This reform isn’t poisonous. It’s soulless and that’s worse

The Labour movement column

By Anthony Painter / @anthonypainter

One of the remarkable things about Michael Braddick’s “God’s Fury, England’s Fire” – his new history of the English Civil Wars – is the deep sense you get about English society in the early-to-mid seventeenth century. Of particular interest is the way in which he describes English civic life of the time. The most surprising aspect is the degree of civic activism in Stuart England.

As Braddick puts it:

“English people were encouraged by practice and precept to be active for the public good. Self-government was crucial to the order of local communities and also to the public image of those individuals responsible for it – officeholders cultivated the image of virtue necessary to carry out their duties to the public good.”

At times it reads like Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and one can certainly see the threads of republicanism and civic virtue that ran from the Old to the New World; though with the latter losing the hierarchy and gaining equality in the process. Braddick reckons that one in ten English adult men held some sort of public office during their lifetime in the period immediately prior to the Civil Wars.

This activism was about the virtue of people contributing to their local parishes, towns and boroughs for prestige but also through an elevated notion of the public good. This civic life is deeply ingrained in our history.

And yet when one reads Nick Clegg’s two major speeches on democratic renewal – one claiming rather preposterously that the Coalition’s constitutional reforms are the most significant since the Great Reform act of 1832 and the other a hectoring Parliamentary performance – the spirit of this is almost entirely absent. It’s all about institutional changes. What could have become an energising mission to reignite our latent civic life has become a petty accountant’s cost-cutting exercise. No reason other than saving a bit of cash or that other national parliaments are smaller was given in his Parliamentary statement on constitutional reform this week (which conveniently ignores both the range and depth of professional political representation in these other countries such as the US which were used as an example.)

John Prescott described the reform package- AV referendum, equalisation of constituencies, 10% cut in the number of MPs, rights of recall for wrongdoing MPs, reform of the House of Lords, changes to Parliamentary process and regulation of lobbying – as ‘poisonous.’ It is not poisonous. It is soulless and that is worse.

Unless we make the case for a virtuous civicism then our politics is defenceless. So if a cost cutter comes along and decides to pare back democratic representation there is no defence against that.

And the problem is this, without a renewed civic culture – one as active as that of seventeenth century England- then there is no resistance to cost-driven or political convenience driven political change other than a barking and powerless Parliamentary opposition. These are the only arguments for reducing the number of MPs. That these arguments work demonstrates the weakness of modern political and civic culture.

Cost drives everything in the coalition’s universe – just read the dry language of the two Clegg speeches and you will see the modern manifestation of New Labour’s managerialism. And we are only a few weeks in. The welfare state is slashed not because it will help people to enhance their lives by, say, getting a job but simply to save cash condemning those people to further marginalisation. And now our democracy is slashed also.

Meanwhile, Labour’s opposition rings hollow. Of course constituencies should be equalised as far as possible- without losing some degree of territorial and social integrity.

But the 10% cut on the number of MPs is a different matter. It is an attempted attack on the advantage to Labour of the distribution of its vote. The academic evidence seems to be that this rear-guard action won’t work.

So it becomes quite simply an attack on democratic engagement driven by petty cost-cutting. For Oscar Wilde, the cynic was a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And this cull of MPs is a cynical manoeuvre. More MPs will be forced to choose between representing their constituents and properly holding the Government to account or scrutinising legislation.

Labour’s strongest approach would be to strongly back the referendum on AV it committed itself to in its manifesto, support the boundary review with the proviso that unregistered voters are taken into account, and oppose the 10% cull on the basis that it will cause material harm to our democracy, the conduct of the Government, and the quality of legislation. It should then resoundingly campaign for AV on the basis that it widens democratic engagement – you have to persuade 50% of voters to back you rather than as low as 29% so you to widen the number of people you engage with.

Beyond that, it should reach for a new expression of hope in our collective and civic life. Men and women should not only be judged by their material and social status – their profession, their house, their car, their social circles- but by what they contribute to their community and the public good. These are austere times. We should search for more than a collective bunker mentality. We need a deep understanding of our rich tradition of civic action and contribution. It is a way of talking about different ways of living our lives that improve the lives of all. It is about values and commitment not simply dry institutional reform.

The coalition, despite much that is welcome in their constitutional reforms, have missed this enormous opportunity. Our 17th century ancestors did this instinctively. What a poor show that 21st Britain is so obsessively watching the pennies that the pounding the streets is not taking care of itself.

Anthony Painter blogs at anthonypainter.co.uk