ThunderDragon Blog

Last week, Gordon Brown invited Peter Mandelson back from the EU and into his Cabinet. But - hang on! - don’t you have to be a member of Parliament to be a Cabinet minister? Yes, you do. So Mandy is being given a peerage.

Yet why do they need to be in parliament? So that they are answerable to parliament and us. However, when they are sitting in the Lords they’re not directly accountable. We can’t vote them out.

The tendency to appoint Lords to Cabinet positions other than the necessary ones is new. And a reversal of the previous convention that only elected parliamentary representatives - ie. MPs - should take important roles. This appeared to start in 2003 when Baroness Amos was appointed Secretary of State for International Development, followed by Lord Falconer who held the position of Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and then Justice.

And now it is to be taken even further. Both Falconer and Amos had their titles prior to being given a Cabinet position - but Peter Mandelson, just appointed Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, doesn’t. Yet he is going to get given one because he has been given ministerial role.

Of course, the government aren’t the only people to take part in this. For example in the Conservative Shadow Cabinet, Sayeeda Warsi was made Baroness so that she could become Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion and Social Action.

The only other people who have been appointed into the Cabinet without already being a member of either House of Parliament were Frank Cousins and Patrick Gordon Walker in Harold Wilson’s 1964 Cabinet - and they soon held by-elections to get them seats. But not for Mandelson, and certainly not now, when Labour can’t even hold on to a seat they had more than a 10,000 majority in.

What is happening is that our political system is turning more and more to the American model. Whilst there certainly can be benefits to bringing in people from outside parliament, it’s not exactly democratic. Our politicial system bases itself on parliament, and specifically the Commons, and this shouldn’t be thrown away for political expediency.

I object to people being given peerages for the sole reason that they can serve in the Cabinet - or indeed the Shadow version. If these people are wanted so much, an MP in a safe seat who is willing to resign in their favour should be found and a by-electon held. Otherwise, they should be no more than an advisor. It goes against our political system and, frankly, parliamentarty democracy itself.

Previously published at The Wardman Wire:

The Rwandan parliament now has women in 55% of its seats. Under the Rwandan constitution, 30% of parliamentary seats must go to women and women elected in these reserved seats are not allowed to represent any party. There are also 3 seats in the 80-seat parliament reserved in other ways - 2 for youth representatives and one for a disabled person.

Whilst it is inevitable that this result will be proclaimed as a “breakthrough” for women and as “the way it should be everywhere,” I can’t help but disagree completely.

In any other situation, a parliament with 55% of women would be something to celebrate, but with the extent to which a quotes have been set does not make it a celebratory achievement. True democracy does not want quotas.

I do not like the Rwandan democratic system at all. Quotas are the very opposite of democracy. They give some a higher position than others, rather than leaving everything up to the choice of the people.

Rwandan “democracy” is not democracy so long as quotas survive. Representation does not require that parliament is a mirror image of society, just that parliament takes in to account the views and opinions of the entire society. Quotas enforce inequality in ine way or another, and since candidates for these female-specific seats cannot represent any party, the entire democratic legitimacy of the Rwandan parliament itself is fundamentally undermined.

Democracy and equality are inextricably linked. Without equality, there can be no true democracy, and without democracy there can be no true equality. Rwanda does not currently have democratic equality because the quota system means that men are discriminated against.

The new, “reformed”, House of Lords is “unacceptably dominated” by peers who live in London and the south-east of England, claims a report.

London has more peers than the east Midlands, West Midlands, Wales, Northern Ireland, north-east England and Yorkshire and the Humber put together…

A significant north-south divide is also apparent, with areas in the south enjoying far greater representation than those in the north.

The director of thinktank that wrote the report, the New Local Government Network, said:

It isn’t fair that our laws are being partly written without all corners of the country having a fair say. The Midlands and north of England are particularly poorly represented.

The problem with the state of our current political situation is that it isn’t equal:

• Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have their own legislative bodies, with varying powers. But England doesn’t.
• Scotland and Wales have larger representation in the Commons than their population warrants.
• The Cabinet is dominated by MPs with Northern and Scottish constituencies. Only two Cabinet ministers have constituencies south of Watford.

