The English Question and the Rise of a Zombie Political System
Gerry Hassan
Bella Caledonia, February 22nd 2010
The British constitution is in a bad way. The Westminster system of absolutism is creaking and falling apart as we speak, centralisation has been taken to a point under the Blair-Brown dual monarchy of New Labour beyond caricature, and the British political classes are held beneath contempt, along with bankers and journalists.
This should be a golden era for radical reformers and democrats, with idealists and campaigners pushing at an open door in terms of the popular imagination and mood, a political community looking desperately for a different kind of politics, and a country knowing that the eviction of one political party of the Westminster state, Labour for the Tories, will change little for the better.
One of the paradoxes of our current malaise is the widespread crisis of the British political system is combined with a crisis of confidence amongst reformers. The crisis of our politics seems to have not only affected the corrupted, tainted ‘mainstream’, but those who want to replace the whole rotten edifice.
The usual culprits to cite here are the Lib Dems under Nick Clegg’s strangely demure, cautious leadership, which has failed to make any real headway in the economic and political storms we have endured (and this despite Vince Cable). Thankfully for Lib Dems another group have come along in recent weeks, mouthing the platitudes of reform, while engaging in processes and ideas which don’t have any real spark or urgency.
The Power 2010 inquiry has significant monies from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and its Reform Trust (1). Chaired by the formidable and impressive Helena Kennedy and led by Pam Giddy, previously of Charter 88, it has attempted to build on the work both did with the Power inquiry a few years ago.
This isn’t the best place to start, because the Power inquiry was characterised by a convincing, powerful critique of our failing democracy and politics, which in its recommendations went nowhere, focusing on narrow political structures and processes, such as PR and state party funding (and could not even bring itself to make the case for a written constitution). There was no acknowledgement of the interwoven nature of the economic and political concentration of power which had happened in Britain under Thatcher and Blair, and that any serious reform needed to respond in kind: with a programme of economic, social and civil transformation.
The Power 2010 campaign then held a series of deliberative discussions out of which emerged a list of 29 reforms to the UK political system, and it in this that the problems began. For a start, there was the lack of imagination of engaging in what amounts to a self-selecting super opinion poll which is of little real value, and can be blown apart by critics as being totally unrepresentative. The last time I looked at the overall figures they were at 80,000 votes, and considering you can vote as many times as you want as long as you vote only once for each demand, the overall reach will be many times smaller.
Yet, there are even bigger flaws with the whole process. The Power 2010 campaign decided from their super February primary to select only the top five and then promote and argue for them in the forthcoming election, just like New Labour’s five pledges on their infamous card in 1997.
However, another problem was lurking in the issue of the English dimension. The final list of 29 left the English question represented by English votes on English Laws, while a referendum on an English Parliament, which had been on the original list, was knocked out.
As we entered into the last few days, Unlock Democracy, the successor to Charter 88, asked supporters to vote for an elected second chamber, the demand which was below English votes. The Campaign for the English Regions urged their supporters to vote for any issue but English votes. Peter Facey, director of Unlock Democracy, stated that his motivation was that:
This was not an anti-English votes for English Laws email, simply a positive one for an issue we think needs to be in the top five. (2)
The disingenuousness is shocking from supposed radical democrats, combined with their complete lack of understanding of the lack of democracy at the heart of the UK in the English question. This was articulated by Paul Kingsnorth in a powerful piece in ‘The Guardian Comment’:
Imagine that you live in a nation which is, or claims to be, a democracy. Imagine that in this democracy, your elected representatives make laws by voting on bills in parliament, as they do in pretty much every other democracy in the world.
He goes on to say: ‘Thus is the country in which 80% of the UK’s population lives; this is England’ (3).
Fascinatingly as we speak with hours to go to the closing of the Power 2010 vote the whole thing has backfired on them. Yes, their campaign of attempting to fix the ballot has raised the number of votes for a fully elected second chamber and pushed it into third place, but the counter-campaign to their manipulation, has pushed English votes up to fourth. What is more striking is the tiny number of votes involved which with just over three hours to go stood at:
Proportional Representation 11,878
Scrap ID Cards 10,325
Fully Elected Second Chamber 6,454
English Votes on English Laws 6,197
A Written Constitution 6,051
Fixed Term Parliaments 5,909
And then after this there is a long drop off. What is striking is the tiny number of votes, the sheer lack of political imagination and radicalism, along with paranoia about letting the English tiger out. This has been combined with an attempt at a form of fixing and a set of processes, which seem to be incredible in terms of their banality.
At the heart of the Power 2010 failure is the collapse of the liberal radical tradition in Britain. Thatcherism and New Labour didn’t happen by accident; they happened because we allowed them to happen, and we allowed the political system, the state and radicalism to be captured by zealous anti-democratic revolutionaries.
