The Future of Politics. Charles Kennedy
and their historic implications. This was ruled impossible, even though the bulk of MPs would have agreed and the Speaker was sympathetic. So the scheduled business went ahead, with run-of-the-mill turnout in the House. It was much the same following the release of Nelson Mandela. Both events filled me with optimism, but the sheer inertia and inflexibility of our own parliamentary system left me feeling gloomy afterwards. It seemed to me very poignant that, while Europeans were breaking down frontiers, the British Parliament was burying its head further in the mud of tradition.
I also view Prime Minister’s Question Time with a measure of distaste. Before I became Liberal Democrat leader I rarely took part in it. I sat through many sessions during my time as a rank-and-file MP, but I never found it a particularly useful political device. Many aspiring party leaders seek to make their mark by launching jibes at the Prime Minister of the day, but tempting though it sometimes was, with characters like Margaret Thatcher and John Major at the dispatch box, that was never for me – it would be possible to count the number of questions I asked on the fingers of one hand. I usually find Prime Minister’s Question Time an irrelevant piece of theatre – a tale of sound and fury, as the quotation goes, signifying nothing.
The problem is that, all too often, the weekly rant at the dispatch box is all the public sees of Westminster politics. William Hague is good at soundbites in the House of Commons: ‘Frost on Sunday, panic on Monday, U-turn on Tuesday and waffle on Wednesday’ was his summary of Tony Blair’s baffling comments on NHS reform in January 2000. Later, outside the Chamber, our Prime Minister commented that William Hague might be good at one-liners, but lacked anything constructive to say. No surprise then, that after being exposed to such tit-for-tat exchanges, the voting public finds parliamentary politics a turn-off.
The televising of Parliament has, unfortunately, done little to reverse this problem, as surveys show.2 There is even evidence to suggest that, far from making the process more open to public scrutiny, televising has led to changes in parliamentary behaviour which have, in turn, made the process seem even less relevant to the general public. In 1992, I drew attention to the fact that the number of bogus points of order seemed to have rocketed at exactly the point when TV coverage began. Some Honourable Members clearly found the temptations of appearing on the small screen more important than efficient scrutiny of the executive.
In terms of parliamentary coverage, the weekly session of Prime Minister’s Questions is TV’s finest hour, but, as I have mentioned, it is all too often little more than the swapping of insults. Predictably, the news networks tend to edit out the calmer moments and overlook the plentiful evidence of inter-party accord and co-operation, because it is not as exciting as a good row. The result is that the viewing public sees MPs as a highly undignified, hugely self-indulgent collective of ego trippers.
The structure of the House of Commons perpetuates this points-scoring ethos – the two facing sides of the Commons engender the sense that one half of the country is ranged against the other half. I would like to see the existing furniture scrapped and replaced with a horseshoe seating arrangement. Most European Parliaments have gone for this model, as have the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies and the US Congress. People may say that cosmetic changes make no difference, but I disagree entirely. If the image you send out to voters through the media is of no relevance, why does Tony Blair spend so much money on his platoon of spin-doctors and image consultants? A rebuilt House of Commons would, in my view, achieve more than an army of Alastair Campbells. It would send out the message that politics is not a rugby game anymore, but a process of co-operation, hard work and winning arguments.
In spite of technological advances, the conduct of politics and its key events has changed little. Party conferences are still centred on an audience, a platform and a series of long speeches, culminating in forty minutes of rhetoric from the leader, but there is no law stating that every conference has to be like that. It is revealing to reflect that by far the largest proportion of party conference media coverage these days is generated on the fringe, in the studios and’, doubtless, within the bars and the restaurants. The former Conservative MP Matthew Parris, now a respected political commentator, has said that the best way to keep a secret in Parliament is to make a speech about it in the House of Commons. That view finds a ready echo at the party conference: if you really want to know what is going on, then probably the last place to look is inside the conference hall itself. It could be different. The Internet offers great opportunities for people everywhere to ask questions, debate issues and even vote – but instead we only have a virtual tour of Downing Street. It is more common for TV soap stars to go on-line than politicians – in my view, it should be a regular segment of every politician’s working life, as well as forming a key part of annual conferences.
Some key events in our recent history have served to harden public attitudes to Parliament and politics. The Maastricht Treaty was a classic example and typifies the problem – it proved a fascinating and instructive experience for my party and myself, but the public’s view of the affair was radically different. In particular, it showed how damaging the adversarial system of politics that we have in Britain is. Too many people, both politicians and commentators, expect you to oppose whatever the merits of the case, and anything short of complete opposition from an opposition party is liable to be misunderstood. It is worth analysing the episode in some detail.
It is all too easy now to forget the depth of political depression which engulfed the centre-left following John Major’s 1992 general election victory. Many of us had expected, prior to the election, that we would be taking our places in a balanced Parliament, in which no party had overall control. The prospect of working in a coalition, almost certainly Kinnock – Ashdown led, was an intriguing one. The prospect of real progress on fair votes for Westminster seemed near at last, but the Conservatives were returned in the face of an economic recession: if the non-Conservative forces failed to triumph against such a backdrop, then what chance was there of ever replacing the Conservatives in office?
John Major’s personal position initially appeared unassailable. One photograph captured his and the media’s assessment of the post-election Conservative invincibility. Attending a cricket match, he closed his eyes and turned his face skywards to bask in the sunlight. It was a telling image, which just added to my feelings of deep gloom.
Around this time, I had personal conversations with Robin Cook (at that point the Labour leadership campaign manager for John Smith) and later with Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson. The former occurred over a Chinese meal in a Pimlico restaurant – and since we found ourselves occupying a table immediately adjacent to the Conservative Education Secretary, Gillian Shephard, I cannot claim that the rendezvous was at all clandestine! It was clear that Smith’s election was a foregone conclusion, and equally clear that he was emphatically in favour of devolution. I also knew that Robin had a sympathetic ear as regards proportional representation. For these reasons, we agreed to stay in touch, not least where a shared agenda on constitutional reform was concerned.
Tony Blair was anxious to be less public and eventually our trio broke bread at Derry Irvine’s London residence. I knew Tony reasonably well, and we had recently appeared alongside each other in media debates during the campaign and afterwards on Channel Four News, which ran an inevitable ‘Losers’ Lament’ segment on the Friday after the Tories’ election victory. Although I have, throughout my career, had various Labour luminaries (including Mo Mowlam) urging me publicly to cross the floor and join their camp, this was not the purpose of the meeting with Tony and Peter. Their principal interest was in the potential for dialogue with Paddy Ashdown, but neither felt sufficiently familiar yet with his direction and policies. His post-election speech in Chard, in his constituency, tackling the future direction of the Liberal Democrats and our relationship with other parties, had caught their attention. I provided a positive thumbnail sketch and encouraged further contact.
So, purely informally, centre-left ruminations were taking place as some of us wondered aloud whether we had any prospect of a meaningful political career. I doubt many of us anticipated the scale of the political earthquake that was just around the corner. The source of the earthquake was equally surprising – a small nation famous for its bacon, but otherwise rarely in the British, far less the international, public eye.
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