Taking the temperature of the United Kingdom's Parliamentary Democracy. 

By Robert Courts

  "There is no situation to which it cannot address itself with vigour and ingenuity. It is the citadel of British liberty. It is the foundation of our laws". So said Winston Churchill of the House of Commons in 1942, a view to which he adhered all his life.  Parliament, he passionately believed, was “the shield and expression of democracy”; the system that made the English-Speaking Peoples the prosperous, benevolent and freedom-loving societies that they are. In Churchill's day Parliament certainly was a highly respected institution, the unquestioned centre of sovereignty and the nation's political life. The great man's statue stands guard at the entrance to the House of Commons' chamber, its foot rubbed down to bronze by the hundreds of MPs who rub it for luck as they enter. It is however doubtful if, standing there in flesh today, Churchill would be happy with the standing of Parliament in Britain's political life, where it is arguable that it occupies one of the deepest troughs in its history. There are three main areas that are contributing to this malaise: apathy, an over-mighty executive and Europe.

Firstly, Parliament is inevitably affected by the apathy that affects all classes, age groups and regions in Britain. At the last election, Tony Blair's "New" Labour government was returned to power on the lowest turnout at a General Election for eighty years: under 60% of those eligible to vote actually did so, resulting in the Blair government's voters being outnumbered by those who did not vote at all! Parliament's legitimacy is clearly under threat when 40% of the people it governs did not exercise their right to democratically elect it. Churchill believed that "the foundation of all democracy is that the people have the right to vote… At the bottom of the all the high-sounding tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. No amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly palliate the overwhelming importance of that point". This simple idea distils the essence: if people do not exercise their voting rights and the government is returned with an unchallengeable majority, the health of the democracy will decline apace. The public will subconsciously question the right of such a strong government to rule on their behalf, especially when, in the public eye, the Conservative opposition has so far struggled to make a substantial dent in the Government's armour. This in turn will lead to a feeling of alienation, of disenfranchisement and of disillusion with the political process. It was bad enough that the Labour government has so stolen the Conservatives’ clothes that they are in many respects indistinguishable from them; it is worse that they are now perceived to be unopposed in Parliament.

Secondly, this overwhelming majority has been used to good effect by the incumbent government to further their own power. Whilst the scope of this article is not party-political, (indeed it should be stated that on the War on Terrorism in particular the Prime Minister enjoys substantial opposition support) it is impossible to consider the UK’s Parliament today without criticising the government, and especially the Prime Minister, who have done more than any in modern history to sideline, subdue, and emasculate the legislature. Blair is rarely seen in the Chamber except when he is needed to vote by a close division (a rare enough event with his steamrolling majority), a fact not helped by his reducing Prime Minister's Questions to once a week, instead of twice. Although his supporters will claim that the time spent is now half an hour instead of fifteen minutes, the overall effect is that Parliament - the check and restraint on the legislature, lest it be forgotten - is able to see the Prime Minister far less frequently. Blair can, therefore, escape being called to account by the legislature for up to a week. In a world of 24-hour news cycles, many of the quickly-boiling and quickly-cooling issues of modern politics will thus have passed. Churchill, who was ever aware of his place as a servant of Parliament and the people, would surely not approve of or tolerate such an absentee approach to the Premiership. Even during the war, when a burden arguably greater than one any of his successors have borne fell upon his shoulders, Churchill was not able to escape a vote of confidence at one point, plus a frequent examination on everything from details of air-raid precautions to grand strategy. Parliament for Churchill was at all times the critical audience to which all announcements were made and the acid test through which his policy and performance must pass. Not so for the Blair government, for whom Parliament is an irritating irrelevance, one that must be nodded to out of convention, but ignored in practice. Announcements are now rarely to Parliament: they are made directly to the media through the Cabinet Office or the Director of Communications, thus depriving the elected body of its power to criticise the government and its policy.

Lastly, and most controversially, the UK’s Parliamentary democracy faces a dilution of its sovereignty from the European Union. Whichever side one may take on the European issue, one thing is indisputable: that EU legislation forms a greater and greater part of the UK’s governance: it is estimated that as much as 70% now comes from the supranational body. It should not be thought that the British Parliament is merely exchanging its authority for that of the European Parliament, for although the latter is directly elected, it mainly has powers of scrutiny and consultation only. The real power in the EU is held by the European Commission, which is unelected, and meets behind closed doors. The UK’s Parliamentary democracy is thus clearly facing a challenge from an immensely powerful and unelected body, a democratic deficit that needs to be addressed by both proponents and opponents of European federalism.

© The Copyright of all photographs and text on this site is the author's, 2001/2, who claims the sole right to be identified as the author such work.

This article first appeared in "Churchilliad", the journal of the Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy, in September 2002.