“So little trouble do men take in the search after truth; so readily do they accept whatever first comes to hand.”
That’s according to Thucydides, writing in the fifth century BC. He is known as the father of political realism, and you can see why. We haven’t come very far in the last two and a half thousand years, have we?
This piece is supposed to be about how to clean up politics, but starting with politicians is probably the wrong place. After all, our MPs didn’t get to Westminster by magic carpet. (We’d know because they would have claimed it on their expenses.) We are responsible for them: we elected them. So if we have deficient politicians, we have to accept our share of the responsibility. We sat down and examined studiously what each candidate promised, and made our shrewd judgement accordingly.
Idiots gonna vote for idiots
Except, of course, we didn’t. We voted according to our witless and uninformed prejudice of the moment. Idiots gonna vote for idiots.
So before we can hope to clean up politics, we might dwell on how to diminish the stupidity quotient in the average human being. While there are self-servers, racists, carpetbaggers, xenophobes and the downright dishonest who fancy their chances, there are always going to be enough witless buffoons among the electorate to give them their place in the sun.
Parties used to keep their MPs in order because their reputation and legitimacy as potential leaders depended on it. They used to represent a particular stratum of society, so they and their voters knew who and what they represented. But as class has broken down and been replaced by smaller interest groups, their objectives have lost definition and MPs have lost their convictions.
What do we want from politics?
What a change from the days of the late George Brown, for one. To watch the great man standing on stage in a packed hall, thundering defiance at his hecklers, was a thing to behold.
But nobody is very clear any more what each party stands for. So MPs have much greater freedom to become whatever the moment seems to offer or require. The so-called ‘broad church’ that was necessary in a two-party system collapses. There can be little discipline when the principles the party is supposed to uphold have become blurred or might have disintegrated entirely.
So that growing lack of a sense of identity is bound to be reflected in our politics. What do we want from politics and politicians? Without those old clear convictions, MPs are more swayed by public opinion, which is usually spectacularly uninformed. We live in a swirl of competing influences in which few MPs, it seems, are prepared to challenge whatever is the idiocy of the day.
Politicians being scared of the mob is not a good look
Those in charge were expected to know more than the man in the street, but these days everybody with a laptop fancies themselves a Jeremy Paxman. Politicians being frightened of the mob is not a good look, but it could be argued that this has been our situation for some years.
Our democracy has been grotesquely debased, and we can easily identify the one politician who has done most to devalue it: Boris Johnson. But he and others could only do so because we, the voters, don’t take it seriously enough.
That probably has to begin at school, so pupils emerge with an appreciation of civics and how it works, and sufficiently developed critical skills to give their vote some meaning. In any case, with the government legislating to reduce the voting age to 16, it seems an essential initiative.
The power to kick in doors
That can only be initiated by a government looking beyond the next fortnight – always a problem for our politicians – and, other than having a death wish, it is difficult to see why they don’t do it.
Having been educated in democracy, voters will be entitled to believe their vote means something: a first preference in influencing politicians over outside players. That includes MPs having outside jobs.
Then the rules must be enforced by making sure the standards authorities have teeth. Whatever the outrage from the Commons, what Peter Hennessy calls our ‘good chaps’ system of government – assuming MPs can be trusted to behave honourably without the need for enforceable rules – has to be abandoned. The Nolan Principles with the right to kick in doors would do it.
Every vote has to count
That leaves party donations. It is a wonder those arguing against tighter restrictions can keep a straight face. In what part of universal suffrage in a participatory democracy are the hugely powerful and the obscenely wealthy permitted to buy up and corrupt the vote?
If every vote is to count, then every party and candidate has to have the same opportunity. That may mean severely curtailing who can donate and how much, or it may come down to funding from the public purse.
Those are other arguments, though either would have dramatic effects on how our elections are run. We would see far more of the people behind the party and its policies: actual activists who believe in something, going out and knocking on doors, just like the good old days. And more events like those George Brown would have recognised.
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