On one thing, the pundits are agreed: "Voters", they assure us, "have been shocked by the publication of MPs' expenses". The pundits are wrong. Voters are not shocked. On the contrary, their anger is heated by the burning coals of having their prejudices confirmed. I reckon I've knocked on hundreds of doors since the exposures began – there's a European election on – and the most common reaction I've had is "Well, what did you expect? They're all in it for themselves." Long before any of this happened, people had given up on the political class. Politicians were, and are, seen as remote, self-serving clones. In the timeless doorstep plaint: "It doesn't make any difference how I vote – nothing ever changes." It's easy to dismiss that attitude as lazy or cynical; harder to face the possibility that it might be true. But the fact is that, over the past 40 years, elected politicians have handed away their powers in all directions – to civil servants, to human rights judges, to regional bureaucracies, to Eurocrats. This means there is less and less that an MP can deliver. In a reversal of Kipling's aphorism, he has responsibility without power – being blamed for the failings of a quango state that he no longer controls. Having surrendered their authority, parliamentarians have ceased to be authoritative. Hence the undifferentiated anger that has greeted every claim, big or small, legal or illicit, extravagant or Pooterish. If you begin from the proposition that all MPs are parasites, you will resent the very idea that they get money from the taxpayer. It follows that cleaning up MPs' expenses, while an essential start, is not of itself going to restore credibility to our political system. We need also to tackle the underlying problem, which is that the act of voting has been rendered decorative rather than functional. In Milton Keynes yesterday, David Cameron called for "a massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power: from the state to citizens; from the government to parliament; from Whitehall to communities; from the EU to Britain; from judges to the people; from bureaucracy to democracy." Brilliant: I couldn't have put it better myself. No, hang on: this is exactly how I did put it in my bookDirect Democracy, serialised in this newspaper four years ago. The solutions which David Cameron goes on to propose are drawn directly from that text, and from its sequel, The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain, which I co-authored with Douglas Carswell six months ago: local control over schools, housing and policing; fewer MPs; more power for councils; referendums, local and national; legislation by citizens' initiative; a shift in power from the executive and judicial branches of government to the legislature; weaker Whips; the end of the patronage powers enjoyed by the Prime Minister under Crown Prerogative; the appointment of public officials through open parliamentary hearings. Six months ago, these ideas were widely dismissed as both abstruse ("no one is interested in constitutional reform") and impractical ("yes yes, Hannan, but back in the real world..."). The expenses revelations have made them seem not just pertinent, but urgent. David Cameron has spotted this and, with the decisiveness that has characterised his response to the allowances crisis, has adopted the agenda whole hog – totus porcus. Douglas Carswell, while naturally delighted to see the meme spreading, is a bit miffed not to be getting the credit. You can see his point. For two years he fought a solitary campaign to oust Michael Martin as Speaker, and was widely described in consequence as a Don Quixote, a maverick, a headbanger – labels which, in the way of politics, continue to adhere to him even though everyone else has now come round to his point of view. Then again, there is no such thing as plagiarism in public life: we are all in the business of proselytising our creeds. As Ronald Reagan used to observe: "There is no limit to what a man may achieve in politics provided he is indifferent as to who takes the credit". What David Cameron is proposing is nothing less than a revolution in how Britain is governed. I use that word deliberately: taken together, his proposals would amount to a turning of the wheel, a setting upright of that which has been placed on its head, so that the state became the servant of the citizen rather than the other way around. Critically, he grasps that these proposals form a coherent whole. They are not a herd of hobby-horses harnessed together in a panic, but a measured response to an identified problem. Make elections matter, and people will start voting again. Give MPs responsibility and they will behave more responsibly. It is apt that David Cameron should have trailed his remarks in advance to The Guardian. I have never understood why localism and direct democracy are not more popular on the Left. The proudest boast of British radicals is that they took power away from the elites and dispersed it among the people. That motive inspired progressives' greatest historical achievements: the extension of the franchise, the secret ballot, religious toleration, appointments through open examination, female suffrage, the legalisation of homosexuality. These days, though, Lefties are often found lining up with the elites against the masses. There are exceptions of course – among them, in a place of honour, Tony Benn. But many Guardianistas, taking their cue from Polly Toynbee, see localism as some sort of shadowy plot against the public sector. It isn't. Its sole motive is to give people more control over the decisions that affect them. It's just that, these days, the people likeliest to wield unelected power are not bishops or dukes or patrons of pocket boroughs, but NICE officials, heads of Local Education Authorities and European Commissioners. These are the unaccountable Crown officials against whom an earlier generation of progressives would have railed. And some, to be fair, are doing so today. Most, though, have responded to the political crisis by shaking out their dusty old arguments for proportional representation. In one sense, this is understandable: it is human nature, in a crisis, to reach for the familiar, to believe you have found vindication for whatever you happened to think anyway. But, while there are perfectly honourable arguments for PR, there is a danger that they would exacerbate our present discontents. I speak with some authority on the subject, being one of the few national politicians elected on a party list system. A week tomorrow, I shall be returned to the European Parliament. I hope you won't take it the wrong way if I say that this is precisely what is wrong with the system. I might as well go on holiday between now and polling day: it wouldn't affect the result one whit. Although I'm tramping all over my South East England constituency, I'm doing so out of what I might pretentiously call Kantian imperative – because if I don't do it, why should anyone else? – rather than because it will materially affect the result. A party list system suctions power out of the electorate and pumps it to the Whips. That problem exists, on an only slightly lesser scale, at Westminster. As long as 70 per cent of seats are safe, the only way for an MP to lose his job is to fall out with his party. That is the argument for open primaries, which will abolish the concept of a safe seat. None of these things can be attempted by a parliament that has lost its moral authority. I don't mean that all MPs, as individuals, are immoral: far from it. But those who will remain need the legitimacy of a new mandate. We need a snap dissolution. Parliament has been through the hubris and the nemesis, but the catharsis has been artificially stayed. If the Prime Minister will not ask the Queen for a dissolution, perhaps she should force his hand. Her constitutional role is very limited, but this strikes me as a case where she might reasonably act. The country unquestionably wants fresh elections. The legitimacy of our democratic system is in the balance. All three party manifestos have been rendered obsolete by events – as much by the financial crisis as by the expenses revelations. The only possible argument against an early poll is based on low political calculation – which it is precisely the Crown's role to transcend. Your ministers have failed you, Ma'am: send for better ones. Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP and author, with Douglas Carswell, of "The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain"MPs' expenses: Can this revolution work?
Tired old calls for PR are not the answer, says Daniel Hannan – but the radical proposals endorsed by David Cameron are.
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
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