Britain's democracy is in a mess. What is to be done?

Over the summer of 2022, 81,000 members of the Conservative party voted for Liz Truss to become leader of the Conservative Party, and so Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (the total UK electorate is 46million).

A series of mishaps followed, during which she dismissed two senior ministers and reversed the policy platform on which Conservative members had just elected her. Then she resigned, on 20^th October 2022, having served as Prime Minister for just over six weeks,.

This fiasco is one more turn in a situation that has been afflicting our democracy for many years.

In principle, our system is that the voters choose a Member of Parliament (MP) from a political party whose leader is offered for the position of Prime Minister. A majority among the elected members then determines which party leader takes this office. The Prime Minister appoints a government from among these party members in Parliament.

The last time this system worked to elect a majority whose leader then served as Prime Minister for a full term of 4-5 years was in 2001—the second election won by Tony Blair.

Since then, in 2007, 2016, 2019 and now twice in 2022, the party in control has changed a healthy leader and therefore changed the Prime Minister. In that time, only David Cameron has served a full term as PM. He did so without his own majority, but in coalition with a minority party.

The biggest change in UK politics in that period—Brexit—took place with no majority in its favour in the House of Commons. The party advocating this policy, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), had virtually no presence in the House. It succeeded because the Conservative party feared the loss of seats under the “first past the post” method of electing members of the Commons. Votes for UKIP threatened to split the Conservative vote and so allow another party to win seats without increasing their own vote. Brexit was also well supported among Conservative members, who could press for the removal of a leader—another factor in inducing Mr Cameron to concede a referendum. The outcome was that neither Parliament nor Government actually supported or advocated the Brexit which they were obliged to implement.

These various changes were not “undemocratic”—it is “democratic” for party members to elect their leader.  Brexit was a case of direct democracy in a process which all parties endorsed.

But have they resulted in good government? Or have we become one of the “badly governed, poorly performing democracies” which the American academic Larry Diamond called “an accident waiting to happen”? What has gone wrong?

The United Kingdom constitution officially provides government by “Monarch in Parliament”. The monarch appoints a government which must retain the confidence of two Houses of Parliament, the Commons and the Lords. This system developed in the pre-democratic era. Democracy became established over a few decades in the late nineteenth, and early twentieth, centuries.

With the coming of democracy, first the Monarch, and then the Lords, diminished in significance to become largely decorative. The power transferred to the elected Commons. The Commons became, and remains, three things:

·        it is the legislature (it passes laws);

·        it is the executive (its controlling majority forms the government, and the next-largest party forms an alternative “shadow government”);

·        and it is the scrutiny body (it holds the state to account, it examines issues and proposes solutions)

When people vote, they are voting, for the most part, for the party leader they prefer as Prime Minister.  Candidates are selected by local parties: in many cases, in normal circumstances, being selected for a “safe seat” is to become the Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons. However talented, MPs know they occupy their place as tokens of the party. They are reminded of this through the afternoon and evening by the droning of bells summoning them to trudge off and jostle in queues to be counted through “division lobbies” in order to vote. This is unnecessary. Technology could make voting easy without the disruption of meetings and practical work. But obedience to the bells reminds them of where their loyalty belongs.

We like to think that we have an “unwritten constitution” with the flexibility to cope with unexpected change. What has actually taken place since Blair’s third election in 2005 has been a series of party coups. Once new leadership persuades party members to support them, they then control both the party apparatus and the proceedings in Parliament. They can use this (as Johnson did in 2019) to “remove the whip” and stop dissident MPs representing the party at the next election. There is nothing to stop such an MP standing as an independent, but, as we have seen, voters mostly vote for their preferred Prime Minister, and therefore for the party label.

With a majority in the Commons, governments can change the constitution by legislation. The Cameron coalition passed the Fixed Term Parliaments Act to protect the government against the risk of either party withdrawing support. This led to a prolonged constitutional crisis in 2019 when the Commons failed to agree on a Brexit settlement, but neither could it resolve the issue through a general election. Once Boris Johnson had a majority he changed the constitution again, so that now only the PM can call a general election.

Another Cameron government innovation, English Votes for English Laws (EVEL), was also dropped by the Johnson government. Reversing EVEL restored a position where MPs from the devolved nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland may vote on purely English matters even though their own devolved legislatures apply different laws. Of the 87 MPs elected to represent voters in devolved nations, 56 are nationalists opposed to the existence of the United Kingdom (7 of these are from Sinn Fein and do not participate in Commons proceedings at all; so 49 is the true figure for MPs who vote in England-only laws even though committed to abolishing the UK).

EVEL was a modest attempt to make a start on the problem of “asymmetric federalism” whereby Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own devolved governments, but England does not. Clearly there can be no separate government for England, with its overwhelming dominance in population and wealth—this would create two rival governments. But as John Denham argues, we should recognise the distinctive identity and interests of the English electorate.

Sooner or later a general election will offer the opportunity to elect an alternative government. But the problems of the last twenty years—small fringe groups in political parties seeking to promote alternative policies and threaten the stability of government—are likely to recur.

If democracy does not sustain competent and reasonably representative government, then people will look for something else. Tortoise media recently reported that around a third of voters do not think the UK is currently democratic and a similar proportion would favour a more authoritarian system. Yascha Mounk says that “around the world” in advanced democracies, there are growing “negative views about democracy” with support for a more dictatorial system.

Political parties have become the mechanism whereby votes for individual members of our sovereign House of Commons are translated into votes for a government. This gives parties leverage which can be abused.

There is a need for a serious discussion about the future of the British constitution. How do we want to conduct our election of an executive? Should this continue to be entwined with the election of a House of Commons?  

This debate is unlikely to make progress if confined within the existing political parties. It needs to take place outside these structures.  

The outcome needs, I think, to be a system that:

·        enables the appointment of the most competent executive reasonably possible;

·        reflects the views and votes of all electors who choose to take part—it should be broadly “proportional” with no “safe seats” where votes are marginalized; and

·        rebalances the voices of nations and regions, and reflects these identities.