Technology | 2009.07.17
Only a new duet of parliament and people can bring the change we need | Timothy Garton Ash
Britain can reach its own constitutional moment by creating bodies to give direction and authority to its fizzing civic energy
Unless I\'ve missed something, Britain has not just emerged from a war, revolution or declaration of independence. Such are the exceptional circumstances usually needed to produce a constitutional moment. And yet – incongruously precipitated by revelations about MPs\' bills for duck houses, trouser presses and servants\' quarters – there is a widespread acknowledgment that Britain\'s political system is in a profound crisis. Earlier this week I heard Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, say that this crisis could put in question "the foundations of the legitimacy of the state".
There is no agreement about the solution. Many in the political class, and especially in the two largest parties, still appear to believe that patchwork repairs will be sufficient. They are wrong. We don\'t need a revolution, but we do need a great reform. There is something fundamentally wrong with a state that is so grossly overcentralised (above all, when it comes to the affairs of England) and has such an overmighty executive, restrained only by judges implementing the Human Rights Act, unelected lords and journalists.
In theory, we have a sovereign parliament. In practice, as Grieve told a meeting at the Institute for Public Policy Research, the recent history of parliament is that of its increasing subordination to the executive. The Labour MP Tony Wright agreed: here is a parliament that in practice refuses to be sovereign since "the main objective of members of the legislature is to join the executive". And, he added, our current electoral system is really about choosing a government, not representatives of the people.
Our national task is therefore to create and sustain a constitutional moment, without the historical circumstances that normally give rise to one. This requires exceptional initiatives from above and below, from parliament and the people. At the moment, there is at once too little and too much from both sides. There are innumerable proposals, speeches, meetings, initiatives and slogans, but it is wholly unclear how any of this will produce real change.
What has so far emerged from above is pretty minimal. The Commons will clean up its act on expenses. There\'s a not very impressive new Speaker. A select committee, chaired by Wright, should this autumn propose some significant improvements to the way the lower house conducts its business. (It is, for example, a remarkable fact that the government controls the allocation of parliamentary time. Imagine what the US congress would say to that.) Most significantly, there is again a serious discussion about electoral reform. Labour\'s leader-in-waiting, Alan Johnson, yesterday restated his proposal for an election day referendum on the alternative vote plus system – the one recommended a decade ago by a commission headed by Roy Jenkins, but then shelved by the Blair government.
In the meantime, it\'s pre-election politics as usual. Party leaders slag each other off at prime minister\'s questions, in a shouting match that makes your average student debating society look grown up. Spinmeisters like Lord Mandelson continue to advance transparently dishonest claims, such as his ludicrous assertion that the government could not give projections of public spending cuts – which we all know must come – because they would be based on "speculation". Every politician\'s utterance is so obviously tailored for an incessant 24-hour news cycle.
The game called politics goes on being played on our TV screens, like tennis or football. But how many people feel that these are in truth our representatives? Intermediate levels of democratic participation are either weak or non-existent, unlike the flourishing local and regional democracy of the US and much of continental Europe. The political parties control the nomination of parliamentary candidates – though David Cameron has now promised primaries, which give you a say. Yes, once every four or five years you can help to "kick the bastards out". Then a new bunch will head off for Westminster, and go on playing the same game in the same way. Even if a fresh parliamentary candidate seems occasionally to speak ordinary English, like you or me, within a few months you\'ll see him or her on the telly, speaking fluent Mandelsonian.
Meanwhile, outside parliament and its television studios, there\'s a plethora of initiatives fizzing off in all directions. This evening you can attend a rally in Westminster\'s Methodist Central Hall, organised by the Vote for Change coalition, with music by Billy Bragg to stir your stumps for electoral reform. The Unlock Democracy campaign has a draft bill to empower a citizens\' deliberative convention to decide on a set of major reforms. 38degrees.org.uk aims to create a British online community for change, like MoveOn.org in the US. A new initiative called Real Change (on whose steering committee I sit) aims to launch a thousand small civic meetings across the country, probably leading on to a reform convention this autumn.
A mighty popular mobilisation is essential. Without pressure from below, politicians will sink back into their bad old ways. But there are some hard questions on this side too. How far can widespread popular anger at the political class be translated into sustained participation in a movement for constitutional change? ("Constitutional reform" is not a phrase that resonates with the great British public. "Open government" might go a little further.) Won\'t such civic energy as there is be dissipated between all these diverse initiatives? In what sense can any of them claim to speak for "the people"? (A convention of randomly selected willing citizens, as pioneered in the Canadian province of British Columbia, would go some way to meet that objection.) And how can all this be translated into legislation in parliament, and into the specific motion for a referendum, which are the right ways to do a great reform in Britain?
Sooner rather than later we will need a body that is a two-way bridge between parliament and people. It will require both competence and legitimacy. Wright has suggested calling it a Democracy Commission. It should have some people on it who really know what they are talking about when it comes to Britain\'s half-written constitution and complex political system: people like the former senior law lord Thomas Bingham, the Oxford constitutional expert Vernon Bogdanor, and the lawyer and veteran political activist Helena Kennedy. It should have representatives of political parties, but also a student, a blogger, a couple of civil society activists – and why not members of the public, chosen by lot?
This must not be a delegation from Westminster that processes around the country graciously listening to the humble petitions of Her Majesty\'s subjects, and goes on to produce compromise proposals from which the government of the day then chooses the bits it wants to push through a subservient legislature. But nor can it just be an independent citizens\' initiative from below, without the political authority to place demands before parliament. Neither parliament alone nor the people alone can do the business. Only a novel kind of creative interaction between parliament and people can give us the constitutional moment we need.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]itutional-reform-parliament-uk
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