The death of two party democracy

The two party system has been so basic to British democracy for so long that it's difficult to realise that its dying and cant now serve its traditional purposes of criticising the government and providing an alternative government.

The symptoms  have been emerging for a long time but were ignored because parties still alternated and rascals were thrown out in the old fashion..Thatcher swept in as Labour lost control,Blair took over as Major failed, then Cameron,with a little help, took power in coalition. Yet behind the scenes the roots of the system were dying. Nine out of ten electors voted for one of the two alternatives in the fifties againsr two thirds now.Party membership fell from the millions to under two hundred thousand .The proportion of strong supporters fell.More people began to switch.

Then came the devastating loss of Labours majority in Scotland  where. Labour will fight win back seats as the SNPs romantic glow fades in the problems of power. Yet it won't again have the major contribution Scottish Labour MPs made to winning and holding power.Harold Wilson wouldn't have won in 1964  or 1974's first election,both building blocks to a majority.

 Labour could still hold power either in coalition with the nationalists or on the basis of support  on confidence as the Liberals relied on the Irish nationalists from 1910.Yet the two parties are bitter enemies on the Scottish ground and the Liberals could hold out the bait of Home Rule. Labour can't.

Beyond this lies a wider problem.Labour is ceasing to be one party. It may not split but its losing its base.The working class has shrunk, the middle class has grown  and is much better off. Affluence has killed altruism.Concern for the poor has been edged out by fear and dislike, faith in growth raising all boats has given way to a zero sum game in which working class gains are seen as a threat .This growing middle may not like greedy self enrichment at the top but sees scroungers and the work shy as a burden on its taxes.A meritocratic society cares less about those left behind,until they punched it by voting Brexit.

The old basic problems of depravation and want are more partial and the growing middle class is more nervous about threats from below,trade unions, higher taxes lower standards than  about the excessive rewards for those above.Indeed concerns about  pensions, house prices and  interest rates and their pawky investments cause it to identify up,not down

The BlairIte answer is to take Labour's core support for granted and reach up to the middle class and down to the properous south by accepting Thatcherism.balancing budgets and replacing general benefits by means tested meanness. Thus New Labouir delivered less to its people,a failure particularly obvious striking in housing, to appear respectable ,avoid frightening  the middle class and win the approbation of the City and the multinationals.

The left, on the other hand thinks Labour in government always betrays their principles.Having  nagged ,about this  for years they now control power and hope, by offering radical policies,greater equality  and a restoration of power to the unions, to bring back the mass working class support the party has lost.

The relationship between Parliamentaery party and the more radical  rank and file members has always been one of suspicion  but now that the lunatics have taken over the asylum mistrust has  exploded into civil war.Yetneither side is particularly attractive to the working class, the right because it offers only peanuts,  the left because of its sectarian obsessions with issues and causes of no real interest to the majority of voters.

Takes two to tango .If Labour prefers to do the Hokey- Cokey it becomes irrelevant.The precedents  are dire.When a party dies the obsequies destabilise decades as the Liberals did between the wars. If it splits it entrenches the Tories to do whatever they want, as we did Mrs Thatcher and Liberal split over home rule did Salisbury.If it's really feeble it can even allow six decades of Tory hegemony like those up to the Great Reform Bill. In fact, come to think of it my, D Phil thesis The Whigs in Opposition 1812-1830 was a brilliant preparation for being in the Labour Party.

Parliament: auditor to the nation

After being retired for a year I can admit that much of my work as an MP could have been done by a trained Orang Utan,provided he was backed by a proper staff.He'd have to be an energetic beast to cope with all the attendances at factories,functions,schools and events constituencies demand these days .He'd need a team of social workers to play the local ombudsman role and deal with all the problems that come up and he'd be well advised  not scratch to himself too much or put too many bananas on his expenses but otherwise he could replace many of us.

 He'd not need be too bright to read out the pre- prepared questions the whips hand out and listen to the media ready  answers.As for tramping through lobbies to be counted, that's  more a job for sheep but he could do it and his more brutish mates could be whips, though they'd need to be able to count up to 300 ( or a diminishing number on the Labour side) As for occasional,or even regular chest beating and swinging through the trees to get media attention, that would come easily to playful primates.

Yet one role which is developing fast, demands a higher level of intelligence than any political primate and provides more satisfaction than Parliamentary hack work .It's accountability, a function growing in importance and effectiveness to the point of offers a more challenging role for MPs and a more useful function for a Parliament which otherwise has little power beyond heckling the government steamroller as it drives over them. 

The Public Accounts committee has shown the way.Backed by the National Audit office with its 700 staff this has long been the best committee It certainly gave me more satisfaction than any other part of the job and has always had a vital role in ferreting out fraud and failure .The evidence is normally fed to it by the NAO. but in the last Parliament its chair,Margeret Hodge made it  tougher and effective,taking it into areas of concern where it forced the pace not the NAO. It hauled in the multi nationals such as Google Amazon and Starbucks and brought their tax fiddles to public attention. 