The Power response is, according to Facey, to have a ‘Constitutional Convention’ which surely sums up the political worldview of such chatterers. It is based on an elite view of politics, and an inaccurate view of how change came in Scotland, which didn’t happen because of Canon Kenyon Wright and his blessed Constitutional Convention, but because civic and political Scotland, both organised and disorganised, wanted it. In short, such change is driven by shaping political space, identity and imagining a nation: a long, diffuse, messy process which can never be summarised by establishing a Convention.
There are many by-lines to this story, but one is that Rowntree gave a significant amount of monies to employ a substantial body of staff of well over a dozen to oversee such a poorly thought through project. It has thrown up the limitations of much for what passes for constitutional reform and democratic renewal in the UK, and also reminds us that despite the multiple crises of the system, there is a distinct prospect that it will just muddle along, for want of anything better.
Rather like the current crisis of neo-liberalism, for want of a better alternative, the British political system could just stagger along, in an undead state. Truly we could be entering the age of Zombie politics and a Zombie political system which still felt it had the right and power to act like an all-powerful leviathan.
Notes
1. Power 2010: Countdown to a new politics, http://www.power2010.org.uk/votes
2. Peter Facey, ‘Shock: Unlock Democracy supports an elected second chamber’, Our Kingdom, February 17th 2010,
3. Paul Kingsnorth, England is a pseudo-democracy, The Guardian Comment, February 18th 2010,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/18/devolution-england-pseudo-democracy
There is something more than vaguely fishy about all this. In the last 10 years The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust have made 79 donations totalling £4,738,995.80 to the Liberal Democrat political party.
Current directors and staff of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust include:
Chair of the Trust~ David Shutt, Baron Shutt of Greetland: Liberal Democrat Peer. Chief Whip in the House of Lords
Vice-Chair~ Dr Christopher Greenfield: Liberal Democrat who contested four General Elections.
Danny Alexander: Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Inverness.
Mandy Cormack: Liberal Democrat who helped build the party’s regional media network for the 1992 election.
I wont go though everybody, but I think the picture that is emerging is obvious.
The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust donations to the Liberal Democrats seem to run counter to the trust’s stated aims, that it “is not committed to the policies of any one political party”. However, their donations account for 20% of all non public donations to the Liberal Democrats over the last ten years. These people are NOT politically neutral.
So, Power2010 is bankrolled by the single largest donor of the Liberal Democrats. Nowhere on the site does it disclose that information. In the context of what they are trying to achieve, that is a conflict of interests, and lets face it… a pretty serious omission.
Helena Kennedy QC, Chair of Power2010, and of the original Power Inquiry, said:
“What is different about Power2010 is that – apart from changing politics – there is no agenda.”
Oh really? How strange then that at the top of the Power2010 list is Proportional Representation, the one thing that could give the Liberal Democrats a shot at power.
It’s a fraud, and it also wouldn’t surprise me if it was rigged (although that is just a personal opinion).
According to the most recent British Social Attitudes survey, released January 2010, 61% agreed that Scottish MPs should not be able to vote on English legislation.
There is a clear mandate for this reform.
Thanks for the link to my piece, Gerry, and for this analysis.
Crucial to it I think is the obvious fact that Power2010, and all the other ideas pushed by the ‘usual suspects’ you identify, have no popular traction. It just amounts to the same metropolitan set banging on again about their pet reforms. What happened to the English Parliament option was a classic example of this: a genuinely popular cause, at least in this context, which if it had been included would have really shaken things up. There were some other really interesting ideas submitted too. In the end, the top five very nearly cam down to the usual five liberal London demands, and only a last-minute campaign by some of us for the EVoEL option (itself crappy but a start) injected any life into it at all.
This though, as you say, only highlights the wider problems that liberal leftist ‘reformers’ have today: they have no popular support. Imagine what a genuinely popular Power2010 would have come up with: the demands would have been nothing like this, I suspect.
Finally, I was fascinated to have confirmed how frightened this lot are of the idea of England: of letting the tiger out, as you put it. The idea that the English might be allowed a voice, and might use it to say things that the likes of Peter Facey and Dame Helena don’t want to hear, puts the wind right up them. I think they are going to have to get used to it, though.
Nice article Gerry, but it would be even better if it had a few more facts to back up the argument. I do not speak for Power as you state in the article. For the record I have no position in Power2010. The only organisation I speak for is Unlock Democracy.
You accuse me of shocking disingenuousness for stating that the reason we sent a email to our supporters asking them to vote for a elected second chamber was because we wanted it in the top five. But unfortunately that was the reason we did it. The fact that our Parliament has a chamber that is made up of hereditary chiefs and people appointed by party leaders is a disgrace. Lords reform was one of five issues we championed in this process, the others being PR, A Written Constitution, stronger local government and a cap on donations).
