Book Recommendation

Captive State, George Monbiot.

George Monbiot talks about the incredible level of corporate power. If you were wondering why people protest against the WTO - this will answer your question.

It also demonstrates that the level or corruption in government is very high. Big business can essentially tell the government what to do, and the government obeys, despite it being counter to the best interests of the public - the people they are meant to represent. It makes me think lobbying should be made illegal!

It also explains why the NHS is in such a mess, money is being bled out of it to pay company profits. The PFI and later PPI are not cheaper it seems - but then that should hardly be a surprise. Instead it sells the future for the now. In some cases borrowing to invest in the future might be ok, but the terms companies have got are so good the public sector is the looser. And what's more the private sector has far too much power to decide what the projects are.

Essentially what PFI does is allow us to build something we don't need for a lower upfront cost than the thing we do need, but then we have to pay over the odds for the next few decades.

And complaints are met with "commercial confidentiality". Sorry, but that's no good. All contracts entered into by the government (at all levels) must be public knowledge - otherwise there is no accountability. And without that we might as well abandon the illusion that we're living in a democracy.

Party Whips Considered Harmful

For a long time I've had a serious issue with the concept of Party whips.

When we elect an MP we choose them to represent us. Their party alliegance gives us some indication as to what sorts of policies they support, and on the whole I would expect an MP to be more likely to vote with their party than against it. But when there's a conflict between representing their constituents and supporting their party it's the constituents who should win. It's the constituents who pay their wages after all through their taxes. But is that what happens? I don't think it is. Most of the time party loyalty wins.

There is an argument that the party often supports an MP's election campaign, and therefore should expect some loyalty. I think this is bogus though. That's a matter for the parties selection process to deal with. If they select a candidate who they know (and the public expects) will vote in a particular way on some issue then they have no cause to complain later. If an MP were to represent themselves one way to the party and then change their tune once in office then the party would have the option to deselect them at the next election. In other words MPs should behave honourably or expect deselection by their party.

Of course, that in itself is a form of coercion. And it's likely to get candidates standing who say they will support the party line even if that's not how they feel. Of course, they should then behave as they said they would during their campaign. But then changing their tune after getting into power is nothing new, although now it's done at a party level rather than an individual level.

What it boils down to is that right now we have a system where we effectively vote for the party we want. Not the person. Given the existance of parties it's very hard to unpick this, and no system is going to be perfect, but right now I feel that it's swung too far in the parties favour.

But what really is offensive about this is that the whip system is a major mechanism leading to the centralisation of power in the party executive. For the governing party that's typically pretty close the PM and cabinet. Centralisation of power is a bad thing. It is directly in conflict with the most basic principles of democracy. And this has been getting worse. It's a trend Thatcher started, but Blair has continued apace.

New Labour for example is a radical departure from Old Labour. Many Labour voters are voting for older Labour principles and Labour MPs who've been in office, or at least in politics since well before New Labour existed. But the party they have actually got now is getting more like the Tories every day. (So much so that Cameron almost seems to be trying to position the Conservatives to the left of Labour!). Without the whips this would have been virtually impossible, because the Labour MPs would have had more power.

So, what I'm essentially arguing for is that every vote in the house should be a free vote. The Lord's works more that way, and it does seem that generally it's more effective at engendering real debate. And that's ultimately what we want. When policy is suggested by Cabinet, we don't want Parliament to rubber stamp it. We want them to debate it. To tear the idea apart, to test it to destruction, and in doing so make sure it's a good idea and make sure it really will do what's wanted. Right now we have a system where debate is stifled, and any idiot idea dreamt up by cabinet gets forced through. And that's why we've had so many policy failures - because those policies haven't had to withstand the fire of debate first.

In the extreme this would mean the collapse of the party system. And it's interesting to note that this is not a new idea. In the early days of the US republic parties were banned. This was because they lead to exactly the problems we are seeing know, and that was considered corrupt. The Republican party was the first party the reemerge as a power block, and there the idea of a party-less system died.

I'm not convinced that a system entirely without parties would work - it would be too hard o keep track of, but getting rid of the whips would at least restore some honour to a tainted system.

