Gordon Brown is as constant and immutable as a slab of Grampian granite. Whatever the problem, its solution is always the same: more regulators, more politicians, more money.
His proposals for constitutional reform (which we should take seriously as the latest poll shows Labor leading by 27 points) are a repeat of the reforms he led in the late 1990s. Essentially, he wants politics to be professionalised, formalized and controlled.
This approach wasn’t exactly successful the first time. Paying councilors did not improve the quality of local government. Scottish devolution has not “killed nationalism to stone”, as George Robertson promised in 1995. External regulators have not made MPs more honest. The reform of the Lords did not produce a more diligent upper house. Yet undeterred, Brown offers more of the same.
It’s a shame to some extent because much of his analysis is spot on. The UK is indeed over-centralised. In no other European country (with the exception of Malta, which is practically one extended agglomeration) do local authorities collect a smaller proportion of their own money. London has a disproportionate burden that no other capital can match – although this has been true since the Middle Ages and will not be remedied by moving civil servants or creating yet more regional development funds.
But if the gloomy Langtonian’s diagnosis is correct, his prescription is very wrong. By doubling down on New Labour’s mistakes, he dispenses more of the medicine that made the patient sick.
He is right, for example, that voting is cheap, especially at the local level. Not because the public is apathetic – there were times during the insane debates about identity politics, Brexit and decarbonisation when I wouldn’t have minded a little more apathy – but because people think local elections don’t matter. They do not raise school standards, nor determine the pay of municipal officers, nor even, in any meaningful sense, determine the rate of council tax. Two-thirds of people who bothered to register didn’t vote on the day.
Voting ceased to be consistent because power shifted from elected representatives to appointed officials. Who cares what color rosette your representative wears when the key decisions are made by the Roads Agency, the Planning Inspectorate, the Environment Agency, the Health and Safety Executive and the rest?
Brown and the Labor co-authors of his report retain a poignant faith in the ability of such bodies to do good. There is something faintly comical in their belief that they can pursue decentralization by creating yet more statutory bodies. Among other things, they recommend a Council of Nations and Regions, a Council of the United Kingdom and a Council of England, and an Assembly of Nations and Regions to replace the House of Lords.
Indeed, the way to move power from Whitehall to town halls is by allowing local authorities to raise their own revenue and set their own budgets. Do this—at least to the extent that most other states do—and we’ll see turnout increase and the quality of candidates improve. But while parties often discuss fiscal decentralization in opposition, they never implement it in power. The thought of empowering all these opposition-held local governments is too much.
“We support fiscal decentralization when appropriate and useful,” the report said. “The shadow chancellor must make any announcements in due course.” Yes right. Quite apart from a reluctance to change the Whitehall machine, Labor is more interested in redistribution than local autonomy. In the end, it will always keep crappy neighborhoods solvent through subsidies instead of letting them take over.
The same prejudice renders proposals for a semi-federal United Kingdom meaningless. Brown is dealing with a real problem, albeit one of Labour’s own making. The creation of Holyrood and the creation of a separate Scottish political and media institution fueled calls for further devolutions of power. When Scots are given a binary choice between independence and the status quo, the numbers are fairly even. But add a third option—further autonomy that falls short of full separation—and it gets 70 percent approval.
The problem is that it is not at all clear what new powers the Scottish Parliament might gain. It is already one of the most powerful sub-national assemblies in the world. The only thing it lacks is full fiscal autonomy; but full fiscal autonomy would leave Scotland with a deficit equivalent to £2,200 per person.
This deficit is the logical consequence of the current arrangement. Why would Scots vote for lower spending when Barnett’s formula ensures they get £6 for every £5 in England? A stronger link between taxation, representation, and spending would create space for right-of-center politics north of the border. But, naturally, this is of little interest to Labour.
Because he won’t provide full budget control, Brown has to propose the kinds of policies that are essentially likely to create more grievances. He even proposes giving Scotland its own foreign policy – a step that would mark the end of the UK as a serious world power.
All this, of course, requires a written constitution. And not a minimalist document that is satisfied with defining the powers of various bodies. No, we should have “an express constitutional requirement to rebalance the UK economy” and “new, constitutionally protected social rights – such as the right to health care for all based on needs”. These are exactly the types of issues that should be determined by our elected representatives. Putting them outside the reach of the general election will exacerbate the democratic disenchantment that this document aims to address.
Which brings us to the fundamental weakness that underlies Brown’s entire approach. Despite his professed concern for democracy, he instinctively trusts regulators and commissions more than voters.
Much of the document is taken up with proposals to limit what MPs can do through a “new independent anti-corruption and cronyism commissioner”, restrictions on outside work and the like.
No doubt all this will be popular. You can always get applause by asking MPs to be banned from doing X or Y. But shouldn’t the regulator be the electorate? Until 1995, MPs were answerable only to their constituents. Then came the slop and Nolan and IPSA and various officials determining what was and wasn’t allowed. So ask yourself this: Has the caliber of our parliamentarians improved significantly since 1995?
The more we create intermediaries to tell MPs what is prohibited, the more we replace a culture of conscience (“is this right?”) with a culture of compliance (“is this technically within the rules?”) I can’t I don’t feel that treating MPs in this way turns off talented candidates. And I have no doubt that making them completely dependent on the state for their income will accelerate this trend.
Labor wants to ban extra-parliamentary work, except in jobs it deems desirable (“employment exemptions necessary to maintain professional membership, such as medicine”). I say again, why should some committee decide it, and not the voters of the deputy in question?
Specifically, how does cutting MPs off from the wider economy improve their caliber? In an ideal world, being an MP would be a second job. Everyone is expected to continue with what they were doing before. They will receive compensation for the time they have left their main job, but no salary. They will meet less often, and as a result we will have a lighter government supported by citizen-legislators.
Which leads precisely to the aspect of the proposals that has generated the most headlines, namely the plan to abolish the House of Lords. In some ways, this is the least controversial proposal in the entire document. None of the three main parties support the status quo. The question is what a replacement will look like. Labour’s preference for some kind of Bundesrat or regional senate is no more or less reasonable than the others.
However, we can be sure that the current system of unpaid, self-regulating peers will be thrown out and that we will end up with a new level of full-time paid politicians. This, unfortunately, is always Labour’s response. Which makes you wonder what the question was.
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