This commentary appeared in the Daily Telegraph, May 19.
To adapt Churchill’s words following the Battle of El Alamein in 1942, Michael Martin’s resignation is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
We are, unquestionably, experiencing one of the moments of great drama that has punctuated the evolution of British democracy over the past thousand years. Moreover, the drama is certain to continue. Martin’s resignation opens the way to radical change; it does not itself solve the problems that the disclosures of the past fortnight have made dazzlingly clear. The system of paying MPs is only one of these. Under the new Speaker it must, and surely will, be radically overhauled. But reform needs to go much further. YouGov has repeatedly found that voters are fundamentally disenchanted with the culture of Westminster; and this disenchantment set in long before today’s controversies erupted.
However, as Parliament sets about the huge task it now faces, we should keep a sense of perspective. British democracy is a sturdy oak with deep roots. It has survived centuries of abuse – vandals stripping away its bark, hooligans sitting on branches and breaking bits off, louts lighting fires in its shade and singeing its leaves. It has survived these, along with hurricanes, storms and lightning. It will survive the current furore over Mr Martin and MPs’ allowances.
Researching my new book, Democracy: 1000 years in pursuit of British Liberty, I have been struck how little of our island story is of unsullied heroes slaying villainous dragons, and how much of it involves self-serving cynics and outright skulduggery. This is more than a diverting paradox. It actually helps to explain the slow but steady evolution of our democratic rights. Morality has often been present; but, as a general rule, it has mattered most when it has been harnessed to the more powerful impulse of self-interest. The same is almost certainly true today.
Consider the Magna Carta. For generations we have been taught that this defined the liberties of “free men”. Yet the bishops and barons who compelled King John to cede these liberties had little interest in human rights. They were offering a broke and feeble king a sordid trade: they would continue to support him if he left them, and their allies, free to enjoy their riches, safe from summary justice. At first, the “free men” gaining these rights comprised a tiny, wealthy minority.
Or take the actions of Sir Edward Coke. In 1607, as chief justice, he slapped down the divine right of kings, when he insisted that James I, like other mortals, was subject to the laws of the land, and should not intervene in the work of the civil courts. Coke was no saint. He had gleefully prosecuted Sir Walter Raleigh for treason and, as Attorney General, recommended the most gruesome deaths for the Gunpowder Plotters. As the contest between monarchs and parliament unfolded, Coke switched sides according to his calculation of personal advantage. He ended up a very rich man. His confrontation with James I took place during one of his pro-parliamentary phases.
Then there was the explosively colourful character of John Wilkes. His battles with authority helped to secure freedom of speech. Yet he was a corrupt and promiscuous pornographer, as well as a radical, brave and witty campaigner. On one occasion the Earl of Sandwich said to him: “Sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox”. Wilkes replied: “That sir, depends on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.”
As for skulduggery, let us give thanks to Lord Norris, an obscure seventeenth century peer who ensured that the Habeas Corpus Bill reached the statute book in 1679. Late in the evening of May 27, it secured Royal Assent after Charles II had been told that it had been passed by both the Commons and the Lords. In fact, more peers had opposed the bill than supported it. But not until it was too late did anyone notice that the total of 112 peers having voted (57 for the bill, 55 against) exceeded the 107 peers attending the session. Norris, a teller for the bill’s supporters, had counted the inordinately fat Lord Grey as ten votes rather than one. Thus was laid one of the cornerstones of our modern liberties.
These episodes are worth remembering as we seek a cure for today’s malaise. Purity and perfection would be nice, but they are unobtainable. For example, it is easy to describe the characteristics of the ideal Speaker to replace Mr Martin. He or she should have the lifestyle of Mahatma Gandhi, the charisma of Barack Obama and the public appeal of Joanna Lumley. You show me an MP who claims those qualities, and I’ll show you a man who will sell you Tower Bridge.
What is really needed is not a paragon of virtue but a reformer with guts. Parliamentarians with a sense of history give thanks to William Lenthall, the Speaker who stood up to Charles I when the king arrived to arrest five MPs. The MPs escaped as Lenthall replied: “May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, but as this House is pleased to direct me”.
Cometh the hour, cometh the mouse. Lenthall had been a feeble Speaker, often unable to control the Commons as England drifted towards civil war. But on January 4, 1642, the mouse roared its way into history. No monarch since then has been allowed into the House of Commons. Had Mr Martin acted differently over the past few months, he could have been a 21st century Lenthall; but sadly he muffed his chances.
Finding the right Speaker and cleaning up the allowances system are the most urgent and easiest parts of the task. The harder, longer-term challenge is to rid Westminster of a culture that has alienated millions of voters. Whenever and however YouGov explores this issue, the same story unfolds. We hate spin. We get angry when politicians fail to give straight answers to straight questions. We are contemptuous when ministers and their shadows blandly regurgitate the “lines to take” in their briefing packs.
We want our politicians to talk human: to engage with the arguments, to display candour, to acknowledge doubts. We don’t fuss when they change their mind or admit mistakes, as long as they are honest about it and level with us. And we admire passion, even anger, as long as it is authentic. It is synthetic anger on the Today programme that we despise.
Whenever I put this point to politicians, they agree with the sentiment, but add the crushing rider: “It’s fine for you to say that. You’re not a politician. You don’t have to survive in a 24-hour news culture, in which journalists pounce on candour, or the slightest deviation from the agreed line, to proclaim a personal feud or a party split. Disciplined politics may be tedious; but undisciplined politics would be catastrophic.”
My response is that the era of disciplined, spin-doctored, robotic politics has not worked. Election turnouts have declined, and the gulf between politicians and voters has widened. Perhaps now, when the crisis of legitimacy is so profound, the chance exists for a change in culture. If they do abandon their old habits then, as so often in the past, MPs and parties will reform their ways not chiefly because it is the morally right thing to do, but because it is in their interest.
I have one final proposal. Could journalists and politicians please stop referring to Westminster as “the mother of parliaments”? It is historically false – Iceland’s Althing is far older – and badly misrepresents the original quotation. What John Bright, the reformist Liberal MP, actually said in 1865, was: “England is the mother of parliaments”. Far from being complacent, he was angry that his constituents had fewer rights and less political power than people in other countries. He went on: “I ask you, men of Birmingham, why should you be thus treated in your own land?”
Were Bright alive today, he would doubtless be mystified by both the misquotation and the allowances row. A newspaper report of his speech told readers that Bright delivered his speeches as he paid his “annual visit to [his] constituency”. The past is truly another country: they do things differently there.
Let us hope that the new Speaker makes sure that the future is another country, too.
Peter Kellner’s book, Democracy: 1000 Years in Pursuit of British Liberty, is published next month by Mainstream Publishing.
