The more you think about it, the odder it is that the only national referendum ever legislated for in this country, apart from the 1975 referendum about whether or not to stay in the EEC, should be about the Alternative Vote. The only party which proposed AV at the last election was Labour, which lost. The Tories campaigned for the status quo and the Liberal Democrats for the single transferable vote. It would be more logical — more proportional, indeed — to put all three versions before the electorate. It would also be more proportional to legislate for a threshold, a substantial fraction which the referendum would have to surmount before its result could have legal effect. If just over half of those voting voted for AV, and if those voting were only, say, half of those entitled to do so, the great majority would find change imposed upon them without their agreement. You surely can’t have first-past-the-post for the vote to get rid of first-past-the-post.
Still, those of us who think the country would be better off with referendums should use this proposed one as a way of nudging the subject along. What, after all, is the stated justification for this referendum (as opposed to the political reason that it was the non-negotiable price which the Liberals demanded for coalition)? The answer must be that this is an important constitutional change which the voters did not endorse at a general election: their view must therefore be sought by other means. If this is the official view, then there must be other referendums in future. The government admits this when it says that it will have referendums on further changes to the European treaties if those changes transfer more power to Brussels. The stuffy old Conservative argument about referendums being alien to our constitution has now worn away. The problem, though, is that it remains in the power of the government, rather than the legislature, to decide what is and isn’t an important constitutional change. Time, perhaps, for the constitutional equivalent of the Office of Budget Responsibility — an independent body which judges the issue, and then reports its views for a decision by parliament.
There is a basic psychological flaw — as well as a constitutional one — in the coalition’s idea of fixed-term parliaments. Nick Clegg is saying, ‘Isn’t it wonderful? We’ve just got married, and in exactly five years’ time we will get divorced.’
One of the curious aspects of the Jonathan Ross saga was that, although he was reported to be earning £6 million a year from the BBC, this was never officially confirmed. Ross boasted that he was collecting huge sums, but the BBC would never say what they were. Now, in the week before Ross finally leaves the BBC, the pressure is on, even from the BBC Trust, for the Corporation to disclose what it pays its ‘artists’. Mark Thompson, the Director-General, is holding out against this, on the grounds that ‘we’re in competition with other broadcasters and no other broadcaster publishes this information’. This lies at the heart of the endless contradiction which the BBC exploits. When you complain that it is funded in a privileged way, it says that it does things which no one else can do. When you complain that it spends its unique funding on enormous contracts with stars, it says it has to do so in order to behave like its rivals. The truth is that the concept of the star, always on the transfer market like a top footballer, is incompatible with the Public Purposes expressed in the Charter of the BBC. People paid a lot very understandably do not want the public to know what they get, but businessmen hired by government for public service jobs face the same dilemma, and have to submit. Asked to appear on the Today programme on Tuesday to discuss this matter, I enquired what my fee would be. The answer was £50. As I sat in the radio car, I worked out that I would have to appear on the programme 120,000 times before I could equal the annual pay of Ross.
Most of the Ten Commandments are easily accepted — if not obeyed — by the modern world. People can see why killing, lying, stealing and adultery cause trouble. Coveting thy neighbour’s house, though less commonly his manservant, remains a problem. But the fourth Commandment is almost completely disregarded. It says that the seventh day is ‘the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work’ (‘nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant’). Ours is often called a ‘leisure society’. It is true that we have two days off out of seven, long paid holidays and, if we are on the public payroll, the basic human right not to answer the phone after four o’clock. But most of us completely fail to keep the Sabbath. Sunday has become a day of activity — driving, shopping, DIY, catching up with things. Last Sunday, as an experiment, I tried to do no work of any description, and found it almost impossible. When Sunday trading was first permitted, I was in favour of liberalisation. I still am, in the sense that I think the law should not prevent people from choosing to trade more or less when they want, but I do long for the boring, quiet nothingness which was a feature of the English Sunday in my childhood. ‘…the sabbath rang slowly/ In the pebbles of the holy stream’, says Dylan Thomas. I don’t remember anything so beautiful, only the extraordinary luxury of time set aside.
Perhaps part of the problem is that we are breaking the Commandment not only by working on the Sabbath, but also by not working on the sixth day. The Commandment insists on six days’ labour out of seven. Certainly when, on Saturday, I set out in search of medical attention for a minor emergency for our daughter, I was struck by how peculiar it is that the combined resources of our civilisation can barely manage this simple service. Everyone takes it for granted that you can fly in an aeroplane, buy a suit, eat in a restaurant and even do all your shopping at a weekend, but GPs so wangled it with the last government that the public are only allowed to be ill between 9 a.m. on Monday and 4.30 p.m. on Friday. To use the currently favoured expression, doctors are ‘ringfenced’ from those they are supposed to serve.
Soon, with a bit of luck, the protestors and all the tents and rubbish which always go with the cause of ‘peace’ will be gone from Parliament Square. I notice that their banners proclaim: ‘Peace — with freedom and justice’. If they still have not left in a week or so, I shall go up to them and point out that this was the favourite slogan of Margaret Thatcher. That should send them packing.
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