Frankly, that the House of Lords is biased towards London and the South East means little. Especially if you consider the role of the Lords. They’re not representatives, they’re a check on our representatives.

Under the partial reforms, the hereditary “representative” - according to this report - Lords were removed and appointed Lords instated. They were [presumably] selected because they have specialist knowledge or experience and can as such properly critique the bills passed to them from the Commons. Not because of where they live.

Representation is about more than geography. Representatives should be equal, yes, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. When it comes to electoral influence, it must be equal across the entire country. One person = one vote = the same level of influence. But if we are slecting the best people to perform the role, where the live or where they come from must mean bugger-all.

A 19th century electoral system for the 21st century. The damning statement of the Electoral Commission in their report (pdf). It also reveals that the “current fragmented arrangements for electoral administration” treats voters as an “afterthought”.

The Electoral Commission has identiified massive loopholds in the electoral system that could allow for fraud. Such as the ability for voters to rock up and vote just like that. They propose photo ID being required in order to vote. This I support. It is just common sense. At the moment, the electoral system is so open to fraud right at the point where we cast our votes, as nothing is required from us except to give a name - and in reality we could give anyones. And it’s not like we all don’t have at least one form of photo ID!

Alongside this is the way that we register our right to vote. Currently this is done by the head of the household for each address. The proposal made by the Electoral Commission is that we have a national electoral register, which each voter must sign up to on their own - providing a signature, date of birth and national insurance number. Like photo ID, This is a good proposal and makes common sense.

The current electoral system under which we run our democratic elections is under massive strain, and simply cannot continue as it is. It needs to be reformed. These reforms proposed by the Electroal Commission are absolutely correct. Unless they are made, the outcomes of our elections will soon be open to suspicion.

“We The People” is a column written for the Wardman Wire. This blog post can also be seen here.

The attitude of politicians today to democracy can so well be summed up by the cartoon below, by Peter Brookes in the Times.

All for democracy - except where it might adversely affect them and what they want. Screw the people! Democracy is for the politicians!

There are two main areas in which democracy is taking a battering at the moment - Zimbabwe and the European Union. Neither of which are exactly strangers to this.

The difference between the two is as much as anything all in the appearance: Mugabe deploys violence and force in order to ensure that he stays in power; the European Union bureaucracy deploys “diplomacy”. Both ignore what we the people - the ones from whom they are supposed to draw their power through the support of - want.

Zimbabwe

The people of Zimbabwe want the MDC to control the parliament and Morgan Tsvangirai as President. Yet Mugabe declares that he will “go to war” before he would let Tsvangirai take over as President.

So he simply doesn’t care what the result of the presidential run-off would have been, had their actually been an opposition candidate. He doesn’t care about democracy, just about having power. Even the UN have declared that any Zimbabwean poll cannot be free and fair.

In the end, there is nothing that we can do about Zimbabwean democracy. Only the other African leaders can stop Mugabe and free the people of Zimbabwe from tyranny. Just calling for the poll to be delayed is not good enough by a very very long shot. The very principles of democracy need to be re-established.

European Union

Then we come to the European Union. This body suffers a democratic deficit nigh on as large as Zimbabwes, with the elected element having so very little power indeed. They are going to continue ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, despite it having been rejected by the Irish people.

The only people who got to vote on the Lisbon Treaty voted against it. Whilst every other country decided to press ahead and not bother asking their electorate what they thought but ratify it by parliament instead, Ireland asked the people. And they said no. Yet the EU don’t and won’t accept “no” for an answer, and appear to expect the referendum to be held again, like they did with Nice. If they do, they will destroy any claim that they ever had to being democratic.

In the UK, ratification was successfully stalled through legal action by Stuart Wheller who said that we the people had a “legitimate expectation” to be able to vote on Lisbon. But that has been lost - but hope still rests on an appeal, however slim that chance may be.

The EU is no a democratic institution. As the famous statment goes, it would not meet it’s own democratic criteria to join itself. And that goes quite some way to demonstrate the doublethink that surrounds and permeates it.

