24 September 2015
Power To The People?
Keeping the role of politicians in context.
By John Watson
Many of those who in the 1960s demonstrated in the streets crying “Power to the People” would have found it difficult to explain what they meant by it. After all, then as now, we lived in a parliamentary democracy with the government elected by the people to govern in their interest. So what more did “Power to the People” entail?
The answer to that lies in the distinction between direct and indirect power. Under the British system, at least as it works traditionally, power is exercised by politicians and the only involvement of the public is in choosing between them. Of course, that doesn’t mean just choosing between the approaches of the main parties – new people or new movements can be introduced to pursue a particular agenda – but the exercise of power remains indirect. The elected representative stands in the middle, as the representative and sometimes the leader of his or her supporters but, more importantly, as the person to whom they delegate the running of the country.
Generally, this has a damping effect on political change. Leaving the demagogue and the rabble-rouser aside, the politician belongs to a sort of priesthood, the Westminster bubble if you like, which sees the world through the prism of a special experience and imposes the discipline of its own expertise onto the raw emotion of public opinion. Like an intellectual Polyfilla, that expertise fills the gaps in public knowledge. What need for electors to analyse an issue when the politicians who they trust can do it for them? It is a system which works well for a public which is not particularly politically engaged but wants to be governed by people who it trusts, while getting on with its own affairs. The British public to a tee.
Perhaps it was this dealing through an intermediary which the demonstrators resented. Perhaps they felt that the system was too slow, that the presence of the political class at the centre of the process held it up to much, gave too much protection to the status quo, was an impediment to much-needed reform. They wanted access to direct power now, power unfiltered by the establishment, in rather the same way as Protestants in the Reformation wanted access to God without the mediation of a priest.
Even in the 1960s that didn’t get very far, but the argument rumbles on and every now and again the idea that power should be exercised by the people rather than their representatives comes back to the top. You can see it in the use of referenda to decide matters of constitutional importance. Perhaps it is right that an issue as important as EU membership should be decided by a plebiscite but it means that a lot of the votes will be cast by those who have a very limited grasp of the issues. Maybe the “wisdom of crowds” will sort that out. Then you glimpse the idea of direct power again in Mr Corbyn’s desire to see policy made by the grassroots of his party rather than being imposed by more experienced people in the shadow cabinet. That could certainly translate popular sentiment into action more quickly than the present system, but what if popular sentiment kept changing its mind? Then he could regret losing the damping mechanism.
There are other ways in which popular opinion can push the political agenda too. Politicians have always kept an eye on the media to see how the policies they formulate are regarded by the public. Newspapers, the BBC, pundits of every form, represent a route by which external opinion can be mobilised to push the powers that be to override their instincts and follow a more populist agenda. One might think that this provided a channel for public opinion to exert direct power and, so in a sense it does, but as long as the media are experienced and knowledgeable, it merely replaces one filter by another. If a Government moves in response to pressure from the press, the overruling of its decision-making mechanisms are compensated by the editorial restraints of the newspaper. If they all live in the same political bubble, is the quality of decision-making likely to be much different?
Nowadays though, pressure from the media comes in a less diluted form as the bloggers and the twitteratti get to work. Sometimes these are respected commentators, their ideas refined and thought through. Something they are nothing of the sort, just the demagogues and rabble-rousers who have always been with us but with a reach extended beyond recognition by the power of the Internet as they try to whip up public sentiment for a pet cause. “British jobs for British people”, “Join top actors in online petition for change in the rules,” the blandishments on social media come thick and fast but they’re generally just calls based on emotion and, unless of course in the case of the actors the rules relate to the theatre, little thought will probably have been applied to them.
Carefully orchestrated media campaigns make life difficult for the politicians. On the one hand, their careers depend on their staying in touch with public sentiment. On the other, it is their task to override that sentiment with their judgement and experience. One has only to look at the difficulties that Angela Merkel has got into over asylum seekers to see the dangers of being swept along with an emotional tide. Compared to that Mr Cameron’s more thoughtful approach looks distinctly competent. It is healthy for the public to have emotions. It is the role of the politician to look carefully before following them.
There are big political shifts taking place at the moment. The virtual elimination of the Liberal Democrats at the election and the differences between the Labour leader and its MPs are bound to lead to some sort of reorientation. The Tories too will have their share of tensions as seats are reallocated following boundary changes. Politicians struggling for their survival are unlikely to look attractive to the public and, when that follows the expenses scandal, the general confidence in those who inhabit the Westminster bubble could become very low. It is worth, then, standing back for a moment. Not very well remunerated and with the prospect of long hours, MPs make the decision to follow a very unstable career. They do so for many reasons: personal aggrandisement, idealism, the wish to contribute; the mix of motives is individual to each of them. What we mustn’t forget is what they contribute. You can call it damping, you can call it obstruction, you can call it refining but the main purpose of the political class in a democracy is to save us all from the most dangerous enemy – ourselves.
