Category: Politicae Britannicae

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.

The findings of the British Social Attitudes Survey make interesting reading, particularly in light of the off-again, on-again proposal from the Conservatives to privilege marriage in the tax code. Needless to say, I think it’s a bad idea, but I wonder how much traction it would actually have with people.

Britain is becoming more liberal in its views about how people live their lives
For example, cohabitation is becoming increasingly acceptable. 45% in 2006 agreed that it ‘makes no difference to children whether their parents are married to each other or just living together’, up from 38% in 1998. This is because younger generations, who have more tolerant views, are replacing older, less tolerant, ones. It is also because people’s views are shaped by their own experiences. Even the most traditional generations are becoming more liberal, reflecting their own experiences, or those of their children and grandchildren.

Essentially, an increasingly large population really couldn’t care that much about whether people are married or not. Assuming the survey is accurate and 45% think that ‘makes no difference to children whether their parents are married to each other or just living together’, I assume another chunk of people will fall into the ‘doesn’t make much difference’ and ‘makes a difference but not enough to justify tax breaks’ categories. I wonder, therefore, how many people will be that impressed by the marriage allowance. Of course, the survey doesn’t show how many people would be actively annoyed – like myself – by the proposal.

The other takeaway, for me, is that this looks like an continuing trend. People are going to approve, or at least not disapprove, of what they see their own kith and kin doing; as more people cohabit and don’t marry, it becomes harder to be vocally opposed to the concept. Equally, a lot – if I read the survey correctly – of those who might have (what could be termed) traditional values are, quite literally, a dying breed.

Without wanting to get all mushy, a small bribe would have made precisely no difference to my having married my wife. Indeed, I would be slightly concerned for the longevity of a relationship that could be bought for such a low figure. Of course, no-one argues that; rather, the argument goes that marriage is good and so we should give it an acknowledgement, albeit a token one. I find that idea plain daft. Marriage is already legally privileged – it’s a contract approved by the state – and socially privileged. Moreover, I see no reason why different-sex marriage is different in any meaningful way to same-sex marriage. I might even go so far as to say that the state has no business getting involved in what is, legally, a contract between two people. If we wish to support families, I’d rather the money followed the children that became attached to the existence of a marriage contract.

xD.

UK plc is not in a great state and today’s PBR is a recognition that recovery is not just around the corner.

We are in a worse condition than our G20 peers; alone still in recession and with three quarters of recession ahead of us. The question to be asked is why we are particularly affected.

Did Gordon Brown make mistakes during his Chancellorship? Of course he did. I think pushing PFI has to be up there; that having been said, we did have a good decade and independence for the Bank of England is recognised on all sides as having been a good move. With the wonder of hindsight, we might criticise the Second Lord of the Treasury for having stuck to Conservative spending plans for the first few years of the first Blair government; it seemed prudent at the time. General management of the economy was good.

What, then, has led us to this parlous state?

Put simply, it is over-reliance on the City. We were over-reliant on the City for growth, jobs and tax revenue. We thought the goose would keep laying golden eggs, so we didn’t support manufacturing and industry. Metalbashing seemed so twentieth century. There is a term for a country that over-relies on a single export – banana republic. Christopher Hitchens’ definition is worrying in its accuracy: “a money class fleeces the banking system while the very trunk of the national tree is permitted to rot and crash”.

If this crisis had been in car manufacture, perhaps Germany would now be worst hit, mutatis mutandis for other G20 states, with the caveat that they weren’t as reliant as we were on our bananas of choice.

All of a sudden, we have rediscovered metalbashing and decided it’s a jolly good idea after all. All of a sudden, we have realised that relying overly on a single industry is a bad idea. Pity that it has taken a crisis in the very industry we chose to make us realise that we were rather closer to a banana republic than we thought!

Let us look now at the architects of our downfall; where as the Spartan, Dracontius, accepted his exile, the bankers want rewards – from us!

If Labour made mistakes in its administration of the economy, they came from being too close to the policies of the current opposition and I do not think a further move towards laissez-faire is warranted.

I’m not going to be making much of Osborne and Cameron’s crocodile tears; the crash is as much of their ideological making as anyone else’s; they made the wrong calls in crises; and the last thing we need is a return to their policies for the economy. Yes, my party made mistakes; they were the same mistakes a Conservative government would have made; we were both wrong but at least Labour appears to be recognising the fact.

xD.