Territories. Making appointments in the Church of England and dealing with international relations.
Although the Standing Orders for civil servants appears innocuous , they include the Standing Orders for the House of Commons and Standing Orders for the House of Lords and control the operational details of both houses, including the rules on speaker selection and many other primary functions.
The Privy Council also selects the senior members of the Judiciary.
The Balance of Power
Over and above the structure of government we must also consider the operational balance of power in the country. Over the past few decades there has been a major shift in power from the regions to the centre, and from Parliament to the Executive. This may sound odd considering the formation of both Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, but in practice much power has been taken from the regions and concentrated in London.
The methods have been a mix of legislative and budgetary. e.g the removal of powers from local authorities and a reduction in budgets.
“England is one of the developed world’s most centralised democracies. The centre controls virtually all taxation, and power has followed money. Over the period since 1945 power and authority have moved upwards within the English political system, as expectations of government responsibilities for improving individual lives have risen with the advent of the welfare state, and as parliamentary and governmental attention has turned from governing overseas territories to directing domestic policy”
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmcomloc/33/33i.pdf
Central government has extraordinary power over Local Authority (LA) budgets. Budget reforms in 2015 have seen LA budgets halved by central government without a commensurate reduction in responsibilities.
Lobbying for Power
We must also consider the influence of lobbies and donations. This is a complex area but in principle all political parties need funding, and major donors- e.g. Russian oligarchs funding the Tory Party or business men like Aaron Banks notably large donations to UKIP, provide an obvious potential for influence and bias.
British Democracy
We are governed by a set of organisations who have immense power over all aspects of our lives. Only one of these organisations is subject to democratic control, the House of Commons. Even here, the elections to this organisation are by FPTP which can result in more than half the electorates votes being thrown away. Additionally, the successfully elected party that runs this organisation is managed by a small group of the “ ideologically pure” who do not answer to democratic control.
By any measure this is a highly managed and constrained form of democracy. The unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of a tightly managed executive ensure that the wishes and needs of a small number of ideologues can be met with little need to modify their desired direction of travel for the UK.
It is time we looked for something better.