It highlighted tax dodging via Luxembourg and Ireland and the scandalous softness of Dave Hartnett,head of HMRC to Vodaphone and Goldman Sachs forcing him into retirement. It brought out the cheating and failures of  government contractors like A4E,Serco and G4S and the folly of the huge NHS computerisation which was scrapped after wasting billions.The privatisation of so many services and bringing business methods and people into education and health increases the risk of fraud and a public service which brings Sir Phillip Rose in to advise on economies is hardly going to be safe in business hands.The PAC has highlighted cases such as King's Free School in Bradford which might otherwise have been hushed up.

The price of honesty is eternal vigilance and while the PAC has shown the way its efforts are being shared by other  committees driven by effective chairs . Tony Wright and the Public Administration committee  changed Parliament for the better,Treasury under Andrew Tyrie toughened up government's attempts to dilute banking reform,  Home Affairs under Keith Vaz. changed government policies and Frank Field's forensic skills with two combined committees  brought Green and  the pillaging of BHS to book. Committee  chairs have become as important as ministers All have ventilated concerns which would othwise have been smothered by  government's obfuscation,dilitariness ,indulgence and PR

This angered the civil servants who were grilled and the  ministers who were criticised .Attempts were made to rein committees in via members briefed by minsters and departments but most interference was resented and rejected .On the PAC it was  beaten off by the skill of the chair and the swing vote of Richard Bacon a tough and  informed Tory who views integrity as an almost religious imperative. Government stopped trying to pack the committees as Gordon Brown had flagrantly done by removing every Labour member with a taint of Keynes from the Treasury Committee to turn it into an adoring chorus.The election of chairs by the whole house gave them a degree of independence they'd not had before.

Not yet perfect the system is still developing.Some chairs are creeps. Some committees plough boring fields.Politics and caution can muzzle as  they did Parliament's Iraq enquiries and a Security Committee which never hears or sees evil.Politics can triumph as  when I chaired a sub committee of the Treasury committee which reported that joining the ERM would be damaging, only to have another committee under Giles Radice reverse that verdict and proclaim membership as the best thing since sliced Frankfurt sausage

But election makes chairs stronger and more independent.MPs are beginning to feel that committees give them real power an interesting job, and a chance to influence policy.It's the most exciting part of an otherwise dull job. Which creates the prospect of developing the committees as a combination of continuous accountability and mini Royal Comissions which don't take minutes and waste years like their ponderous big brothers.That would raise Parliament's role from a stage on which the party battle is fought  to the more useful one of accountability with committees as the nation's auditors.

 Britain needs Such a reform.Compared to the USA our so called constitution provides few means of redressing grievances, unearthing scandals and failures,exposing the abuses of corporate power or bringing professional or business reprobates to justice.Government and business have massive PR machines,to put a rosy gloss on disaster.Hordes of libel lawyers lie in wait for the incautious.HMRC is understaffed,whistleblowers get punished and professional and business regulation is chaps regulating, and regularly excusing, chaps. Regulatory capture the Americans call it but it's the norm here.Even reprobates can be  regulators.Private Eye does its best but neither it,nor our underpowered Ombudspersons can cope withe scale of abuse and emerging corruption.

Why not  give the job to the Parliamentary select committees? Properly backed by their own research staff ,their membership decided by an independent panel,not the whips, their chairs supplied from short lists decided by the speaker and elected by the house they can do the job and become a powerful check.That would make the system accountable,protect the people,restore respect for Parliament and give MPs something more useful to do than playing Punch and Judy.

So, what happens next?

My guess is not much. The politicians take time to adjust to a changed world. The parties take even longer. But the people will just pick themselves and carry on as if nothing has happened. The sky won't fall in.

The Remainers won't give up. They'll attempt to repeal the judges decision  and argue that they should have another referendum on the grounds that Brexit cheated, told lies, appealed to base and all sorts of  naughty motives which Remain of course didn't do because  truth, God,virtue, and the future of Britain were on their side but for some strange reason didn't prevail.

So they'll rant on with God on their side claiming that everything that goes wrong from race hatred crimes to an increase in nose picking are due to Brexit. They'll be helped by credulous journalists who'll hunt round Britain for symptoms of distress and round the EU to show how much they hate us and how they'll refuse to make concessions to us. Won't be true of course because they've no way of knowing, or measuring, but they'll fit the world to fit their prejudices,

The Conservatives who think like a regiment and have an ingrained instinct for power at any cost will pull together, plaster, acclaim their leader as the greatest since Boudacea and roll with the punches as they always have in the past. That means giving Davies and Boris their heads for a time but chucking them overboard  if they don't get a good deal. In the mean time they'll chuck Osbornism overboard with Osborne by increasing borrowing, pushing Quantitive easing and probably cutting business taxes. So much for tilting the balance to the people.

