The next few days will serve up plenty of reminders that this country does not have a written constitution. As the plotters decide how best to move against the Prime Minister, they will not be operating within any defined framework of rules to select a head of government. Rather, they will be muddling through. There will be much comment about the residual power of the monarch — notably, her ability to dissolve Parliament. But the Queen is wise enough to appreciate that for a modern monarch to exercise these prerogatives would be to ensure their rapid abolition.
It is tempting to say that the coming turbulence shows why the United Kingdom needs a written constitution. But there is no inherent logic in this siren argument. If there is to be a third Prime Minister during a parliamentary term — something that has not happened during the modern era — then that Prime Minister will have to prove he can command the confidence of the House. If he can, he can govern. If he can’t, he will have to go to the country. This is how it should be. This is, after all, a parliamentary not a presidential system.
British democracy is at a low ebb. Polling data shows that more than 80 per cent of voters think that MPs put their own and their parties’ interests ahead of those of the country; that three quarters do not trust MPs to tell the truth; and that 46 per cent think that half or more of those who sit in the Commons are corrupt. But the idea that these numbers are a result of some constitutional failure is a convenient bromide served up by politicians who are keen to shift the blame.
The crisis over MPs’ expenses is not a result of some inherent constitutional weakness, but a simple consequence of the moral failings of too many MPs: failings which they have fought long and hard to conceal from public scrutiny. What possible connection is there between the system used to elect an MP and the fact that he claims for a non-existent mortgage, avoids capital gains tax or tries to buy a home for ducks on the taxpayer? Many, including Alan Johnson, have been extolling the virtues of Roy Jenkins’s 1998 report on the Westminster electoral system which recommended the so-called ‘AV-plus’ procedure. The most striking feature of this system is that it would introduce the party list to the composition of the Commons: those who were elected from the lists would be entirely insulated from the righteous anger of the electorate in cases such as the expenses scandal. How would this be an improvement, let alone a panacea? Indeed, it is hard to imagine a better way of stirring up apathy than — for example — denying the public the opportunity to kick out a Chancellor who has had us pay his capital gains tax. Under AV-plus, Jacqui Smith might resign from the Cabinet — yet still secure a place on the Labour list so that she wouldn’t have to face her constituents.
First past the post is imperfect. Voters in safe seats are taken for granted. A general election can hinge on the results in a handful of battleground constituencies that receive special attention — both financial and political — to the detriment of the rest of the country. But first past the post produces strong government, prevents the minor parties from holding the major parties to ransom in coalition negotiation and legislation, and enables the voters to throw any member of the legislature out. To adapt Winston Churchill, first past the post is the least worst voting system. The constituency link — not destroyed but substantially weakened under AV-plus — keeps MPs grounded as well as accountable. Those without a constituency can become detached from the concerns of voters. Lord Mandelson was flummoxed by a question earlier this year about whether it was fair that the poor paid more for their energy than the rest of society: he didn’t realise they were still using pre-payment meters. It is hard to imagine that if he was MP for Hartlepool he would have been allowed to forget this fact by voters at his constituency surgeries.
That so many Labour Cabinet ministers are now straining at the leash to reform the constitution sums up so much of what is wrong with our politics; their enthusiasm is, in most cases, sudden and self-evidently a moral flag of convenience. Harriet Harman was right — yes, you read that correctly — when she said that ‘trust has got to be rebuilt first, before people will engage in how we can use this moment to strengthen democracy’. That will not happen until voters have had a chance to purge the Commons in a general election. This Parliament lacks the moral authority to reform the stationery cupboard, let alone the voting system. In opposition, Labour promised a referendum on electoral reform in its first term in office. Nobody would believe it was delivering one in its last year in government from any motive other than naked self-interest.
Let us be precise about ‘reform’. As Fraser Nelson writes on page 10, transferring power from politicians to the people in the ways that Daniel Hannan MEP and Douglas Carswell MP suggest has much to recommend it. We also need a stronger House of Lords to act as a check on the Commons now that the Whips have come close to turning it into an arm of the executive. The only way that the Lords can have the legitimacy to fulfil this role is if most of its members are elected. They should, however, be voted in on a different cycle and for a much longer term than MPs: we do not need a structurally confrontational legislature. A small appointed element should be maintained: perhaps 20 per cent of the whole. The ability to appoint life peers provides a necessary way of bringing outside expertise into the government.
The authority of the Commons flows from the people it represents. Until the people have had a chance to hold its membership to account, talk of grandiose reform and rewriting of the rules is both preposterous and morally outrageous. Our constitution is too important to be tinkered with by this gang of discredited and exhausted spivs. Politician, heal thyself.
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