To laugh or to cry? Up and down the land people are asking themselves this question as they watch Harriet Harman, Nick Clegg or... well here is something by Charles Moore. He's an old adversary of mine having adamantly opposed Charter 88 and any attempt at reforming the British system in a democratic fashion since yonks.
Now he is following the lead of Douglas Carswell MP, the Tory backbencher who took the scalp of Speaker Martin and is calling for open primaries in the selection of MPs. Moore doesn't follow him so far as to support his audaciously titled book: The Plan (what socialist would dare to issue a volume with such a title!).
The ductile Moore slips away from embracing the idea that there is anything fundamentally wrong. Instead he has this delightful approach to an argument:
I keep asking myself how all this has come about. How is it that a Parliamentary system which really was the envy of the world even only a generation ago is now the butt of its jokes? I think I have a possible explanation.
For a hundred years, the great issue which Parliament debated most often was the franchise. Who should be allowed to elect MPs? From the Great Reform Bill of 1832 until the final admission of all women as voters in 1928, this argument raged. It made MPs super-conscious of the people who put them into Parliament, since they kept on debating who those people should be. And it made the public feel that the right to vote really mattered.
With these battles won, people felt satisfied, for the time being. But after the Second World War, politicians began to take advantage. With their legitimacy uncontested, they made things more comfortable for themselves. MPs forgot that their House was esteemed because it genuinely made the laws for the people it represented, and so they transferred much of that right to Europe.
So there you are. What went wrong was that they just stopped talking about the right things. Whoops, this led to them "forgetting" they were they to make the laws so they transferred this to Europe. What a slip!
Having handed over their birthright, MPs then focused on their mess of pottage. Individual offices, more paid advisers, bigger pensions, shorter hours, second homes, free ginger-crinkle biscuits! It is not a coincidence that Tony Blair, the first prime minister in our history ever to show consistent contempt for the House of Commons, was also the first to make the hand-outs really gargantuan.
Corruption and ginger-crinkle simply followed loss of focus. Blair almost comes out of it well, or at least better than forgetful. He genuinely despised the place and so he pioneered a new level of corruption. One has to admire his consistency. However, "In the party conference season which has just finished, little bits of this subject came up", Moore laments,
David Cameron, in particular, was specific about one or two tough things which he wanted to apply in the next Parliament, such as an end to the MPs' pension scandal. But the mood in all the leaderships was that they wanted to "move on". They are avoiding plans for real reform. They should be reverting to Prime Minister's Questions twice a week, relinquishing government control of parliamentary business, providing for referendums. But of course they do not want to strengthen Parliament against the executive which they themselves hope to lead.
Here, at last, there is a glimmer of the deeper picture. "They are avoiding plans for real reform". They? It can only mean all of them. The whole lot of them - enfolded into the hope for unchecked executive power.
Now where did I hear that analysis before? Blow me down if Charles Moore isn't starting to make the case for a new Charter 88 now that liberty and freedom are no longer safe. Will he ever admit that only a generation ago, well 20 years, this was already being set out loud and clear?
OK, let's put the trumpet aside and recognise the strange common ground that is emerging - like a fresh island from the sewerage emitted by our ancient constitutional arrangements. In a striking analysis Timothy Garton Ash, just back in the UK after three months, wrote in the Guardian that he was puzzled and alarmed. Why has the constitutional moment not been seized? Where are the political forces and organised arguments able to take on a system in which all are, as Moore says, "avoiding plans for real reform"?
Garton Ash discusses Democratic Audit's hilarious 'Unspoken Constitution'. Set out for what it is, who can support the regime in its true light? Perhaps now that Moore recognises that the old regime has lost its vital link to the public even he will recognise the need for a new settlement.