As for business the big boys will continue to moan and float the idea of transferring to Europe.Big business likes the status quo and doesn't like being inconvenienced. But Business is very adaptable and always deals with the world as it is which means they'll accept Brexit and work round its problems despite the assertions of the politicians who don't know business and don't realise how flexible and adaptable it is. Never believe what politicians and journalists say about business. They. dont know it and they don't realise its flexibility and adaptability and they're contemptuous of it.

Business will be helped in this adjustment by the fall in the value of the pound.This is the great benefit Brexit and uncertainty bring. That will boost exports,bring new jobs and new growth and make imports dearer and less attractive.In 1992 the last Tory devaluation ushered in a decade of growth and prosperity. Why should this not do the same?

 The main worry is the Labour Party. It tried to whip its supporters into an enthusiasm for Europe they don't feel and blame poor, hapless Jeremy for his failure to do so. Labour now believes in Euro-enthusiasm more than it believes in socialism.It now seems determined to devote itself to relighting the referendum, committed to getting back into the EU. We're in danger of being stuck in the past fighting a battle that's over.

What about the workers?Well one thing the referendum did show was that they're fed up of Europe, feel neglected and buggered around by globalisation. Since no one  now speaks for them they've decided to speak for themselves and the liberal elite can't forgive themfor it. Labour once stood for the workers.Now the right regard them as a safe vote which can be taken for granted. No need to deliver to them, so the party can concentrate on its real job.That's to add middle class and southern voters to the proletarian lump.Anything done for the workers will frighten the middle class off. Hardly nice for MPs who're now middle class themselves. No wonder the forgotten people struck back in a referendum which was their chance to say we've been buggered about.

 As for the left It's so busy pushing a thousand curses in which the workers have no  great interest and get nothing from that they've lost sight of Labour's real role.That isn't friendship with Hamas or the IRA it's the betterment of the pay and conditions of the people it represents. Until Labour realises that it will get nowhere.

It's a joy to be a European rather than a paid Eurocreep!

To listen to the miserable moans coming from our self appointed cultural elite and the National Union of liberal intelligentsia you'd think that Britain had gone isolationist, cut itself off from the world and opted to go back to the dark ages. How dare the uncultured and untutored masses, cut us the cultural elite off from Europe (second) home and beauty? It's been as if  the British people in saying they don't particularly like the EU (few do except those who're paid by it) had opted to have  Britain towed off into the mid Atlantic festooned with "No Entry" signs and  run by Millwall fans.

All balls (or if you like it boules). What the people are saying is that they don't want to be drained, taxed and bossed around by bloated bureaucrats in Brussels.We'll still love France, are excited and stimulated by the Belgians,sing Italian arias and drive German cars.Peter Mayle will still be overjoyed (and under taxed) by living in France, retired crooks will still buy villas in Spain  and British tourists will still be able to study anthropology in sex clubs in Amsterdam or Hamburg. 

School parties will swop with schools in France, and intellectuals will still sing "Paris tu n'as pas change mon vieux" as they're overcharged in French bordellos where they've gone to enjoy "let dirty weekend". Poles will still come here to pick our potatoes ,kill our chickens and do barrow jobs on our houses.

The Belgians will still keep their security information for themselves in the hope that their terrorists do it in Paris ,the EU will still provoke Russia over Ukraine and prove unable to stop Serbs murdering Kosovans. The French will still overcharge us for electricity and nuclear power.Italian cars will still break down on British hills and the Spaniards aren't gowing to cut off our vital supplies of paella;

In fact life will go on as normal after Brexit.We'll probably get even better arrangements for cooperation on matters cultural, environment and educational Who needs a perambulating Parliament and a bloated bureaucracy to clean up our beaches or do the simple things which are all they've done been able to manage so far  Nor will we be affected by the 30,000 lobbyists mostly working for big business who wine and dine round Brussels or bribe our MEPs to do some work and actually go there a few times.

Best of all we won't have to pay for it all or subsidise Croatia to kill people, Rumanians to rob or Latvians to lactate. We'll be free to pursue our own interests without having to drag the albatross of French agriculural protection into every trade meeting and subject our interests to the whims of  Estonia,our fish to the French and our fields to all that yellow rape because the French won't let us import it from poor countries. We'll be free. Free to be the best kind of Europeans. The ones who love it voluntarily and because they like it andnot because they're forced to grin and bear it and pay for the thing. What a joy it will be to be European not a paid Eurocreep.

Believe in Britain

The big difference between Brexiteers and Remainers is not so much about what kind of Britain they want. Brexiteers don't want to go back to Imperial Britain. Remainers don't want to be just another province in the jostling folly that calls itself "Europe" or "The United States of Europe". It's  more a question of belief in Britain. Does it have sufficient strength to survive on its own, or is it now so weakened by years of comparative decline that it needs the prop of the EU?

