Election reflection….

Democracy is much misunderstood both by its practitioners and critics. It is undermined by its more autocratically inclined opponents, and occasionally by those who should know better (whose narrow interest is that some of us who can vote, don’t vote). It is routinely taken for granted by those of us who have the privilege of participating in it as evidenced by generally relatively low turnouts here in even general elections in the UK and in the US. Democracy is often an aspiration of those who are never asked who should hold power over them, and it is more valued by those who have only recently come to experience it (as evidenced by the long queues in the recent South African election). It is often messy, it necessitates compromises (either within or between groupings and parties), and it is often peppered with hypocrisy and dissembling (and occasionally flat-out lying).

It was Churchill, speaking in 1947 in the Commons in a debate about amending the 1911 Parliament Act, who said: “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…”. This is the bit of the quotation that is familiar. But he continued “..there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.” That “broad feeling” remains strong more than 75 years later, long after the demise of both Churchill and his original audience. Funnily enough, in the current UK election campaign, it is the leader of the Labour opposition who has seemed more in tune with Churchill on this score than his supposed political heirs and successors, talking about putting public service at the heart of politics. After a long periods in power politicians (on both ends of the political spectrum) seem to forget they are the peoples’ servants. So it is to Sir Keir Starmer’s credit that in the final stages of the election campaign he has put service at the centre of his philosophy for government. Time will tell if he is sincere and strong enough to resist the temptations of political pragmatism and competing agendas. But if it turns out to be just another sound-bite, another ruse to attract votes, he’ll have to face us all again in a few years. That’s the beauty of elections. They provide a reality check, a sort of political gravity. It can be ignored for shortish periods, but eventually it exerts itself usually followed by the thump of former high flyers impacting terra firma.

So we duly wandered round to our polling station this afternoon, to put a simple pencil “x” against a particular name. An election is always a great leveller. MPs and ministers stopped being that when the election was called. The power drained away from them and flowed to us. So they were in effect brought back to our level. The power has lain in our hands over the weeks of the campaign. But elections also remind all of us that we are on the same level too. My vote counts as much as your vote, no more, no less. And our mass participation in the same simple act for us all (with the single exception that we may put our crosses in different boxes), reminds us of the broader community to which we belong and contribute and for which we are jointly responsible. It doesn’t matter our occupation (or whether we have none), our age, social or ethnic background, bank balance, preferred TV channel or style of music. For one day we’re all the same, while also being different and diverse.

There’s one other thing that I’m very grateful for. There are real differences in the offers that the different parties have been making during the campaign. Most of those who align with those different parties do so precisely because there are sincerely held differences of view between them. I admit there will be those who will perhaps have more base motives, using their alignment strategically to advance their own interests. But I think that this remains a minority pursuit. And yet, by and large, the discussion of these real differences has remained within civil and civilised bounds. On the margins there may have been intimidation, and perhaps even threatened or actual violence. But this has been vanishingly rare. We should be grateful. I cast my vote this afternoon calmly and freely.

One other thing I’m fairly certain of: whoever loses this election will not be found protesting in Whitehall or Downing Street tomorrow morning, trying to whip their supporters into a frenzy with incoherent and unsubstantiated accusations of the election being stolen. Power will flow from the people, back to the politicians, probably quite a different group of politicians, relatively smoothly. We used to think that such transitions were just part of the normal democratic process. But of late we’ve learned that it is dangerous to take this for granted too. It turns out that it is more fragile than we thought. And as the change unfolds tonight and into tomorrow (and if the exit poll is to be believed it is a big change), we should breath a sigh of relief and be thankful. Thankful that somehow democracy, for all its faults and messiness, has worked again. Then we can all get back to the business of moaning about how horrible our political system is and arguing about which particular collection of incompetents are messing it up.

At least we will have had the privileged of putting them in the position of messing it up. 

