Britain’s politicians are making us a laughing stock. Before last year’s MPs’ expenses scandal the UK, was in the lowest quartile of EU countries in terms of confidence in its national Parliament. Also, electoral turnout in the UK was among the lowest in Europe and the job of MP had one of the lowest levels of public esteem.
What would the picture be like today? The expenses scandal, with all its home flipping, cleaning moats, pornographic videos etc, has reduced public esteem still further. A recent poll suggested that only 13% of the general public trust our politicians to tell the truth.
You think they would learn but they don’t. Five days after the inconclusive general election the three parties are now playing a game of three person poker where all their actions suggest that they are looking to maximise party advantage. They do this while repeatedly saying that they are keeping the national interest paramount. Can’t they see that nobody believes them? Meanwhile we all await the reaction of the financial markets. Thank goodness they have the problems of Greece and the euro to keep them occupied at present.
What can be done to avoid a repeat of this farcical situation? Well first, why don’t we forget the pretence that we have an unwritten constitution and accept that we have no constitution at all. Thus we are at the whim of the politicians who make the rules up as they go along. Such a constitution could set down clear rules and procedures to be followed in such a situation where no party has an overall majority including, possibly, clarifying the role of the monarch.
Secondly, the absence of fixed-term Parliaments in the UK means that another general election is likely to happen in the not too distant future. While a Lib-Con coalition might last a couple of years, I would be surprised if a Lib-Lab-everyone else coalition would last beyond the end of this year given its fractious nature. Once the then-prime minister decided the signs were positive for his party, he could split the coalition and call an election. In 1974, Harold Wilson called a second general election seven months after the first one and won a majority. Gordon Brown might even split a Lib-Lab coalition after a few months and call an election before his departure from prime ministerial office. He could claim it was in the ‘national interest’ for him to stay on as prime minister and the Labour Party might agree with him.
The consequences of this today are probably that no party will want to be held responsible for unpopular decisions that could come back and haunt them at election time and so will avoid making tough decisions for some time to come. Contrast this with Germany where a grand coalition governed, reasonably effectively, for a four year period between 2005-2009 because of fixed-term Parliaments. This is a model we should adopt.
Malcolm Prowle is professor of business performance at Nottingham Business School and a visiting professor at the Open University Business School. He can be contacted via his web page www.malcolmprowle.com
