Reform is fine – but can we really be bothered?

Published on Sunday 24 May 2009 22:27

BRITAIN is currently a reformer's paradise. Public, pundits and even politicians agree that much in the Westminster basket is rotten, and, as a result, oft-proposed and oftener ignored reforms are suddenly the order of the day.

The need for a lean, mean and transparent expenses system is taken as read. Campaigners argue we also need an elected House of Lords, a federal Britain, fixed-term parliaments and to give control to MPs, not party whips. We also need primaries with full-blooded proportional representation to let the public choose and rank candidates. Anything less, they insist, and the public will reject the main parties, the BNP will win seats and there will be mayhem.

Perhaps democrats shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but this mass overnight conversion to the cause of structural reform may not, alone, be enough to revitalise our democracy.

The fly in the ointment is not in the detail of reform proposals – it's us, the voters. Do we really want to put more effort into the democratic process? All the signs are that voters are heading in the opposite direction. Those who have long believed "they're all at it" and "voting only encourages them" can now point to the expenses fiasco and feel perfectly justified as they sink back in their armchairs, dig their feet deeper into the collective Big Slipper and feel absolved of all responsibility to vote, participate, inform themselves or care about how we are governed.

The public's apparent hunger for control of MP selection makes the introduction of US-style primaries look like a popular and rational proposal. But unless the Daily Telegraph conducts a forensic examination of expenses at every election on the public's behalf, how will anyone be able to judge between the merits of the various human beings competing for their vote? Indeed, once they have stopped claiming for every packet of peanuts, second home, set of silk scatter cushions and moat, will the behaviour of MPs be titillating enough to reactivate the Telegraph's cheque-book?

Unless people know candidates in some way, there is only one answer: voters will continue to vote for the rosette, not the person – as they always have done. The "surprise" result of the Glenrothes election is a case in point. Pundits and party activists (even Labour) overlooked the crucial fact that Lindsay Roy was not just any old candidate. He was a local headmaster who had worked in four large Fife schools over a period of 18 years. People knew him – and knew him in the best possible way. Not as a politician, but as the man who helped their children get an education. His victory was more a retrospective vote of thanks for an educational job well done than a vote of confidence in his future ability as an MP.

Perhaps the parties should select more teachers, nurses, doctors and valued public servants to stand as MPs? Otherwise, how can voters distinguish between people they hardly know?

The astonishing impact of the Telegraph notwithstanding, it's the electronic media – particularly TV – that increasingly forms opinion, sets trends and offers access (or otherwise) to those who wish to govern.

And yet, as its power to shape public opinion has grown, TV and radio have largely ditched the old-fashioned hustings programmes that gave viewers and listeners some idea of a candidate's ability to string a sentence together. Last week's Any Questions on Radio 4 featured a Green MEP introduced as having the dubious privilege of being the politician least likely to be recognised if they sat on a bus beside you. But within minutes, her impassioned and eloquent contribution on the kind of Britain she would like to see soon had the audience whooping, cheering and clapping wildly.

Assuming her expenses record reads well, Caroline Lucas is exactly the kind of person disillusioned voters would love to elect. But unless they heard her perform on Radio 4, she wouldn't stand a hope in hell.

Without far more public and broadcaster engagement in the business of hearing candidates perform, sensible sounding reforms, like primaries or PR, will become a recipe for the election of Jeremy Clarkson, Esther Rantzen and Susan Boyle when her singing days are over.

If celebrity and outrage over greed is all that motivates us to vote, our democracy will simply limp along, whatever technical reforms are accepted by a shamed and chastened political class. That's not to say voter involvement or PR are bad things – far from it.

The deep-seated scepticism of the average British voter is unquestionably a function of the first-past-the-post Westminster voting system, which has encouraged a "winner takes all" attitude to government, advancement, expenses and the perks of political office. Governments can change completely after a tiny shift in public opinion – so, with no expectation of regular involvement in the business of governing, MPs have become like dieters bingeing on the nearest packet of digestives, because they are not sure when the next biscuit will come along.

One year in power means five years out – and five already spent climbing the greasy pole. MPs could be out on their bahookeys at any time and "day jobs" might be hard to resurrect. Sadly, that applies to almost everyone these days, so extra compensation for short, unpredictable careers doesn't wash. In general, the young devolved parliaments have understood that – and offer more constant involvement to MSPs. But PR has not lifted Scottish turnout much above 50 per cent – and even after the massive row over MPs' expenses, it looks certain Scottish voters will elect politicians to Europe's most powerful legislature simply and solely on the colour of their party rosettes.

Technical reform alone is not enough to guarantee change at Westminster. If civic society doesn't ditch inertia, disbelief, cynicism and passivity and breathe life into democratic institutions as if they mattered, MPs will remain ossified, distant … and almost inherently unaccountable.