A week ago it was about 200 hundred votes behind. So we asked our supporters to vote for it. Yes I accepted that it would knock one of the other issues out of the top five (and seeing that English Votes and a Fixed term Parliament were in fourth and fifth pace I accepted that it would displace one of them). The process pitched supporters of various reforms against one another and no this is not the process I would have designed if Rowntree had given us the money. There was no more a conspiracy by us to prevent English Votes than Paul conspired to keep Fixed Term Parliaments out (though that was the effect of his article).
You say that our email was a manipulation of the process if it was then it was manipulation built into the process. So yes we tried to manipulate the process, but so did CAMRA, Countryside Alliance, Compass, Progress, Tax Payers Alliance, the Freedom Association, ERS, War on Want and a number of other organisations all of whom put out emails to their supporters asking them to vote for certain issues.
Do I think English Votes for English Laws is good policy – no I don’t but for that matter neither does Paul or the other campaigners for an English Parliament. In the end of the day I will probably be happier with English Votes than Paul is. As an organisation we don’t support it because it does not deal with centralised nature of power in England.
Paul Kingsnorth in his thanks to you says that I am against giving the English people a voice. Paul knows that is complete rubbish as he was on the panel with me when I gave a speech calling for the right to self-government for the people of England. In it I called for an English Devolution Enabling Act that would allow people to decide how they should be governed. So if the people of England want an English Parliament they can have one. But if like me they want a decentralised England with power exercised in Manchester, London, Yorkshire and Cornwall they can have that. Yes Paul and others like him like me want to give the English People a voice, but they want them to only have one song to sing (a English parliament) whereas I want them to be able to choose the song as well. And no this was not a option in the Power 2010 process.
Peter -
During the debate we recently did together, which you mention, you were very clear indeed that you didn’t think England should have any kind of permanent political voice at the national level. This is fine, of course: it’s a point of view. As it happens I don’t share it – though, like you, I would probably favour the English being presented with a list of options in a referendum, including an EP and regional assemblies (I reckon we’d win that poll as well!)
But the wider point is that what we might call the ‘constitutional reform lobby’, of which Unlock Dmeocracy and Power 2010 and Charter 88 and all the usual suspects are a part, has been furiously campaigning against English democracy at the national level for over a decade, and supporting the regionalisation of England unquestioningly. Personally I think there is more to this than the stated desire for local democracy. I want more local democracy too – much more of it, and I hate the centralised state. I support all the other measures Power2010 is campaigning for. But I also object strongly to the imposition of pointless, unpopular and unwanted ‘regions’ which have nothing to do with decentralisation and everything to do with keeping the English down.
I think that the soft-left constitutional classes are very much against the idea of national expression for England. I think it scares them, because – unlike most other measure put forward by Power2010 – it has the potential to be genuinely popular, as opposed to simply popular in London think tanks. I think it is about time that the issue started to be taken seriously instead of brushed under the carpet.
Paul
Yes I don’t support a English Parliament with the same powers as a Scottish Parliament. Because I dont see what it would do which could not be done better at a lower level.
But I welcome your support for a referendum with options. But surprisingly I wont be signing up to your version where you get to wrap yourself in the Flag of St George and I get the corporate logo for the Government Office of the East of England. And yes in that referendum you could very well win. (But for the record you did not win this poll. English Votes came fourth just ahead of Written Constitution. The top issue for which we campaigned PR had nearly twice as many votes as English Votes.)
I won’t support your referendum for two reasons. Firstly I dont want power to be devolved to the Governmental regions. On the whole (with the execption of London) they are meaningless. Secondly I don’t want the centre to decide the question or even that matter two reasonable men like ourselves.
Instead I want the right to self government for the people and communities of England to be enshrined in statute (preferably entrenched in a written constitution). This should state how powers can be draw down and that powers devolved cant be centralised without the explicit consent of the people.I dont want any more GLC’s abolished or as at present counties being broken up into unitary authorities without the support of their citizens.
After that I want Westminster to back away. And yes that would mean that if you could get enougth support (say five percent) on a petition you could have a referendum on a English Parliament.
But if there is enougth support in a county, city or region of England then so can they. Now you may think you will have enougth support, but I already know that threshold can be achived for power to be drawn down below the English level. Because it has already been done in Cornwall.
But if the people of England are with you as you say then what have you to loose. We could have a approach which was radical and that produce the type of decentralised England we both say we want.
Peter -
I’d just like to assure you that I have never wrapped myself in a flag. I’m far too middle class for that sort of thing
And when I talked about the argument for an EP ‘winning’, I was talking not about beating your campaign for PR (which I support) but about beating the English regional government model, which was nowhere to be seen.
