The Government's green paper on constitutional reform, "The Governance of Britain" (CM 7170, July 2007) makes proposals to limit the powers of the executive and making it more accountable, to re-invigorate democracy and to address issues on the relationship between citizen and the state.

The green paper considers Parliament to be the central mechanism of oversight: "It is important that Parliament is strengthened to ensure that its own powers – whether ancient or more recently acquired – continue to be exercised effectively within appropriate limits and in a way that means the people whom it serves understand its work and have faith in its decisions."

The green paper also states that, "The Government wants to ensure that the powers that it holds are legitimately owned and fairly used. As explained above, the Government will be consulting on how best to ensure that it has appropriate authority and no more than is required. In the UK’s system, the separation of powers ensures that no one institution can wield too much influence over the others: Parliament, the executive and the judiciary balance each other."

Assertions and facts

So the green paper's constitutional proposals seek to strengthen people's faith in Parliamentary decisions, to ensure the legitimacy and fair use of Parliamentary power and to sustain a separation of powers whereby Parliament, the executive and the judiciary balance each other. Unfortunately these wishes do not pass for more than assertions. The propositions in the green paper fail to address the fundamental question of the legitimacy of Parliamentary power and its fair use. Therefore these proposals will not strengthen people's faith in Parliamentary decisions. The concept presented by the green paper that British governance sustains a separation of powers of the executive, Parliament and the judiciary is not a statement of the facts.

The proposal for a Wheely Bin Democracy for Britain The British government considers the participation of the people of Britain in the decisions which affect them as being largely limited to "local issues" whilst the government retains a strong and largely illicit control over national agendas and budgets which remain under the influence of the political party. New Labour have such a poor opinion of Britons that they consider their interests will be satisfied and their intellectual limits attained if they are encouraged to participate in decisions through "citizen's juries" who, at great cost, will decide on such matters as to where wheely bins should be located or what colour they should be; local authorities will also be held to account on how they handle such vital matters.

The core issue for any constitutional settlement in this democracy is that Parliament be made up of individuals who are faithful representatives of the communities they represent. Any faithful representative requires that the agent, a member of Parliament, is aware of the concerns of those represented as well as their ideas and point of view on different propositions to resolve such issues of concern. Participatory decision making involves representatives transmitting the preferences of their communities (constituencies) on all evaluations of solutions of matters of concern and, indeed, final legislative proposals.

Political parties as collectives representing minority factional interests

At the moment few MPs possess such knowledge since their line is taken from a political party and their interest is focused on those who will vote in support of that party. In Parliament MPs vote in line with their party wishes and not in line with constituency wishes. This is a process which excludes the vast majority of the electorate from meaningful participation in policy formulation but substitutes this by a process of presenting to the public policies thought up by members of these tiny private organizations. The process of a general election sees some of the electorate selecting the least bad set of policies in party manifestos whilst a majority of the electorate, recognizing that they are not electing community representatives but rather political party representatives, do not participate in the voting process.

The result, for the last 30 years has been the election into absolute power, as reflected in the House of Commons voting majority, of small private political factions who do not enjoy the majority of support of the electorate. In spite of their lack of majority support, these minority "governing parties" run governance and can, using their Commons voting majority, force their policies through into law irrespective of the views of the so-called opposition or public at large.

The British constitutional crisis

The status of British democracy is therefore one of a constitutional crisis reflected in the lack of a legitimate representation of the preferences of the electorate and therefore a serious weakening of the legitimacy of anything the government does simply because it does not represent any absolute majority of support amongst the electorate. In more stark terms, the British constitutional crisis is the fact that those who take up the role of governance enjoy no general support amongst the people and therefore do not govern in line with the will of the people. Indeed, much of what govenance does is against the general preferences of the people of the country.

In Britain we speak of Parliamentary democracy but Parliament's business is very much about the settling of decisions on issues of political party interests, as represented by policy propositions. The outcome is largely a foregone conclusion in favour of the interests of the minority faction in power rather than anythng approaching the interests of the majority of the people.

A need for a constitutional settlement which upholds and defends sovereignty

The reason for this bizarre situation is the outcome of the role of representatives or MPs shifting from being community representatives to becoming individuals whose prospects in terms of employment and political future, is bound up in the degree to which they serve their political party. In other words MPs have become the agents of representation of political parties who sponsor and arrange campaign finance. A legitimate and sustainable democratic representation can only be achieved through a process which defends and upholds the sovereignty of the people. Thus this cornerstone of any constitution can only be achieved by organizing governance in a way which reflects the will of the people.

Our current constitution, at the hands of political parties, does not give priority to the defence of the sovereigny of the people but rather it is almost wholly concerned with the management of government coping with the contending wills of political parties. The direct outcome of this evolution is that there are in excess of 50 basic tactics¹ whereby British governance ignores the freely formed preferences of the electorate.

The Governance of Britain - it's proposals

Freedom, It is so important

The recent Green Paper entitled, "The Governance of Britain" sets out a list of proposals for changes in the British constitution. This document does not dwell on such issues as the meaning of sovereignty or the importance of the will of the people. Indeed, such topics do not count as being concerns of the government in the context of constitution. Predictably, since this document has been prepared by a minority faction, the Labour Party, it is mainly concerned with the relative structure of power between different aspects of government administration, law and political parties. There is scant reference to the lack of legitimacy of the degree to which governments constitute a substantive representative body of the electorate or at least one which reflects electorate preferences. Accordingly the legitimacy of imposing unwanted policies is not raised. There is therefore no consideration given to the need to improve the transparency and levels of participation of the electorate in national decision-making. Naturally a more profound consideration of such matters would drawn attention to the fact that better participation requires more faithful representatives rather than individuals whose decisions are controlled by political parties. The discussion of whether political parties are essential for democracy is another one and one which will be covered in another article.

The local democracy substitute

The green paper sees partcipatory democracy for the people of Britain to be restricted to dumbed down local initaitives with citizens juries spending resources on, perhaps, wheely bin use or play park locations. The government wants the real decision-making to remain with the political parties to exercise exclusive control over centralised budgets.

Priorities wrong

The constitutional points refer largely to esoteric issues of the election of bishops and a mixture of issues where the Prime Minister of the Executive currently maintains control. It is interesting that the reason for the issues being addressed is excessive Prime Ministerial patronage of government positions thereby affording the Prime Minster excessive power over the Executive and indeed Parliamentary voting, it hardly touched upon in a meaningful manner. Most of the matters touched upon as priorities for action, or rather the points of concern of the government, can hardly be considered to be factors which raise the profile of the role of the electorate in the national decisions which affect them. Accondingly, whilst masquerading as a document concerned with proposals for a constitutional settlement safeguarding the liberty of the people of Britain, the green paper expresses the views of a group whose authoritarianism expresses itself so overtly that this has become a matter of serious concern to the people.

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¹ "The Briton's Quest for Freedom - Our unfinished journey", McNeill, H.W., Hambrook Publishing Company, Portsmouth, 2007, ISBN: 9780907833017

Updated: 19th May, 2008.