Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

He has not yet offered to resign. I think he will. When he does it will not bring down the Coalition, but it will change its nature. An unhappy Liberal Democrat parliamentary party, prodded constantly by unhappy activists in its constituencies, will acquire a leader and a spokesman, who is hugely popular in the country, whose status as a national treasure is, if anything enhanced by his candid indiscretions, which may offend the political establishment, but strike a chord with voters everywhere and Lib Dems especially.

This will mean that the Coalition no longer has an assured majority, especially as an emboldened Tory Right will want to stand up and be taken into account. Policies will have to be fought over issue by issue. This is the nightmare Cameron has seen and this is why he has kept Vince on. This is why Vince is working from home today. He is thinking very carefully whence his integrity beckons.

There should be so such thing. There should be Judicial power and Political power.The two are quite different. The first is impartial and is based on the judgement of what is proper within the law. The second is based on the judgement of what is best in the national interest. By its nature the first is and must be impartial. By it nature the second is based on the view of a politician from a political party, cannot be impartial and, in the national interest, should not be.

That we have a vast agglomeration of legislation that confuses the one with the other is due to a lack of a written Constitution and a lack of understanding of what the unwritten one is. Apart from certain provisions about universal franchise and the frequency of parliamentary and local elections, there is one guiding principle and one or two concessions to democracy.

The guiding principle is that we have an hereditary Monarchy with absolute power over everything. The concessions to democracy are that Parliament must approve the Queen’s choice of Government, which by convention is chosen mostly from its ranks. It can sack the government through a vote of no confidence and no money can be spent nor taxation raised without its prior approval. Every other aspect of power is exercised by Royal Prerogative through the Government, which as its title makes clear, is Her Majesty’s, not Parliament’s nor the People’s.

Parliament is broken down into political groups or factions formed into Parties. This is how Parliament organises things, because another principle of the Constitution is that Parliament has sovereignty over itself. In the nature of matters in action, such a body or its members cannot be impartial, they will have views,  passions even, about almost everything. This is why we have an independent Judiciary, made even more independent recently by the establishment of the Supreme Court.

As current shenanigans with the Telegraph and Vince underscore, none of this works as well as we think it does, nor is as honest in presentation as it ought to be, nor as understood as should  be universal in an open and free democracy. What it does do, is invest in the hands of the government of the day levers of power unmatched anywhere else outside a dictatorship. If we are happy with this we will continue to put up with inefficient governance, stings and public apathy, brought to life only by a universal distrust of politicians.

If we think we deserve better, we need to get a proper Constitution at the heart of our State.

If there is government by one party, it makes for good order and is in our tradition, for the principle of collective responsibility to apply. It is debatable in a modern world whether tensions known to media correspondents and lobbyists, should be held secret within the Westminster village and not shared with the public, to whom the politicians are accountable. For the purpose of this post I will raise the issue only and let it pass.

What is clear is that Coalition government is different. If there are two parties (or more) it is very difficult for those parties (and those who elected them) to behave contrary to their principles without appearing dishonest and untrustworthy. This is why there has been such a crisis in the Lib Dem party over tuition fees. It is therefore important to make some changes in the  way we view such a government and in the way it presents itself to us.

If we prefer government by politicians of different parties getting together and forming a consensus, we must view them not as one government full stop, but as one government made of two parties who agree on some things, disagree on others and which are driven by differing ideals. So that we, the people, can fathom why certain policies develop in unexpected ways, it is necessary for each party to brief us separately, as well as the government to do so as a whole.

Currently the Prime Minister, or other Ministers, give regular  press conferences. At least once a month David Cameron, not as Prime Minister but as Leader of the Conservative Party, flanked by its senior figures, should give a  briefing of how they are  arriving at a joint position with their coalition partners on controversial issues. Likewise Clegg, Cable and Co should do the same. There will then be less opportunity for entrapment and the mists surrounding some peculiar decisions will clear. It may not be such a smooth government, but it could be a good deal more effective.  

There is still in Whitehall and Westminster a culture which supposes the roof will fall in if the people are allowed to know. This may once have been true. It is no longer. Most people appear to be a good deal more savvy and better informed than both the ministers and the mandarins. You cannot govern in today’s world of Internet empowerment with a system based upon Victorian telegrams.

This is becoming a multi-strand political story, with different facets. I intend to deal with each separately. First the media. 

There is a question of whether it is right and proper to make an appointment to see and M.P., pretending to be a constituent, when one is in fact a reporter wired up with the direct intention of entrapping a democratically elected representative who has done nothing wrong, into saying stuff which might embarrass, shock or cause consternation when published. This is in no way the same as law enforcement agencies infiltrating terrorist cells or entrapping drug dealers.

To claim a false identity and tell porkies to mislead an innocent person, if not criminal, is certainly fraudulent. In this case a well meaning, if perhaps rather singular, Cabinet Minister,  beguiled by two charming young ladies who led him on to talk with disarming frankness, made a fool of himself. In the claims he made of his powers to thwart the ambition of Rupert Murdoch he caused such consternation in the government that he was instantly stripped of his media powers. Why his Department had these in the first place is to do with the Mandelson empire. There is already a Department of Culture, Media and Sport, so the move is no big deal.

What is much more alarming is the panic in the government about showing that he was not impartial. Why?

Politicians are not elected to be impartial and are not supposed to be so. We want to know what their views are, what their policies are and what they would do in various circumstances. Allowing the Murdoch Empire to grow the size of the universe or stopping it its tracks, are both perfectly legitimate positions. Having not a clue either way is just plain stupid. If you want impartiality you go to the judges not the government.

Therefore there is revealed something unhealthy and unsatisfactory about the relationship between government and media. It should not be necessary for the media to present a fraudulent prospectus to get at the truth, nor should it matter a fig if a senior member of the Cabinet hates Murdoch and intends to set about clipping his wings. Was Margaret Thatcher ‘impartial’ about Scargill?