And the MPs who think that wrecking our parliamentary democracy is a price worth paying

The media is excitedly bombarding us minute by minute with ever more “information” about the antics of our politicians as they wrangle over Europe. But why don’t they tell us about the spectacular damage this is causing? The egotism, self-interest and incompetence of our leaders and representatives in Westminster is by now not merely inhibiting sound government. It’s about to make it impossible.

The slow-motion car crash of Brexit is taking place in the context of what was already a decade of chronic ineptitude and the relentless decline in the credibility of MPs and ministers. They took a massive kicking with the expenses scandal, totally failed to regulate the banks after the 2008 financial crisis, refused to take any action at all to deal with the ever-growing misery in social care provision, and couldn’t even find a way to treat their staff and one another decently.

The departure from the EU, if it had any point at all, was intended to bring about the most important political, social and economic changes since the Second World War. There has been a lot of misguided talk of “sovereignty” and the independent power of the state, and strangely very much less about improving our democracy – that’s the independent power of the citizen. So perhaps we could have foreseen that the latter might be ditched as MPs jostled to achieve the relationship with Europe that they specifically, personally, individually and they alone wanted.

The application of the grand idea of Brexit has run into trouble, which as most people are aware in is this:

… rightly or wrongly the vast majority of MPs now want to achieve a workable leaving arrangement with the EU, and yet

… they differ so strongly with one another about what the arrangement should be that any deal which is reached (assuming that reaching a deal is even possible) would be rejected, and

… if there is no deal or they scrap the deal we’ve got they will not be able to agree on what to do next.

That’s not a little difficulty of puffed up egos. That suggests quite a big failure of our political system, an already ragged parliamentary democracy in urgent need of reform.

Idiocy and self-interest have led us cumulatively to anarchy in parliament

Any attempt to itemise the particular crimes leading up to and since the EU Referendum risks personalising the issues and suggesting that we are just the victims of a few well-known here-today-and-gone-tomorrow political figures. The problem is actually very much deeper. But we do need to reflect on a few of the cases of idiocy and self-interest which have led us cumulatively to anarchy in parliament.

Referendums are rarely used in Britain, and when they are the government which sanctions them always goes to a huge amount of trouble to ensure the result is the one they want. Arguably this makes the exercise no more an indication of people’s real views than casual opinion polls, which as we know are conducted all the time and with ever-changing results. A referendum is just one of the spanners in the political toolbox, and hardly justifies the sanctity of descriptions which suggest they are the definitive voice of the people, as so many nervous EU opponents constantly claim.

David Cameron, however, broke new ground with his referendum. He used this tool to settle a nagging internal problem in the Tory Party (which rather disagreeably meant he had to ask the public what they thought) and accidentally dropped his spanner in the works. Guided by the arrogant complacency and superficiality which characterised his time as prime minister, he allowed leave campaigners to tell him what question to put on the ballot paper. This was so they wouldn’t complain too much about the eventual result. In fact he set up the whole process to benefit them. And, unsurprisingly, as in most UK referendums, the result was the one favoured by the people who set the question.

The sad thing is that, having participated in the Tory’s bungled self-interested charade, the whole of our political establishment were by now complicit in it, and as “democrats” they could hardly denounce it for what it was. So everyone has to toe the tired “will-of-the-people” line, whether or not they believe in it. This craven behaviour is especially noticeable in the Labour Party, where party unity and the fear of upsetting voters means a post-Brexit commitment to nothing except a bunch of things they don’t like.

   Insisting another referendum would be damage democracy is as daft as saying wind farms risk harming the air.

Even worse, is the blatant lie from the eloquent Jacob Rees-Mogg and his 40-strong rabble of followers (yes, 40 out of 315; who’d have thought they could attract so much attention?) that a second referendum would be undemocratic. This is wrong on so many fronts. But perhaps their most glaring assault on democracy is the insistence that people should not be allowed to change their minds when they are in possession of better information, ie once the details of a Brexit deal are known. Education and democracy have gone hand in hand since the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century. One does not work without the other. Informed people make better decisions. No?

