A note about recent events in and around Parliament

It’s been a tough couple of weeks for Parliament and our Parliamentarians. The latest episode started with the extraordinary scenes around the Gaza debate and has developed into a speech by the Prime Minister in which he suggested that we are now subject to mob rule and urged the police to crack down on protests by using the full range of powers available to them. So how do you pick the bones out of that?

Stripping it back to the fundamentals, we have

1.????? A system of democracy in which we elect people to Parliament and empower them to govern. They are accountable to us, the wider electorate, via Parliament’s rules and procedures and, every few years, via a general election; and

2.????? A tradition of freedom of speech which allows peaceful protest. Freedom of speech is not unlimited - there are constraints imposed by law, including laws under which hate crimes are illegal.

They have generally worked for many years - so what’s gone wrong?

I don’t think that there is a clear answer to that question, but I put the following forward as contributing factors

1.????? Our respect for politicians is lower than it has been. We live in times when respect is expected to be earned rather than for it to be something that attaches to someone merely because of the job or office that they have. A number of factors have got in the way of it being earned. These include politicians’ own behaviour, ranging from the expenses scandal to the recently exposed willingness of some in high office to mislead Parliament. They have led to politicians being regarded with cynicism or even contempt which is unfair to the many who are straightforwardly focussed on representing their constituents in an effective and hardworking way.

2.????? The manner in which modern political parties operate. In spite of the indiscipline evident in some quarters at the moment, in the main they have become machines which appear to be driven at all times by winning the next election. In consequence, they seem to pursue short term party aims rather than the long term national interest in many areas, many promises made to secure votes go unfulfilled and in a world of soundbite and focus groups, many of us are left feeling powerless to influence anything.

3.????? In an era of central party control and carefully crafted briefings and soundbites, it is remarkable that so much inflammatory language, often in social media postings or newspaper articles, is issued by some politicians, sometimes, but by no means always, followed by an apology.? Unfortunately, these individuals seem not to have a sense of the wider damage that their pronouncements may cause or, if they do, they have a diminished sense of responsibility in relation to it.

4.????? Many protestors do what protestors have always done, and show their feelings by gathering and marching peacefully. Some, however, don’t. It therefore becomes easy for politicians to speak of all protestors in the same way, which is as substantial a misrepresentation as the electorate judging all politicians by the standards of the least well behaved.

5.????? Social media has given a new means of access to the electorate for politicians and to politicians for the electorate. It has benefits, but is also abused. Inflammatory messages on X by politicians are too casually put out; trolling and death threats going the other way can never be acceptable; and

6.????? Still relatively rare but increasing instances of fatal attacks and other personal violence against politicians or damage to their homes or offices.

Given all those factors, are larger budgets for personal protection for MP’s and urging the police to more frequent use of their powers the answer? In the short term, they may help to deal with the symptoms, but it won’t cure the feelings of frustration and anger or cause many people to think in a different way. Experience suggests that in those circumstances, the need to provide protection will increase, and an unhealthy spiral will be established.

A reset is needed. The events of recent years have caused a lot of damage to our Parliamentary process in the eyes of the electorate, with procedural wranglings more akin to a university debating society than a national Parliament at the cost of a meaningful debate on Gaza being the latest example. It’s hard to expect people to exercise restraint in their behaviour when there is a perception that a number of our politicians don’t take responsibility to do the same, apparently without meaningful sanction. It’s also hard to promote the virtues of a parliamentary democracy when people feel that at most times and in most cases their votes don’t really matter unless they live in a key marginal. For their part, the electorate needs to recognise that our politicians are human beings who deserve time and space and personal lives away from their jobs, and that like everyone, they will make mistakes.

But who of our leading politicians will lead that reset? I don’t know, but there’s a lot at stake so fingers crossed that someone does before it all becomes too difficult.