Bloody Lawyers

There are too many lawyers in politics. Blair was a lawyer, a barrister in fact. Roughly a third of the cabinet are lawyers, or trained as such, and this distorts the way in which the cabinet functions.

Allow me to explain. Our legal system, in which lawyers are trained, is an adversarial one. Two advocates take opposing sides of the argument and each one tries to make their case in support of their side to the best of their ability. This is a reasonable where the question to be answered has a yes/no answer, such as in the case of guilty V not guilty, so long as both possible arguments have advocates. That's something our legal system guarantees.

But the risk with this approach is that when you choose your position too soon, you can become blind to other, better, alternatives. We've seen it with government policy over and over again, they propose some action, and then look for arguments to support the policy. When they are presented with evidence that doesn't support the policy, rather than reevaluating the policy, and looking for ways to improve it they instead try to discredit the evidence or frequently, to discredit the source of that evidence. This makes it impossible for them to move beyond their own prejudice, to find better solutions to the problems the country faces.

The alternative is the scientific process. Scientists work by developing a hypothesis, and then develop experiments which will reveal evidence to either support or disprove the hypothesis. The important point here is that there isn't a strong attachment to the hypothesis. It's the evidence that matters. So if the evidence says the hypothesis is wrong, then it's time to get a new one.

To ignore evidence which opposes your preconcieved ideas is foolish, arrogant, lazy, and leads, inevitably, to poor decisions. And the way lawyers are trained to work makes them more vulnerable to this way of thinking. Since in a trial someone else has the responsibility of taking the other point of view, it's less of a problem, but in defining policy there may not be a balancing voice, and even if there were, these are not simple yes/no questions, so it's not possible to represent all possible views. Given that, the scientific process is more appropriate and safer than the adversarial one.

We need leaders who have the intellectual honesty to see when the evidence tells them their ideas need to be revised, not leaders who hide the evidence and ignore it. We need leaders who can look at all the evidence and listen to what it is telling them. At the moment too few have these skills, we have too many lawyers and not enough scientists (or other rational thinkers).

House of Lords reform

Some time ago the government started to reform the House of Lords by doing away with hereditary peers. Since then no obvious progress has been made, bogged down, mostly, by a lack of vision about what to turn the Lords into.

Suggestions range from a fully elected house to a fully appointed house. My own view is that both these extremes are wrong. Here's why...

Firstly, as usual, we need to think about what we're trying to achieve. The Lords has an important role in current politics, It is the revising chamber, responsible for assessing legislation and amending it. Since many Lords have great experience in politics and law, and many other walks of life their expertise here means that impractical or ill-advised legislation can be adjusted before it is passed.

On the other hand however, the Lords is an appointed or herediary body. Over 90 Lords represent the hereditary peers even after the 1999 reforms. To many people this presents a democratic deficit, and they advocate an elected second chamber. There is also an issue that while the Church of England is well represented in a multicultural England Muslims, Jews and other faiths are not represented at all. Nor are agnostics or atheists explicitly.

So, the question we need to answer is how do we retain the function of the Lords while removing some of the current flaws.

For the Lords to function its members must have a depth of experience. Government touches on many areas of life, and so the Lords needs to have experience in those many walks of life. So my suggestion is this, various professional organisations, such as the BMA, various unions, Police forces, architects, the military, scientists, educators, various religious groups and so on should each elect amongst themselves a small number of people to enter the Lords. At the moment the Church effectively does this already - archbishops and bishops already sit in the house, but only for as long as they hold that office. I suggest that the various professional bodies elect Lords every five years or so, or perhaps for 15 years, but reelecting one 3rd every five years to give a less abrupt transition.

This would ensure that bills coming from the commons could be examined by people who had relevant experience in the various departments that would be affected. It would be a meritocracy - ensuring that we get the most capable people in government (and I note here that many Lords are very highly skilled, something an elected house might lose). At the moment there are a large number of cross bench Lords who are not affilliated to any party, but bring great wisdom. My scheme would enhance this, whereas most other suggestions would weaken it, and this would be a tragic loss.

I see no benefit in having to houses both elected by the same mechanism. They exist to do different jobs, and so different mechanisms to appoint members doesn't seem inappropriate.

Avoiding polarisation

Great post here about the importance of not getting polarised.