Against recall elections

Recall elections are a bad idea. They would lead to homogenised, bland, UHT-milk MPs who are unwilling or unable to take on controversial or unpopular issues.

So far as I could tell, the three party leaders have come out in favour of recall elections to remove ‘corrupt’ MPs. The mechanism, as I understand it, would involve collecting a given number of signatures of electors requesting a recall vote. I welcome the sentiment, but I can’t help but feel that this is what Jay and Lynn called the Politician’s Syllogism:

1. We must do something
2. This is something
3. Therefore we must do it

The idea is simple enough; if an MP has had their hand in the till, so to speak, their constituents should have the opportunity to remove them sooner than the next election. Implicit in this is the idea that something like the Standards Board for England (which for some reason has been renamed Standards for England) or the Committee on Standards in Public life or similar should not be able to remove an MP from office. I presume the assumption here is that only electors should have the right to cashier their elected representative. Following on from the suspension of Ken Livingstone, against which he successfully appealed, there was a general sentiment that it was undemocratic for the Standards Board to be able to suspend him for four weeks, let alone remove him from office.

All well and good so far.

If the principle stands that only electors can cashier their MP, their cannot be a gatekeeper, either. If the vote were dependent on someone agreeing that there was a case to answer, they would effectively have a veto on the will of the people. If the did not exercise said veto, they would be making it impossible for that MP to win the recall election as they would have given a huge amount of ammunition to the opposition as well as encouraging that MP’s party to tap said MP on the shoulder and invite them to step aside for the good of the party. Either way, you set up what you are trying to avoid – an unelected body that can fire the elected.

The result, then, is not just a means of getting rid of corrupt MPs but a general ability to recall MPs. That is profoundly dangerous in the current political climate.

We have recently seen Birmingham Hall Green Labour run a leaflet against the LibDems on the basis that the latter feel prisoners should have the right to vote. Imagine if an with a marginal seat were to promote something unpopular but right in Parliament; this would be license to threaten a recall.

Add to this mix demagogues like Nadine Dorries. In the run up to the votes on restricting abortion, Ms Dorries said on her website:

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.

Dorries was saying that she felt abortion was an issue that could cost MPs their seats, that she would seek to make it cost MPs their seats if they didn’t vote with her and that she would organise to that effect. Fortunately for us, she is incompetent, but abortion remains an emotive issue. It is a conscience vote in Parliament because there’s no point whipping for most MPs, as it’s a die-in-the-ditch issue. The same is true outside Parliament, and more so when someone is whipping people into a frenzy. It is the sort of issue where someone like Dorries might try to make headway.

It is not the only emotive issue. It’s really not hard for me to see how, at the time of the fox-hunting ban, outraged country-folk, seeing the issue as tantamount to an abuse of the constitution, antient liberties and all that, would take anything available.

I’m going back to Burke’s Speech to the Electors of Bristol to sum up my feeling:

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. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. 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.

The argument against this would that political culture would militate against it. The theory would go that people would not sign up for a recall election just because they didn’t like their MP or their policies and, if one was triggered inappropriately, would vote against it. I’m afraid, though, that I don’t believe it. Along with deferential voting and strong party connections, playing by the spirit rather than the letter has gone the way of the dodo.

Add to the mix the charming fourth estate in the UK, and you have a heady cocktail of populism, demagoguery and yellow journalism that can combine to ensure that we have the blandest possible MPs with no capacity for independent thought.

I’m not sure I actually agree with the above, but I think the argument may be sound and is at least worth considering. It certainly should not be put through on the nod in the early part of the next Parliament.

xD.