Our MPs are representatives and our Parliament is sovereign. I am happy with that, with reservations. I'm also a Burkean, committed to the place of the Little Platoons, or in the language of modern non-lefty sociology, Nisbet's Intermediate Institutions. So it's hard for me to disagree with Burke's "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement;
and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your
opinion". Well, I reckon he was right here too. Let me explain.
Max Musterman MP sits for Pepsiton, a town in which a third of the population work for the Pepsi plant. Despite that, he is free to declare that he prefers Coca Cola to Pepsi, and even to stand on his hind legs in Parliament and declare that he thinks Coca Cola is the superior beverage. It may be unlikely to win him votes at the next GE, but is within the limits of what representative democracy allows.
Now imagine that instead of just preferring the taste of Coca Cola, Musterman campaigns openly for the closure of the soft drinks plant in Pepsiton and the government funding of a new Coca Cola plant in Cocaville, the town in the next county, caring not that he will be putting his own constituents out of work. That's beyond the limits of representative democracy - Musterman's judgement may trump the opinion of his electors, but cannot get away with acting contrarily to their interests.
Betrayer MPs have taken refuge in Burke's aphorism, and their pusillanimous chums-together defence of the egregious Grieve is on these grounds. They are cruelly mistaken, if not wilfully disingenuous. It is not a matter of Remainer MPs for Leave constituencies disagreeing with the opinions of their electors but acting directly against their interests.
An MP's very first duty is the defence of democracy, of our bloodily-won rights to universal suffrage and the secret ballot, and their first duty to defend the democratic outcome that 17.4m electors chose. Seeking to overturn that democratic outcome betrays not just the interests of an MP's electors but renders them unfit for further service in Parliament.
With five-year fixed term Parliaments and rigid central party control over candidates, a system that gives us convicts clamped with tags and still subject to recall to prison sitting in Parliament, we need a constituency Power of Recall more than ever. Assuredly, with the bar set sufficiently high to prevent vexatious abuse, but enough to allow the voters of Beaconsfield to rid themselves of this rogue Grieve and elect a representative loyal to their democratic duty.
PS For the benefit of those mutton-headed Home Office dags and Common Purpose shills masquerading as senior police officers, the term 'betray' when applied to MPs has been in use since the 18th century - see the Burke quote above.
23 comments:
" It is not a matter of Remainer MPs for Leave constituencies disagreeing with the opinions of their electors but acting directly against their interests"
You forget the "in my opinion" after "interests" and who are you to decide what the best interests of the inhabitants of Pepsi Town are? Especially as those Pepsites seem intent on decoupling Pepsi UK from the American 'parent' company, reformulating the drink to be sugar-free, gluten-free, nicotine and taste-free; rebranding it as 'disPePSi The Drink For The NonGender Generation' and doing a deal with Iron Bru that will cost customers a fortune in the long run.
It is a strength of our system that an MP enjoys a degree of 'immunity' before the law and his constituents. The 'Power Of Recall' is the ballot-box.
So it's hard for me to disagree with Burke's "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion". Well, I reckon he was right here too. Let me explain.
I've always believed Burke was right, but I'm starting to wonder if we need to think about it a bit more and have a debate about the nature of our representative democracy. This isn't just about Brexit, although it is the catalyst.
When Burke was thinking about it Govt spent, what: 15%, maybe 20% of GPP? It also tended to concentrate on the core requirements of Govt: real public health issues not condescending State issues like how many calories in a pizza, defence, security, law and order and foreign affairs. Now it intrudes in to every corner of our lives - personal, business and even the bedroom.
In Burke's day the average adult didn't have access to the information that MPs had, didn't have the time to think about the issues and didn't have the means to communicate with their MPs and fellow citizens in real time. With the Internet we now have the information and means of communication and modern life means we have the time to consider and debate. Just look at the growth in blogs and long form journalism such as Unherd and Quillette. Joe Rogan gets 3m plus viewers and some of his stuff is very very good - he had Jack Dorsey and his General Council on discussing Internet censorship for over 2 hours and that's a fairly hot topic.
I haven't changed my mind, yet, but I'm certainly giving it some thought as I watch our representative democracy being turned inside out by MPs who appear to have give the issue of Brexit a lot less thought than I have.
Parties are the problem. Most MPs in recent years have been, not representatives of their constituents, but delegates of a party Central Office. Many have been parachuted in against local opposition.
One good thing about the current shenanigans is that many MPs have been forced to make decisions for themselves for the first time. Trooping into lobbies like robots is no longer universal.
How to prevent the formation of parties that vote together on all issues has been a problem for democracies for centuries. So has the related question of patronage.
Don Cox
Do you seriously think that MPs (and Lords) are going to vote for anything which weakens the Party System and their power over us? I don't.
