The Johnson government, and the Prime Minister himself, have been much criticised for their propensity for breaking rules, laws and conventions. Tim Bale argues that the government seems bent on freeing itself from the constraints that we used to take for granted, and has embraced populism in a reckless manner. He calls on ministers to reconsider their attitude to the rules of the constitutional system before it is too late.
I’m no expert on the constitution, the courts or the more arcane aspects of parliamentary procedure. But I can, I suppose, claim to know a bit about the Conservative Party. And I’m growing increasingly concerned.
The party has always been protean – shifting its shape, changing its colours like a chameleon to best suit the conditions in which it finds itself. But there have always been limits.
Margaret Thatcher may have been a disruptor, particularly when it came to undoing the post-war settlement to which her predecessors reluctantly agreed. Yet one always felt she had a basic respect for the conventions of representative democracy and the rule of law, even on those occasions where she and her governments pushed against them.
And the same went for her successors as Conservative premiers, John Major, David Cameron and Theresa May. But Boris Johnson? I’m not so sure.
Wherever you look now, you see a government seemingly bent on freeing itself from the constraints that we used to take for granted – and that, in some ways, our uncodified constitution and parliamentary conventions left us little choice but to take for granted.
The examples are legion. The foreseeably illegal prorogation of parliament. The insouciance over the possibility of breaking international law and effectively reneging over commitments so recently made on Northern Ireland. The point-blank refusal to take action against a Cabinet colleague found to have breached the Ministerial Code. The brushing off of court judgments concluding that a succession of ministers have acted unlawfully. The casual willingness to mislead parliament. The way that PMQs has become even more of a farce than it was before. And most recently the proposal to strip powers from the Electoral Commission, which comes on top of plans to insist on voters having photo ID to combat a problem that the evidence suggests doesn’t really exist.
You may scoff at the idea that we live in a post-truth era. But, when it comes to politics, I’m afraid we’re not just heading in that direction; we’ve have already arrived.
Plus ça change? Non
As a middle-aged history buff I’m naturally inordinately fond of telling people with all the patronising pomposity at my command that ‘We’ve been here before.’ But in this case I’m honestly not sure that we have. Respect for the rules of the game or, at the very least, the fear of getting caught breaking them no longer seems to be widespread in the upper echelons of government. Before Matt Hancock resigned as Health Secretary, the last Cabinet minister to fall on their proverbial sword was Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns, who went in early November 2019, his offence (endorsing a former aide as a candidate for the Welsh Assembly despite allegedly knowing he had played a part in the collapse of a rape trial) being so egregious that he really had no choice.
It is just about possible, of course, that Hancock being forced out might give some pause for thought. But I doubt it. It took an unknown whistleblower to go as far as to pass footage from a CCTV camera inside a ministerial office to a tabloid to catch the former Health Secretary in a ‘steamy clinch’ – and even then, it’s abundantly clear that he and the PM were initially convinced that he could and should hang on to his job.
It’s as if Johnson and his colleagues, buoyed up by a largely supportive (if occasionally tetchy) print media, a cowed broadcast media, and an apparently unassailable Commons majority, have realised that – except in the most blindingly obvious, ‘caught in the act and on camera’ cases – the emperor has no clothes. They’ve woken up to the fact that the checks and balances we’ve rather naively assumed would always impose limits on any government, Tory or Labour, can be ignored with little or nothing in the way of consequences, electoral or otherwise.
Given the traditional weakness of the opposition in the UK system, whether this continues to be the case will depend in large part on whether Conservative backbenchers are willing to go the way of their Republican counterparts across the pond – sticking to a Faustian pact with a populist leader that sees them saying and doing (and putting up with) pretty much anything that leader does, even when at least some of them know in their hearts that what he’s doing may be damaging the very democracy they purport to uphold.
True, there are a bunch of Tory MPs willing to challenge their government over COVID-19 regulations. But ask yourself this: how many of them are protesting purely to preserve civil liberties rather than because they’ve somehow convinced themselves that lockdowns don’t actually work?
According to John Stuart Mill, ‘Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.’ I know I can’t be the only one to worry that this might be precisely what is happening on the right of the political spectrum in Britain – just as it’s happened in other places previously and (as other contributors to this blog have noted) is happening again, both in East European countries like Hungary and Poland and in the United States of America.
The British Conservative Party, perhaps more so than most other mainstream centre-right parties in Europe, has long flirted with populism – even (her critics would doubtless say ‘especially’) under Margaret Thatcher. But it has never embraced it as fully, and as recklessly, as it seems to be doing right now. Let’s just hope it comes to its senses before it’s too late.
First published by the Constitution Unit
This post is one of a series of posts by speakers at the Unit’s conference on the government’s constitutional reform agenda. Professor Bale appeared during the final panel of the conference, entitled Rebalancing between parliament, executive and the courts, alongside Unit Director Meg Russell, former Conservative Attorney General Dominic Grieve and Peter Riddell, the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The panel is available free of charge on YouTube and on our podcast.
Ian Davidson says
Also see today’s (5.7.21, pp32-33) i newspaper “It’s easier to be shameless than honourable” discussing “The Powerful & The Damned” by Lionel Barber, 2021, (WH Allen) which covers similar territory. I studied/worked in public administration from 1980 onwards. In my view, it was New Labour spin: Blair/Campbell etc which marked the beginning of the end for personal moral accountability in politicians. Thatcher did some terrible things as PM (sinking the Belgrano; poll tax; destroyed coal and steel industries (with some help from incompetent and corrupt trades union leaders) etc but there was some sense of personal honour; eg resignation of Lord Carrington as Foreign Secretary in 1981 re Falklands invasion. No such regret from Blair/Campbell over the Iraq war and the consequences we all still live with? Politics and society has changed dramatically in the past three decades. Now we elect popular characters such as Boris Johnson, helped by self-deprecating appearances on “Have I Got News For You”, because they make us laugh rather than any serious evaluation of personal and party merits? We have crossed so many moral/political/legal thresholds that I suspect there is “no way back” to previous standards of public life? In Scotland, we have our own contemporary and unique issues. Owing to the tribalistic and dualistic nature of the “constitutional divide”, the SNP Government, since 2007, has not been properly held to account via an inadequate and immature Scottish Parliament and a Scottish media, dying a slow death, controlled by investors on the other side of the Atlantic? Any criticism of Scottish Government political policy (politicians) and/or administrative actions (civil servants) is viewed via the narrow prism of “Unionist versus Nationalist” diatribe played out 24/7 x 365 on social media. The converse of this is that the Opposition is disunited and often choses weak issues on which to criticise Scot Gov. The Covid outbreak, emergency powers, Nicola Sturgeon on the telly every day “sharing our pain” has created an unhealthy situation whereby she is often portrayed as “Presidential” in a system which was never designed for same. Our new group of x 129 MSPs have basically “bunked off” for two months break whilst having only managed to elect a Presiding Officer and just decided who chairs each cross-party committee. Apart from two Covid days debate, everything else postponed until late August. The so called independent bodies and Commissions set up re: Human Rights, Equalities, Poverty, Audit etc issue reports which are either ignored or discussed and then forgotten about. Calls for a Covid public inquiry are continually stalled.
In summary, political accountability at UK level has diminished and in Scotland, where devolution should mean more accountability, we are currently in a very strange land of murkiness. No one is to blame, no one resigns? Now, when is the next episode of “Love Island” on the telly?
David Gow says
Hi Ian, you should write a piece!
Oh Aye says
You can’t say ‘post-truth era.’ It’s a meaningless aphorism. That would mean we live in an era when there is no objective truth which is, obviously, completely false and wrong.