The New Parliament:
Hanging Together...
or Hung, Drawn and Quartered?

By Clark Nida

What interesting times we live in!

For the last few months Britain, along with the rest of the world, has had some extraordinary bad luck. For which the government is hardly to blame. Globalisation has led to global financial speculation on an egregious scale. George Soros, who ought to know something about international finance (he made a billion dollars when Britain was forced to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate mechanism in 1992) declared in 2009 "We witnessed the collapse of the financial system[...]It was placed on life support, and it's still on life support. There's no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom." This "life-support" has entailed a truly vast transfusion of government money by the British government and others, to bail it out and restore confidence in the market.

The immediate result of this has been to stop complete economic collapse in Britain, but to massively increase the National Debt. Now we're being told, by the very people who grow fat by speculating on our life-blood by juggling it with the life-blood of other countries, that the government must curb public spending -- indeed "make a bonfire of it" -- the very words I read recently. Thus we are lectured on the virtues of thrift and good housekeeping by the very people whose reckless greed has got us where we are. It's like burglars breaking into your house, nearly wrecking it, being arrested and then insisting you stand bail for them in order to restore the underworld's confidence that you are still a person worth burgling.

Who represents these people? Who are their friends?

Why, those who are calling loudest for massive cuts in public expenditure: the Conservatives. Our economic plight, though it could have been far, far worse, has made things bad for many of us. Just as elephants do when they fall into the hunters' trap, we have been looking around for a scapegoat to trample. It is only human (elephantine, too) to suppose that if the government was meant to be in charge, then it must all be the government's fault. This is like saying that if the fire brigade have saved your life when you foolishly let your house catch fire, then since they were the only people in any sort of control at the time, they should obviously be blamed for the incident and sent packing.

The national dailies, the organs of a handful of oligarchs, have been going up every filthy crack to encourage us to take this self-destructive attitude. The Prime Minister, they have determined, Has Got To Go. Why? Because, far from being ready to appease reckless greedy financial speculators by making a bonfire of government spending, he has made it clear that he would rather shield ordinary folk from financial distress. Indeed he would rather make a bonfire of the unbridled financial market which squarely bears the guilt for what has happened. Nobody expects wisdom and justice to emerge from the minds of ordinary people. But one has cause to feel disappointed at such self-defeating stupidity.

The Conservatives have been slippery and devious throughout the whole campaign. They have made it clear that they want power, whatever it costs, especially what it's going to cost us ordinary people. Sensing that people naturally want things to be different from the way they are, they have promised "Change". They've been careful to promise little else, except to hint at the sorts of austerity measures which made the reptilian Thatcher regime so odious and kept the Conservatives out of office ever since.

It is not at all clear that we need let them back into office even yet. They speak for scarcely more than a third of the electorate (36%). However, due to an artefact of our unrepresentative voting system, this gives them a considerably greater proportion (48%) of the "voting" seats in Parliament. However they are 16 seats short of a commanding majority. So they cannot govern without making alliances -- with people for whom there is little love lost on either side. The foxes must make common cause with the chickens if they are not to see the prospect of tender meat to fill their bellies snatched away.

The British Parliament has 650 seats. Five of these are held by Sinn Fein, whose MPs refuse to take the oath of allegiance and accordingly are not permitted to vote. Together with the speaker's seat, this amounts to 6 non-voting seats, leaving 644 voting seats. Half this number plus one (323) represent a notional "winning post", though it would be possible to get most legislation through Parliament with fewer supporters. Not however with 16 fewer, as is the case for the Conservatives.

Labour and Liberal Democrats together command 314 seats, nine short of the target 323. Judicious alliances with people whose halitosis they could stand might give them another 14 seats -- enough to keep Conservatives out of office. For the moment, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has no reason to resign. He will only be compelled to do so if the Liberal Democrats announce they are accepting the Tory whip (ie voting consistently with the Conservatives).

This precarious arrangement might last for anything from 3 to 12 months, during which time the Prime Minister, whoever that turns out to be, will seek by some cheap populist measures to get the country in a good enough mood to call another general election -- and hopefully win an absolute majority.

Very rarely in British history do individual MPs enjoy so much power as they do right now. But it is power to be exercised with extreme care, because those same MPs will be punished by their constituents if they go against the reasons they were voted into office in the first place. Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, should remember that those who voted for his party did not do so because they wanted to see Conservatives back in office. Else why not vote Conservative?

The Conservatives, for their part, should remember that they enjoyed yesterday's swing in their favour not because people have any great love of what they stand for. But if there is one thing that people are sick of in British politics, it is the endemic stitching-up by powers and principalities serving nobody but themselves. People wanted to loosen the seams and let some fresh air into what had become a very fusty Parliament.

And that is exactly what the people have managed to do.

If there is one thing this Parliament has a mandate for, it is to institute new systems of election and ways of government which are less unrepresentative and more accountable to the public. Neither Labour nor Conservatives have expressed any desire for this to happen. Far from it. All they want it seems is to get back to Business As Usual, in the way they've grown accustomed.






© 2010, Clark Nida.


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