Every step on the path to democracy and universal suffrage had to be forced out of them by obstruction of their business and/or violence. They shelter behind the Burkean principle because, in practice, it gives them carte blanche to do whatever they like. And with fixed-term Parliaments, collectively they are safe for up to 5 years before the electorate can give a verdict. By which time the damage has been done.
Grieve has blatantly lied to his Constituents. He said he had accepted the result of the Referendum; he stood on a Manifesto which committed him to voting in favour of leaving the EU; the Single Market; the Customs Union and the control of the ECJ. He has done precisely the opposite. But when his Party Association, with complete justification, held a Vote of No Confidence as a precursor to de-selecting him the Party Grandees and other MPs took his side and criticised the Party Members who had the temerity to expect Grieve to keep his word.
Parliament is corrupt. And corrupt people are not going to do anything to tackle the corruption.
Bollocks as usual ketch.......
" The 'Power Of Recall' is the ballot-box."
By the time that comes around, the damage is done, the guilty have succeeded, the trail's gone cold and the sheep have forgotten.
That's how they've been getting away with it for years.
Imagine driving your car if there was a 30 second delay on every control action you took.
A five year delay in the feedback loop belongs in Dickensian times.
One thing that Raedwald did not mention is that Grieve stood on a party manifesto that supported Leave. Having got elected, he then did just about everything in his power to frustrate Leave and favour Remain.
That differentiates him from Burke, who failed to win Bristol in 1774, the election in which the issue arose: of delegate versus representative. And presumably Burke lost that election, at least in part, because of his stated view - or how it was interpreted by the majority of Bristol voters.
Best regards
I don't think our Goverment (way of) can possibly survive the after effects of Brexit regardless of the result and change MUST happen to restore confidence.
Of course, that change could equally be the side-tracking (relegation to inconsequence) of Parliament by the EU should we be made to remain and post the Lisbon Treaty. After all, isn't this the whole intent of the EU?
The people need to crash the system before the establishment does it to suit themselves.
I haven't checked Grieve's CV but I assume he was always openly 'remain'? So what you're saying is that the Leave voters who voted for him were too stupid to notice the 'QC' and even 'PC' after his name? You vote for a politician you will get one, you vote for a top Lawyer turned politician then you will get everything you deserve...and 'buyers regret' type whinging afterwards is just puerile and makes you sound like that frog stung by the scorpion of fable.
Those saying now 'b-b-but h-h-h-e-e st-st-od on a Leeeeeave manifesto' should surely be aware that Grieve KNOWS that manifesto better than they ever will, hell he probably helped write the bloody thing? He's a QC, you can be damn sure he will know ALL the 'loopholes' and 'get out' clauses that allow him, according to the twisted morals of most lawyers, to maintain and believe he is being true to the letter of it. As Leg Iron once famously said; lawyers is like rats-leave a hole no matter how small and they will get through.
They say 'you can't con an honest man', same goes for political 'betrayal' , you can't be betrayed by a politician unless the vile seeds of traitor-dom are within you yourself.
Imagine driving your car if there was a 30 second delay on every control action you took.-RAC
I drive a '94 ZX Citroen non-turbo diesel automatic held together by prayer, duct tape and rust; your point is?
Why is it such a big deal that the UK continue to be a member of the EU. Its not as if trade will not continue as before.
Power is a great aphrodisiac. EU political leaders feel that despite being an economic superpower, they are humbled by nations who do have military power. Even little Israel can ignore them. Europe's geographic position, and its undoubled economic power, is not reflected in its political influence. This must be humiliating to EU leaders.
I post that the reason why the UK cannot be allowed to leave the EU is that if it leaves, the project to turn the EU into a military superpower, and hence a superpower to rival the USA, will crumble. Britain is the most important EU member when it comes to military and security expertise. Too, its a nuclear power and a member of the UN SC.
Britain cannot be allowed to leave the EU. And if it leaves in whatever deal or form, it must be brought back in again asap.
DP
It's Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle yet again. The Leave fanatics are prepared to tear the baby in half, to make sure that the EU-sympathetic don't get the child, even for a moment.
The baby can be whatever you like, the rule of law, multi-party democracy, parliamentary sovereignty, or the economy in this instance.
Jack Ketch writes: "He's a QC, you can be damn sure he will know ALL the 'loopholes' and 'get out' clauses that allow him ..."
Clearly Jack has decided not to notice the 'non-loophole': of the opinion of Grieve's constituency party.
Whether Grieve himself expected this (no-confidence) outcome is unknown to me. Maybe he viewed/views the sacrifice as worth the benefit. Note however that the whole issue has not yet been played out - either in Beaconsfield or nationally.
Anyway, Jack's assumption that this is a m-m-maaaatttteeeer of laaaawwww, rather than of (subset) public opinion, stretches credulity.