Conclusion

Democracy today is not democracy as it should be. It doesn’t meet the ideological requirements of democracy or even the practical requirements in Zimbabwe and the EU. The cry of “democracy!” spills from the mouths of all politicians, yet few ever actually do anythign about the issues in their own backyards. It is always someone else who is lacking in it; never themselves.

I am the first to admit that democracy is unlikely to be perfect in every, or indeed any, case. But these two examples are some of the worst in the world today - dictatorship under the banner of democracy.

“We The People” is a column written for the Wardman Wire. This blog post can also be seen here.

As the news informs us that MPs have decided not to allow us a democratic vote on the Lisbon Treaty…

The European Union and related issues is a topic that causes great schisms across most parties, one that is usually widest across the Conservative party, but recently it is the Lib Dems who have been most split by it, primarily over what we should have a referendum on, the “Libson Treaty” or EU membership itself.

Referendums and Democracy

Referendums are a form of direct democracy, whereby we the people answer a yes-or-no question on a subject of importance. In some countries, such as Switzerland, referendums are standard events. In others, such as here in the UK, they really aren’t. After all, we have had only one referendum ever. Which just happened to be on entry to what is now the EU.

Referendums are important events, no matter how often they are carried out, and just become even more important the rarer they are. After all, the last referendum decided that we would be members of the Common Market, which has become the EU without we the people getting another vote. Even though the last vote was held a decade before I was even born.

Read the rest here.

My We The People column, now up at the Wardman Wire:

Jack Straw is hinting that the government wants to draw up a written Constitution for the UK, with a process that could take up to 20 years. But why does Straw want to do this? Because

most people might struggle go put their finger on what [their] rights are or in which texts they are located. The next stage in the UK’s constitutional development is to look at whether we need better to articulate those rights which are scattered across a whole host of different places and indeed the responsibilities that go with being British… [And to] bring us in line with most progressive democracies around the world.

But why on earth does this mean that we should have a written Constitution?!

What Is A Constitution?

A constitution is basically the rules by which the democratic system of the nation state is run. Th is can either by an “unwritten”, though in reality this more means “uncodified”, constitution which relies on accepted conventions in order to run or a formalised, written Constitution.

Britain has an uncodified constitution, not an unwritten one. Pretty much every bit of it exists written down, in documents such as the Magna Carta, the 1689 Bill of Rights, and the Parliament Acts. The British constitution also exists in every single piece of legislation ever passed by Parliament, since there is no division between primary and secondary legislation. It also exists in common law, treaties with foreign powers, and analaysis and commentary made by experts [such as Bagehot]. But it also exists in conventions, which guide the way in which the system works - one convention being the role of Prime Minister.

America is the prime example of the written Constitution. It has a piece of paper which lists the rights and responsibilities of Americans, and is very hard indeed to modify. These kind of Constitutions are typically created after war or revolution, in order to satisfy the populace that their rights are defended.

Go here to read the rest.

The Wardman Wire has seen some very good articles over the past week on the subject of MPs and the money they claim, both as salary and expenses. It’s not my intention to weigh in on that debate, but use the opportunity to examine the role of MPs in our democracy.

Read the rest at the Wardman Wire.

Another instalment of my We The People column over at Wardman Wire. I’m delaying what had been intended to be the first posts for this column yet again because this story caught my eye, and I felt in the mood to write about it. So here it is:

Read the rest here.

It’s a week earlier, and on a different topic, than I had intended, but here is my first We The People column for the Wardman Wire, on the recent problems in Kenya and Pakistan:

What could be called crises of democracy has occurred in Kenya and Pakistan, both accompanied by bursts of violence - one caused by the assassination of an opposition political leader, and another by alleged and suspected electoral fraud. Neither of these countries have a highly developed or deeply-embedded democracy, and are still riven by tribal differences. Fifty Kenyans have died in a torched church - a place normally regarded as a safe-house - because they were members of the same tribe as the President.

But are there really crises of democracy in these two countries?

Read the rest…