According to Gordon Brown, in his speech to the IPPR earlier this week, “it’s clear that people want to change the way that politics is done in this country... the public have been rightly outraged by the expenses crisis, so trust needs to be restored”. Cue a bundle of measures to push ahead a broad constitutional reform agenda, such as the final removal of the hereditary principle form the House of Lords, a right of recall, personalisation of public services, and a referendum on the introduction of the Alternative Vote system for general elections.
Many have suggested in the past that Brown has been a block to radical constitutional change, so critics have wondered at this ‘deathbed conversion’ to electoral reform, made with just a few weeks of Parliamentary time remaining. Is it an attempt to cosy up to the Liberal Democrats, with the prospect of a hung Parliament in the back of Brown’s mind? Probably. Or to demonstrate how fallacious the tag ‘progressive Conservative’ is if they oppose, for example, attempts to remove the hereditary Peers? Again, probably. Brown has positioned himself as a radical Prime Minister, facing down the forces of conservatism and Conservatism. “The new politics is, in essence, a choice between parties who want to make the people more powerful and those who talk about change but reject the changes that would genuinely empower people.”
The problem is that the proposed solution does not fit the apparent problem. Technical changes to constitutional arrangements will not restore levels of public trust or encourage citizenship. Take the issue of electoral reform.
Firstly, the public are fairly ambivalent on the issue. A recent poll seemed to suggest that 52% favour ‘change’. However, the poll did not ask exactly which system respondents might favour. By comparison, 43% want keep the First Past the Post system. While this is hardly a ringing endorsement for the current arrangements, the likelihood is that FPTP remains the most popular single option. The prospects are that any change would damage, not build, the public’s sense of confidence in the system overall.
Secondly, it is not clear that creation of trust is a function of electoral systems. Political theorist Russell Hardin has suggested that the notion of interpersonal trust cannot easily be transposed to the relationships between individuals, communities and institutions. It is a product of ‘thick’ (i.e. ongoing and close) relationships, backed by a strong sense of active reciprocity, not of a transient act like putting a cross, or some numbers, on a ballot paper.
The alleged crisis of trust has little to do with the electoral system (the mechanism through which Members of Parliament get elected), and everything to do with their political behaviour (what they do when they get there). This is not just about the expenses scandal, but about the function of the wider political culture.
After giving his speech on constitutional reform, Brown made one of his biannual appearances before the House of Commons Liaison Committee. Tony Wright MP, quoting Obama’s State of the Union address, suggested that what frustrates the public about politics is the ‘perpetual campaign’, “where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about their opponent - a belief that if you lose, I win”. Shouldn’t we be looking for a more bipartisan approach?
Brown responded by suggesting that he wanted that very thing. Members of the Committee, and the audience, gave a nervous laugh, presumably because they felt that the answer was far from Brown’s instinctive political practice, including his earlier apparent electoral strategising on electoral reform.
Fiddling with the electoral system is a technical fix for what is a basic human problem. It is because we so lack the language and conceptual framework to address the latter that we tend to pursue the former. Where there are technical problems that would benefit from technical solutions we should not hesitate in dealing with them. But doing so will not restore a sense of connection with and pride in our political system, or at least will only do so as part of a long hard road of change which encompasses a range of political attitudes, behaviours and practices.
Paul Bickley is senior researcher at Theos.
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