UK

Disenchantment and dissent

May 20, 2008
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Strong stuff at the heart of the Independent this morning, with an essay from Nick Clegg (leader of the Liberal Democrats since December last year, in case anyone wasn't paying attention) lamenting… well, pretty much everything.

Under the heading "Westminster isn't working"—at least in the print edition—Clegg launches one of the most substantial attacks I've read for a long time on the cronyism, vagaries and lack of accountability at the heart of British democracy. Here's the nub of his objections:

Some say the rituals, the eccentricities, give our Parliament a special aura that is crucial in its asserting its primacy at the heart of our democracy. Surely pomp and ceremony is good, harmless fun?… If only. The reality is altogether more disconcerting. The amusing, if unfathomable peculiarities of our Parliament hide a crisis in the way we are governed. A crisis in which the public feel ever more alienated from, and angry towards, the political class. And a crisis in which Parliament itself is neutered by the all encompassing power of the centralised Whitehall state. No amount of whooping and yelling in the Commons can obscure Westminster's guilty secret: the rules of the game are totally stacked in favour of the Government, rendering Parliament largely impotent to hold ministers to account… MPs can debate and holler all they like, but Downing Street will always get its way. In 11 years, there have been only three defeats for the Government in votes by MPs—a feat unknown across the rest of the democratic world. Ludicrously, one of those defeats was a gesture vote on whether we should all go home early… That is the record of a system in crisis, in which the legislature dances to the tune of the executive. It is a spineless abdication of scrutiny and accountability at the heart of our Government.
I recommend reading the piece in full, as much as anything because it comes across as the exasperation of an actual human being trying to do a job rather than the unguent platitudes of a political automaton. Some might say, of course, that frankness is the consolation prize of a party that will never form a government; others, perhaps, that making loud noises is a tactic often adopted by parties worried by a low media profile.

As Clegg himself notes, however, "the Liberal Democrats…—representing 23 per cent of the voters—are allowed to decide the content of just 1.5 per cent of the debates," making it seem rather churlish to begrudge them a few inches of newsprint. And, more stirringly, "In 1951, only 2 per cent of voters chose a party other than the Conservative and Labour parties. By 2005, that figure had shot up to 32 per cent, and it will continue to rise." Whither the Liberal Democrats? It would be nice to think that, under Clegg, they may be starting to make a difference.
UK