Right to recall would feed the political disconnect

People are lining up today to attack yesterday’s Queen’s Speech announcement for a Right to Recall Bill. “A pretence,” said Tory MP Zac Goldsmith. “A fudge,” said Left Foot Forward’s James Bloodworth. Even Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, moaned that was “a modest recall measure”, blaming the Tories for blocking more radical reform.

Well, thank God for the Tories.

While proponents of a right to recall may point to today’s by-election in Newark as a prime example of where recall could have stepped in, the fact that it is happening rather undermines their point. Patrick Mercer realised that his position as an MP was untenable, and resigned. Democracy in action.

True, not all MPs would have clocked how much trouble they were in and thrown in the towel. In those cases, if an independent authority decides they have committed serious wrongdoing (especially financial impropriety), then allowing voters a short period of time to sign a petition forcing a by-election seems perfectly reasonable. And that’s pretty much what the Government have announced.

However, it should not be broadened beyond that.

A system where an MP could be recalled at any time, for any reason, if enough of their constituents sign a petition (20% seems to be the arbitrary figure bandied around), is one open to abuse. It would hand more power to the wealthy and influential: recall petitions supported by those with the money or platform to publicise them would be the most successful. How often would those be driven by a personal grudge or hobby horse obsession? How many MPs would have to fight off by-election threats because they don’t support an EU referendum? I would much rather they were spending their time representing people rather campaigning for themselves. And no, they aren’t the same thing.

If you want rid of your MP for political reasons, then a general election is the time to do that. They are elected to serve a full term, and during that time will have to make decisions on plenty of pieces of legislation that they have no direct mandate on. We elect them to make those decisions, and at the end of the term if we don’t like the decisions they have made, we get rid of them.

MPs should also feel capable of making unpopular decisions – or at least decisions they know will be unpopular in the short term but believe to have long term gain. A right to recall would scare many into chasing immediate popularity, rather than planning for the long term prosperity of the country. Too many, in fact, seem to driven by this already. We shouldn’t encourage it.

Nor should we encourage the pariah status of politicians. By saying that people should be able to recall MPs at any time is to suggest that they’re always doing something wrong, that they’re always on the take – that they should always be overshadowed by the threat of deselection because, basically, they probably deserve it.

This isn’t a measure that builds trust, it’s one that destroys it. It’s begging for people to run personal, negative campaigns against MPs. This wouldn’t address people’s disenfranchisement with politics, it would feed it.

Do we really want to move towards that type of politics?