Edmund Burke on Nadine Dorries

Nadine Dorries, the Conservative MP for Mid Beds and doyenne of the anti-abortion movement in Parliament, has been pressing for further restrictions on abortion for some time. I have no doubt that she sincerely holds those beliefs. However, it does seem that the strength with which she holds those beliefs is clouding her judgement. As various bloggers, including Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads, Ben Goldacre of Bad Science and the Guardian, Book Drunk, Devil’s Kitchen and Unity from the Ministry of Truth, have pointed out, Ms Dorries has played fast and loose with facts and statistics and seems – as I am a charitable sort – to be demonstrating confirmation bias over this issue.

On her website¹, Ms Dorries says something that is not just wrong-headed, but dangerous:

As a result of a number of polls, we know that the majority of the public, as many as 72 per cent, wish to see the upper limit at which abortion takes place, reduced from 24 to 20 weeks. Many MPs, however, choose to use Parliament as a place to pander to their own preference, or ideology, rather than to represent the will of the people.

What Ms Dorries is saying there is that MPs should be proxies for referenda on every issue. Quite apart from the weaseling of ‘belief’ into ‘preference’ and ‘philosophy’ into’ ideology, this notion of ‘the will of the people’ or ‘the general will’ is a dangerous one indeed. It should be easy enough to see how Ms Dorries’ stance could be parlayed into ‘preference’ or ‘ideology’, quite apart from the problems in identifying this ‘will of the people’; certainly, it is not Ms Dorries alone who may choose the will of the people. She would do well to remember Edmund Burke’s words in his Speech to the Electors of Bristol:

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

MPs are elected to legislate and to scrutinise based not on the whim of the people, but based on easier access to more information, the time and will to process and use that information honestly, and to come to a reasoned decision. Equally, an MP should not encourage dog-whistle politics. No matter how important you might consider abortion to be, regardless of your position in the debate, you cannot say that it is more important than every other issue combined. That is, however, what Ms Dorries is encouraging people to do:

Each day, I am going to highlight MPs who may need to think very seriously when voting on the issue of reducing the upper limit to 20 weeks, because if they don’t, they may see their majorities wiped out at the next election.

Although the issue is serious, the manner of expression – this above and to the exclusion of all else – cheapens political discourse and will lead to ill-considered judgements if Ms Dorries’ is successful in her aim. It favours fanatic who obsesses over a single issue rather than someone who would take the broader view; it encourages people to vote with their hearts and not their heads. It is, in short, an abrogation of an elected representative’s duty to make an appeal to base instinct rather than reasoned judgement

The full text of Burke’s speech is available courtesy of the University of Chicago. It is short, at a little over six hundred words, but is well worth reading.

xD.

1 – it is not a blog. A blog allows comments; Dorries’ website, even the bit that’s updated regularly, does not allow comments. Interestingly, Burke says something about that too, after a fashion: “it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents”.