Republican dagger at the heart of the system

Posted by John McAllion on June 26, 2009. Filed under John McAllion,Opinion,Republicanism,Westminster. Posted with the tags:Republicanism
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The public outrage over MP’s expenses has unexpectedly holed the British ship of state below the water line. Suddenly, the Mother of all Parliaments faces a collapse of political authority without parallel in its modern history. The first Speaker forced to resign in disgrace in 300 years has been followed by the first Lords to be suspended for corruption in 300 years.

The people’s determination to make the honourable swindlers pay has already ended political careers across the political divide and will probably continue to cull the green benches all the way to the next general election.

The initial focus of people’s anger has been an indefensible allowances system manipulated by politicians to rob the taxpayer blind. Expenses designed to meet costs “wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred” while performing parliamentary duties have been abused to fund extravagant MP lifestyles that have horrified voters whose own lifestyles are being shredded by the worst recession in living memory.

For decades the Westminster elite had happily milked the public purse behind the veil of parliamentary privilege and secrecy. Thanks to the Daily Telegraph’s revelations, they now stand naked and drenched in hoots of public derision before the court of public opinion.

The eruption of public fury has caused panic among the establishment parties and has helped to spark a constitutional crisis that is now threatening the ancient edifice of Westminster government itself.

Gordon Brown warned the Commons that its battered reputation could not be repaired without fundamental change and has set up a National Council for Democratic Renewal to advise on everything from an elected House of Lords to a written constitution and electoral reform for the Commons – what one commentator described as “the full boxed set of trendy parliamentary reform”.

The Calman Commission has further disturbed the constitutional waters north of the border by recommending “radical” changes to devolution that include Holyrood taking charge of half the income tax raised in Scotland along with control of national speed limits, drink-driving laws and airguns legislation. New labour politicians are already hailing the Commission’s recommendations as a radical revolution that will deliver a devolution fit for the 21st century and further cement Scotland into the political structures of a reformed United Kingdom.

All of these proposed changes have been conceded under pressure from a ferocious press and media onslaught that fanned the people’s anger and demanded a purge of the guilty and grasping politicians. The Daily Telegraph led the charge but were enthusiastically backed up by national and regional papers across the country all determined to put the boot into the offending MPs.

Murdoch’s Sun even ran an on­line game in which readers could electronically pelt images of “greedy expenses-grabbing MPs” until they handed taxpayers’ cash back.

Slowly, however, it began to dawn on the more thoughtful among the political commentariat that the flames of people’s anger might rage out of control and threaten to destabilise the structure of Britain’s elite system of government.

Abruptly, the tone and substance of editorials in the London-based quality press began to change. The call went out for an end to the hysterical witch-hunting of MPs and for the people to recover their sense of perspective over a scandal that was minor by comparison with the corrupt political systems in other countries.

Politicians, journalists and churchmen were given space to talk up “our democratic system” and to warn of the dire consequences should the people decide to rebel against it.

The BNP success in the euro elections became a warning against abandoning first past the post elections. The one member-one constituency link that had failed miserably to prevent the expenses scandal suddenly became the only sure way of ensuring the accountability of MPs to their voters. The people were reminded of how lucky they were to live under a political dispensation that had delivered political stability and prevented revolutionary upheaval.

Steadily, the political establishment is regaining its confidence and its will to see off the threat of real radical change.

Behind the rhetoric of democratic renewal, politicians on all sides are working to limit the changes to a British state that remains conservative to its core.

There will be a debate on changing Westminster’s voting system but no action this side of the general election. There will be an independent regulator for MPs pay and expenses but set up in a way that preserves the unchallenged sovereignty of the Crown-in-Parliament.

There will be consultations on a written constitution and lowering the voting age. There will be debates on modernising Commons procedures. Once Britain’s two-party system has survived the coming election they will remain just that – debates and consultations.

The survival of the British state for more than 300 years is no accident of history.

The system’s unique genius has been its ability to neuter its fiercest critics by showering them with all of the perks, privileges and power that the Houses of Parliament can offer.

Successive waves of would-be reformers from Lloyd George to Tony Benn have been bought off by membership of the most exclusive club in the British Isles. Since the arrival of universal suffrage, the threat of a people’s democracy has been successfully kept at bay by the bulwark of a two-party electoral system guaranteeing a succession of elective dictatorships and locking Britain into global capitalism.

As we approach the next election, the media will work to focus the people’s attention on Britain’s longest running farce ­the New Labour/Tory contest to form the next elective dictatorship. New Labour will warn against Tory Cuts. Cameron’s Tories will counter with New Labour’s historic levels of public debt.

Both parties will stick with capitalism. Neither of them will threaten a British-style democracy that ensures that so long as our rulers can fool some of the people all of the time, they will have enough seats in the Commons to ignore most of the people all of the time.

That is why the Left needs to take up the cudgel of constitutional reform. We need to channel popular disenchantment with Westminster into positive support for radical alternatives to Westminster’s ways of working.

Republicanism is a dagger at the heart of the elitism and privilege that permeates British politics. Popular sovereignty represents a fundamental shift of power in favour of the people. A written constitution and bill of rights is a guarantee against the encroachment of the security state. Electoral reform transfers political power from narrowly based and unrepresentative parties to the masses.

A royalist commentator on the constitution at the time of the English Civil War argued that “…when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change”. The Left now need to convince the people that when change is necessary, it is necessary to change.