{"id":311,"date":"2019-10-16T08:21:11","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T07:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cranleigh.org\/politics\/?p=311"},"modified":"2023-11-15T08:40:12","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T08:40:12","slug":"brexit-and-constitutional-damage-how-democracies-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cranleigh.org\/politics\/2019\/10\/16\/brexit-and-constitutional-damage-how-democracies-die\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit and constitutional damage; how democracies die."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I read a book last year called How Democracies Die<\/em> which was written by\ntwo American academics who had clearly been motivated to write it due to the\nrise of Trump in the USA. However, rather than being just another hatchet job\non Trump, it was instead a very thoroughly researched study on the degradation of\ndemocracies ranging from Germany and Italy between the wars all the way through\nto the likes of Turkey and Venezuela in modern times. Clearly there was\nconsiderable focus on the United States however, where bitter partisanship and\npolitical brinkmanship have become the norm since the 1990s. Democracies\ndegrade and die not just because of over-mighty executives, as you might expect\nliberal American commentators to conclude, but also through dysfunctional\nlegislatures, politicised judges (and the tendency of parties to a political\ndispute constantly to resort to the courts), and polarisation and intolerance\nin public debate and the media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the recipe given for\nmaintaining healthy democracy? Two core ingredients: tolerance and forbearance.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first of these \u2013 tolerance \u2013\nis clearly at a pretty low ebb in both Westminster and (perhaps to a lesser\nextent) in the country at large. I do not intend to cover this phenomenon here,\nsuffice it to say that John Stuart Mill would be less than proud of some of the\npublic discourse today in Britain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what a lack of tolerance\nleads to is a lack of forbearance. This is a term less familiar to many, but it\nbasically means that those with power should exercise it with restraint, and\nthat the spirit of the law should be seen as more important than its technical\nletter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This forbearance, if properly\nexercised, should avoid reducing politics to its lowest common denominator. And\nforbearance is very important indeed in a constitution that functions through\nprinciples and conventions, rather than codified and entrenched rules. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the current Brexit stand-off\nwe see many political actors letting go this forbearance and using every trick\nin the book to gain partisan advantage. Yet though this advantage may be real,\nit is also temporary, whereas the damage it does may be long-lasting and even\npermanent. Here are some of the most egregious recent examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. A partisan Speaker<\/strong>. One of the Labour\nParty\u2019s parting shots just before Gordon Brown lost the 2010 election was to\nconnive in the proposing and electing of a Commons Speaker who the great\nmajority of Conservative MPs found actively irritating and distasteful. Whether\nthey were fair to think this is beside the point. Using the fact that John Bercow\nwas then a Tory to disguise their intention, Labour put into the referee\u2019s\nchair a man who about half the Commons chamber distrusted. This broke with the\nlong-standing convention of selecting a Speaker who commanded respect on both\nsides of the house, and who would be trusted to be impartial. Since then,\nBercow has become a deeply divisive and destabilising figure. On his watch,\ndebates have degenerated into hateful ranting and undignified stunts. Though he\nhas claimed (often convincingly) to be upholding the right of parliament to\nscrutinise the government, he has also openly and gleefully taken sides over\nthe major debate of the day \u2013 Brexit \u2013 when taking decisions on parliamentary\nprocedure and in handling debates. As he resigned, he was cheered by one side\nof the commons while given the cold shoulder by the other. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Irrespective of\nwhere you stand in party politics and over Brexit, this indicates just how\nseriously Bercow has, through his own lack of forbearance, undermined the\nimpartiality of the Speaker\u2019s role. We can now look forward to Speakers in the\nfuture being forced in by parties to carry out partisan agendas, rather than put\nin place by cross-bench agreement to conduct the business of the Commons\neven-handedly. This will degrade the integrity of Parliament as an institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n