Rees-Mogg may take his views from a period before that, but he is quite clever enough to understand that democracy operates on a variety of levels and in many different ways. We’ve had a range of arrangements for referendums in this country, usually setting a winning threshold far higher than a hopelessly equivocal 50%. Voting systems and voting ages vary throughout the UK, let alone the options available elsewhere in the world (among which Westminster elections are almost the most archaic). Margaret Thatcher’s resignation in 1990 was triggered by a mass public protest in London against the poll tax, so democracy can sometimes even dispense with voting.

We might legitimately argue over whether a second referendum is a good idea. But insisting that it would be damaging to democracy is as daft as contending that wind farms risk harming the air.

The irony of course is that the pro-Brexit politicians who are largely dominating the public debate with an insistence that this is all about the will of the people won’t actually give “the people” a look in. In any case the impasse that the politicians have reached happens to be the result of a battle of wills among those who are well-heeled enough not to be too worried about the consequences.

This politically amoral, posturing blusterer could easily end up in error as our next prime minister

Obviously we should also consider the heinous contribution of Boris Johnson, if only because this politically amoral, posturing blusterer could easily end up in error as our next prime minister. Johnson resembles Donald Trump in two respects, crazy hair and the knowledge that persistently lying to the public is effective – not because it persuades but because it confuses. It’s almost surreal to hear him still talking about the huge financial benefits of Brexit to the NHS and greatness which lies ahead for the UK when almost everyone else has dropped the pretence.

So what has that to do with democracy? He’s a scary man whose belief system involves replacing the postulated existence of a deity with the real and terrible existence of Boris Johnson. Brexit is his Big Bang. His irrepressible, inexhaustible political ambition is to dumbfound us all by filling the universe with this dark matter. Democracy for him means buffoonery, obfuscation and conscienceless deception. And for some people he is the first choice for our next leader.

There’s little consolation in knowing that he is not alone in the political multiverse. The endless eruptions of bickering politicians about the minutiae of Brexit negotiations, which in many cases they are can’t even be fully informed about, are an easy source of news for Westminster-based journalists. The public may see them as tedious and demeaning. But they are frequently also calculated efforts to determine the future of the country. For some MPs squabbling is a deliberate tactic to render a final deal with the EU either unachievable or unworkable. Others, even the well-intentioned, are just reckless or self-seeking. But the outcome is the same.

Usually when we challenge the continuing existence of a rigid two-party system in the UK we are told that it is necessary to bring balance, clarity and stability to two unruly houses of parliament. Well, it has stopped doing that, and there is nothing to take its place.

And what of Theresa May herself? She is often presented as a victim in all this mess, an indefatigable (Thatcher-like) battler confronting the intransigence of the EU megalith and keep the cabinet together. But irrespective of her negotiating stance, her deal with the blackmailers in the DUP to stay in power is probably the most appalling inversion of democratic principles in the whole miserable scene. She was warned clearly and bluntly while she was wrapping up the squalid £1 billion bribe with the Protestant extremists that this would have dire consequences for her capacity to negotiate over the Northern Ireland border. She persisted, and has put the economic future of the whole of Ireland at risk. Her disregard for the people she was elected to govern is breath-taking.

It’s an unmanageable political elite with no clear goal in sight other than their own survival

As with so many others in government and Parliament, her arrogance and self-interest show that, far from being a great victory for democracy, the EU referendum has been the occasion for burying it. This is not an issue about decisions which the public may agree or disagree with. It’s the staggering dereliction of public duty by an unmanageable political elite who have no clear achievable goal in sight other than the survival and success of their own factions.

Neither is this an issue about bout ministers and MPs who believe that any level of cynicism, disloyalty, self-importance and political ambition can justified the end in the political game. Effective politicians have probably always thought like that. There is a crisis because so many of them simultaneously think they have a right to misbehave as independent spirits, irrespective of any impact they have on their colleagues, parties, leaders and the public. A leaderless government is a price worth paying. A disastrous no-deal departure from the EU is a price worth paying. A divided nation for years to come is a price worth paying. It’s the cult of the individual gone made.

We are seeing the credibility of our creaking parliamentary democracy eroded at a time when liberal values are under threat in many parts of Europe. And we are facing a potential crisis in a stalemate parliament where this democracy is so damaged that it may stop functioning altogether. We can’t tell yet where the coming years of negotiations with the EU (or lack of them) will lead us or what the fallout will be. But we can be sure there will be a cost, and that the cost will be borne by the rest of us, however we voted or didn’t vote in the 2016 referendum.