That's the cause of demands to repeat the referendum, the claims that Brexit won on lies while Remain told nothing but the truth: the fears would turn out to be true because Britain was so weak and voters were too stupid too to see this. Indeed even now Remainers can't wait for the crisis to come and demonstrate how right they were.

For Remainers the EU is Britain's Zimmer frame. It will support us when we fail and we'd collapse without it.Brexiteers see our contributions as a drain in Britain's economy, holding us back and dragging us down, so we'll surge without it. Remainers say EU aid helps us. Brexiters say it's our own money back with the EU's heavy costs taken out.

Remainers think the world will be against us and relegate us to declining impotence if we kick away our prop: access to the single market. Brexiters say we're losing out in the single market because the Germans accumulate surpluses and don't trade fairly so we'd do better negociatins our.own agreements with expanding markets without dragging the dead albatross of French agricultural protection into everything

If Remainers had won, the steady drain and decline would have continued. Because the Brexiteers did, we can break the grip of the vested interests who benefit from decline, administer a stimulating shock to check the decline and stop the drain holding us down.

It's not going to be easy.It'll be hard work and a risk. But it will be better than the sleepy slide of drain and decline,which may benefit the rich, the City and the vested interests of importers, Eurocreeps, politicians who prefer strutting on a bigger stage to the more difficult task of solving Britain'sproblems, but hurts the workers, the producers, the manufacturers and.all who're old-fashioned enough to be proud of their country. Including me.

The big benefit of Brexit

In all the moaning and fears produced by the prospect of Brexit the biggest was the fear that the pound would come down. It has - without us having brewed it. Down 8% already on top of the 6% before.

A good thing too, and with any luck it should come down further. That's a huge benefit to exports-which were flagging before the fall. It's a tax on imports which were far bigger than we could afford. It will make it more expensive for the wealthy to buy villas in Monaco and yachts on the Med but before our hearts bleed too much for them, let's remember that it will mean we export more cars,s ave British steel and boost engineering, ensuring more jobs and economic growth.

The pound had to come down if we were to pay our way in the world and only the prospect of Brexit and the blow to confidence produced by the referendum vote could do it.  Instead of moaning how naughty the British people were for voting as their betters told them not to, we must now seize it, invest in exporting industries, boosting help and support for exports and turn the economy back into the powerful economy it once as.Then the devaluation will become the key to growth as the 1992 devaluation gave us a decade of falling unemployment.

Go for it! Don't let Osborne ruin it.We have nothing to fear but the EU itself. The Euro has turned our major market into a low growth high unemployment black spot.Which is why we now need to use our new competitiveness to win new markets.The cost of membership and the Eurogeld are a drain on Britain's economy and should be shed.

It would be a national tragedy now to throw away this opportunity to get back to growth and restructuring Britain's failing economy

Labour: Love it, don't leave it.

As the Labour Party deserts its job and its responsibilities to play Cowboys and Indians it's worth  while pointing out that both sides are right, though it's not clear whether one is crazier than the other and their combined efforts are making the party unelectable. People tend to like a party to be an alternative government to a civil war on wheels.

The gulf between the two camps is about how to get elected. The Blairites, who started sulking before Jeremy was elected, believe in Tony's approach which was to take Labour's core working class support for granted, give it nice smiles and warm words and not much else and make the party attractive to groups like the aspires, whoever they are, the south, the middle class or business or the lot by pulling Labour's teeth and pretending that it was the Liberal Party reincarnated.

The Corbyn lefty approach was older and argued that Labour had to be radical and left to build the working class vote because proletarians are in a majority and only need to be radicalised to bring them out in great numbers to bring victory and another 1945.

Tony's approach won in l997 (though given the Tory mess Michael Foot would have made it too). His government didn't deliver much to the workers:minimum wage and Sure Starts but no extra powers for the Trade Unions and lots of deregulation for the bankers and financiers who became more important to the government than the TUC, until they greedily screwed up everything with the recession.

The Corbyn approach represents a rank and file reaction against this. The benefits are that Corbyn himself is a sincere man of principle and that's more saleable than the plasticscene politicians who'll bend to any shape. People prefer a leader with values. Plus the fact that McDonnell is looking for serious answers to the serious question about the economy such as investment, inequality, higher taxes all the things no-one else dare tackle.

The weakness of the Corbyinites is that he doesn't look like a leader and he's boring. The weakness of the Blairites is that they've got too many jostling and inflated egos,  too few ideas and no guts at all. No need to take either side but every need to force them to work together. If they don't, Labour's not only destroyed but useless as the only political instrument for advancing the cause of people which used to be its job in my time. Less sound of battle please and more the dull banging of heads being knocked together.