Best regards
Clarence wtites: "It's Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle yet again."
I beg to differ; firstly it's the Judgement of Solomon - or even earlier in Buddhist and in Hindu tradition.
Secondly, I wonder who is the judge? Clearly, if it's Clarence, then Leave is the lying non-mother.
But actually, Clarence is just one of the protagonists.
He writes: "The Leave fanatics are prepared to tear the baby in half, to make sure that the EU-sympathetic don't get the child, even for a moment."
Well, actually the EU-sympathetic have had (most of) the baby since 1992 (the Maastricht Treaty). And they certainly want half or more of it now, if they can't have all of it. And that 'compromise' makes next to no sense, just like half a baby.
Best regards
Nigel has answered Clarence; I was going to write almost the same thing. Leave won, over 80% of MPs voted to trigger Art 50; so - very clearly - the fanatics are those doing anything and everything to Remain.
Clearly Jack has decided not to notice the 'non-loophole': of the opinion of Grieve's constituency party.-N.Sedgewick
Jack has the misfortune to live in Norfolk, home of the "Turnip Taliban" so he knows, as Don Cox points out, that the "constituency party" aren't much of a "non-loophole".
Lets get down to practicalities.....
Not voting will not help.
Spoiling your ballot paper will not help.
Voting for some no hope outsider will not help.
If we are to be ruled by eu dictators then it won't make much difference if the eu diktats are carried out by home grown communists.
Henceforward my method will be to vote for whichever candidate is the strongest contender against the conservative candidate.
If we are destined to be forever stuck in eu Hell then at least we can take revenge on the traitors who put us there.
To quote another C18th writer “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” For 'raise prices' read 'twist things our way'.
Then we add in the lobbyists and the publicists and the newspaper barons. Just check out Edward Bernays - The Father of Spin. That game has got a lot more sophisticated since the days of Adam Smith and Edmund Burke and Bernays. Every senior public servant is trained in how to handle media and politics is stuffed with spin merchants and think tanks, a whole international web of cross coupled interests hidden from the public.
And what might be the purpose of all this scribbling and spinning and contriving? The getting and keeping of power. To prise 'power' away from the EU's sticky hands and place it firmly in the Bullingdon Boy's sticky hands instead.
I rather feel they are wasting their time, the 'power' involved is not much more than a small light bulb. Compared with the real economic power flowing within the EU, the US and Asia they have a very dim bulb indeed. Never mind, Brexit was a project promoted by a small, rich cabal. The effects of globalisation were used to foster the illusion that it was all the wicked old EU's fault that housing and industry in Rotherham had gone down the tubes.
But getting power is the thing, they will discover it is useless later on. Watch the Post Brexit blame game.
Yes, of course it is the judgement of Solomon The Wise etc. Brecht acknowledged that. There's nothing new under the sun.
Most Remain voters are willing to accept peacefully the UK's leaving the EU. So they are ready to compromise. In order not to wreck the economy, the institutions of the UK, peace in Ireland, the UK's Union, and so on, the extremists among the Leave voters need to make accommodations too, but the ERG, the DUP, and their like will not.
Churchill said at the outbreak of war, that one of the evils, against which the UK was now pitted was Bad Faith.
Well, it's perfectly clear, from the recent conduct of the British Right, that exactly that is just another tool in the box to them.
What a shabby spectacle they have made of this country before the world.
Lots of remainiac scum running their gobs as ever. Get the message turds--your cozy middle class BlueLabour paradise is gone for good. It isn't coming back ever.From now on its trouble all the way.
Why is it claimed that those who want to leave the EU are "right wing" ? My impression is that most are working class folk who would normally have voted for Labour. And in the last election, the Labour manifesto promised them what they voted for in the referendum.
Not that there is anything wrong with being right wing, if it means supporting enterprise and small (growing) businesses, and reducing the burden of regulations. And now that the old Labour party has been taken over by a gang of anti-Semitic Marxists, even moderate socialists who support the NHS and unemployment benefits appear as "right wing".
The WA that the EU civil servants prepared and May has been fighting for would wreck the British economy, and destroy the British constitution.
Don Cox
No, Anon, 60-70% of Labour voters voted Remain. The rest either did not vote, or voted Leave. Yes, the Leave vote was mainly working class, but Tory/ukip voters.
Don't confuse constituencies with votes, where both GE and referendum results were very often marginal.
Burke was and is right with regards to representative democracy. However, a referendum is an exercise in participatory democracy, hence those strictures that Burke rightly suggests should usually apply do not. All the more so when voters have been told that what they voted for will happen.
I think I read somewhere that around 2/3rds of MPs who are consistently voting as remainers represent leave voting constituencies.
A recall system is indeed urgently needed. In the meantime I trust the voters will take note of the behaviour of their representatives and vote accoringly at the next GE...
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