One of the key points that I tried to bring out in our public debate, and will bring out again here now, is that there are two separate questions at issue here and they are being conflated. This happens time and time again and it is one reason why this argument is often so circular.
You highlight it well when you write ‘I don’t support a English Parliament with the same powers as a Scottish Parliament. Because I don’t see what it would do which could not be done better at a lower level.’ The two issues you are conflating here are the national question and the question of localisation of power.
I am a massive supporter of the localisation of power within England; and in many other places too. I have been writing about this stuff for years. My book ‘Real England’ is essentially a 300-page argument for the radical devolution of power to local people and communities.
But the English question is not about devolution within England: it is about representation for England. It is an outgrowth of devolution to the other 3 UK nations. Your problem, in this discussion, is that you never address this. You would like Westminster to enshrine in statute how England’s democracy should work. Westminster contains Scottish, Welsh and NI MPs. Are they to be involved in creating the statute which tells the English how they are to be governed? I’m guessing this statute will not apply in Scotland and Wales. Why is that, Peter? Why is that fair?
The problem you have is that you are operating in a post-devolution landscape as if devolution had never happened. Pre-1997, your proposals would have made a lot of sense. Now, they come up time and again against the problem of the lack of a say for the English nation. And yes, I am quite specific about England operating as a nation. This, I think, you have a major problem with. But it is inescapable.
The UK has been broken up politically along national lines. This was not done to facilitate localisation: it was a response to nationalism. Scotland and Wales voted as nations, in referendums, on their futures. England – as a nation – should be given the same choice and chance. English nationalism, or at least English national feeling, is on the rise as a response to devolution. If you don’t like that, don’t blame me – blame the Labour party.
We are where we are, and we need to sort out the anomalous injustice of allowing MPs from other nations to make English laws when English MPs are banned from making laws in the other UK nations. So here is my question to you: what would you do about this? Your proposals don’t address it: rather, they skirt around the entire national issue in favour of a discussion about localisation which, while welcome, continues to deny a voice to the English nation as a whole.
I have never claimed that ‘the people of England are with me.’ That would be amusingly arrogant of me. But I do know that the opinion polls show a great appetite for sorting out the English question at an English level. I’m looking forward to hearing your answer to it.
Paul -
I agree with you that there is not a single English Question, but a number of English questions. These include national, cultral questions and yes the question of governance. You and I are discussing how England should be governed and where power should lie.
I disagree with you that one of the English questions is not about where power lies within England. The creation of a English Parliament wil impact on that debate. If we create a new elected Parliament it is difficult to see how that Parliament is going to devolve those powers downwards. The experience in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is that they spend there time trying to draw more powers down from Westminster not in finding new ways to push it down. We are arguing about the sort of England we want.
But let me accept that democratic reformers have not spent enougth time addressing the national aspects of the English question.It is something we need to address. And it may be that some form of English votes can be part of the answer. Which is why I said in my reply to Gerry the irony is that in the end I may be happier than you with English votes. England as one of the constituent parts of the UK must be written into any wriiten constitution.But I dont believe that I have all the answers to the English questions (that would be arrogant of me). I also dont believe that all the solutions have to be in the form of institutions and laws.
Nations exist not because they have a parliament or government they exist because people believe in them.
But also I dont accept your story that devolution is purely a nation question. I do accept that rediscovering a strong sence of nation was a important element in Scotland and to a lesser extent in Wales. But to this was added people who wanted to bring power closer to the people. People who saw devolution as a way to deliver better goverance and better policy outcomes. In England this coalition of people driven by nationalism and democratic reformers (you can be both) does not exist in fact we war against ourselves.
You are plain wrong to say that Northern Irish devolution is national. There is no Northern Irish nation in the same way there is no New Jersey or Price Edward Island nation. Northern Ireland has competing idenitities or nationalism’s.
Paul we both want Westminster to enshrine how English democracy or goverance works. And that is what happened in the three other parts of the UK. The Assemblies and the Scottish Parliament were established by Westminster and yes voted on by MPs from all over the UK. You want Westminster to legislate. The difference is you want them to legislate to reastablish a English Parliament (subject I assume to referendum) and I want them to enshrine the right of self government for the people and communities of England. Under your proposal I and other localists have no way of getting what we want. Whereas under my proposal you and other campaigners for English nation equality have a oppourtunity to deliver a English Parliament if you can persuade enougth of your fellow citizens. I offer a process whereas you are offering a fixed destination.
I believe that what I have outlined can be part of the answer. I believe it would go a long way to removing the growing feeling of resentment (we can argue how big it is) that England has been denied what has been offered to the other parts of the UK by giving people the right to self goverance if they want it.