Amateur Hour

 It is hard to fathom the political pickle we are currently in. On this side of the Atlantic we (some of us) watched with horror as our friends in the US elected a political neophyte to the highest office in the land. From early on, it was clear that President Trump was completely mystified by the business of government. There were obviously things he wanted to do; he was admirably clear about what these were (fix healthcare, reduce crime, stop illegal migration by building “the wall”, appoint conservative judges, fix campaign finance). Some of them were entirely within the gift of the presidency, such as nominating Supreme Court justices. But many were not, requiring the cooperation of the legislative branch of the US system (ie the Congress). This should have been unproblematic for the at least the first part of his administration, given that he was elected as a Republican president, and the Republican party controlled both the Senate and the House of Representatives (and a majority of state Governorships to boot). The Republicans even tightened their grip on the Senate after the 2018 mid-term elections (although they lost control of the House).  But yet, Trump achieved remarkably little beyond securing a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. While this is not to be sniffed at, his term was more marked by an inability to govern than to get stuff done. He seemed to be more interested in trashing the very norms and institutions he should have been using. The simplest explanation is that he was an amateur and basically not up to the job. He famously said of healthcare “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated” in 2017. But everybody did know (except apparently him). Maybe he should have been paying more attention.

But Trump’s rise can be seen as part of a reaction to professional politics and the “elite” that populates it, as represented at the time by Hillary Clinton. There’s no doubt she knew all about politics from her experience as former First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State and so on. But she just couldn’t get enough voters to believe that she was on their side, and would get the sort of things done that they wanted. Trump was the perfect foil; a way of holding two fingers up to the system (apologies for this British cultural reference, in the US it is of course one finger). The problem is he proceeded to trash the system and the institutions that made it work, to the extent that it sort of did work, if only haltingly. And so a vacuum was created that was filled with conspiracies, distrust, misinformation, outright lies and an increase in domestic political violence (threatened and executed). The tragedy for us on this side of the Atlantic is that it appears that there are those that seek to follow the same playbook, whether actively or passively. And, at least initially, they managed to strike a similar cord.

For us it was not a disputed election that brought things to a head, but a contentious referendum. There’s no point relitigating Brexit. The decision was passed to the people, the people decided and we all have to live with the political, economic and cultural consequences. The outcome was in part about sticking it to the elite, or at least that section of it that seemed to have actual arguments, facts, analysis, the biggest political beasts (one remembers press conferences with Balls, Osborne and Cameron) and, of course, experts. And in order to “get Brexit done” we were then, by some margin, prepared to entrust our system to Boris, a man who in normal times would have been completely disqualified from the highest office by his track record of lying and buffoonery. We apparently had had enough of “experts”, and handed the keys to those who would not pay undue respect to important institutions, not to mention personal integrity. Things then began to look up when Boris was dispatched precisely because of his lack of integrity (although no doubt basic political and economic incompetence played a role). But, alas, this turned out to be a lull, the calm before an economic storm brought on by monumental hubris which magnified the effects of a basic incompetence. Once again, some the stabilizing and constraining institutions which previously might have moderated the excesses of the political class were ignored or undermined. In the case of the Truss/Kwarteng omnishambles, non-budget, “fiscal event” these were mainly economic institutions like the OBR, the Bank of England, and the top civil servant in the Treasury who was apparently too “orthodox” for comfort. Trussteng knew better than the faceless (if experienced) bureaucrats, and better than the markets that they proudly professed to worship. They had been warned of course, in public debate, that fantasy economics don’t usually fare well when they collide with reality, but they either didn’t listen, or didn’t care, or actually believed the fantasy. We may never know which it was. But they managed to persuade the key selectorate that they knew what they were doing, and so the keys were duly passed on to them. 

If someone had proposed a script with a plot that followed the twists and turns of the last few months in UK politics, it would have been rejected out of hand as being too far-fetched. And the idea of a popular insurrection (albeit an unsuccessful one) in the US would also have seemed implausible not that long ago. But this torrid tale of people promoted or trusted beyond their abilities, of the triumph of the amateur and the charlatan over the serious and experienced, holds lessons for us. Knowledge, experience and character all count, particularly when it comes to running things like governments and economies. It turns out that this is no easy job and takes skill, experience, application and even a little luck (or the aid of Providence). Democratic political systems no doubt can be frustrating and exasperating, but the answer cannot be to entrust them to those who don’t really have a clue about what they are doing. Trusting the expert and the experienced, may also mean trusting the cautious, and that may mean that change is slow and incremental. But in the complex world in which we live, that may be the best we can hope for, no matter how impatient we may be. Better slow change than quick disaster.

Democracy only works where the voters play their part, inform themselves and decide carefully, weighing the options, judging character and ability deliberately and dismissing fantasies and the fantasists that promote them. Maybe in the end we get the politicians and governments we deserve. Well, we’ve tried the amateurs. Maybe it’s time to revert to the professionals, as unappealing as that might seem.