Covid shows that Parliament is a zombie institution

By Pete North - June 3, 2020

One gets a sense that the government is seeking to make an irrelevance of parliament, but it seems to be a space race where parliament is trying to beat them to it. The unedifying spectacle of MPs queuing round the block to vote in parliament (following risible social distancing protocols) can only really be interpreted as a calculated insult to parliament. It displays a casual contempt for the institution.

In that regard one can almost sympathise with the government being that parliament is full of deadbeats who add little of value and there is little need for a government with an 80 seat majority to deter to parliament. The contempt is well earned. I also take the view that if MPs are so supine that they consent to this treatment then it’s no less than they deserve.

But then we get complaints from backbenchers on Twitter that MPs are not observing social distancing rules, which is what perhaps makes this an ambush for all those who stamped their feet in righteous indignation over the Cummings affair. No doubt Guido informants will have had their cameras out for future reference. If they’re so stupid as to walk into that ambush then they really have it coming.

More astute MPs have claimed that forcing MPs to attend Westminster potentially makes MPs superspreaders, re-seeding the virus in London from the regions with outbreaks yet to reach their peak. They argue that voting by way of an app is more efficient and more modern and saves a tiring and unproductive trek to London. Who could disagree?

But that then presents a more pertinent question of whether the entire parliamentary model is redundant. If MPs can engage in the debates and vote from their kitchen tables, why can’t we? What do we need these muppets for? Why not cut out the middlemen. It isn’t as though the people we elect are wiser or more moral. Quite the opposite in most cases. Why are we forking out for MPs to have second homes in London, turning these morons into property millionaires in the London bubble? How does that serve the interests of ordinary people.

The parliamentary model as it currently stands is at least a century obsolete in its language and processes, and opaque to anyone who isn’t a politics geek. How can you have a democracy by informed consent when half the time the public doesn’t even understand what’s going on? Even I have trouble keeping up with arcane rituals and as we’ve seen lately, that opacity is very often used to show confusion or misrepresent events. We see irrelevant amendments lodged that have no chance of passing but serve as a propaganda device along the lines of “MP votes against payrise for nurses”. The whole circus is rotten.

As I understand it, it’s a relatively recent thing in the long history parliament that it’s in operation for most of the year, giving rise to a class of professional politicians with politics qualifications. It’s not meant to be like this. That so much is decided in Westminster is an indication of how much real power has been confiscated from local authorities. We are now at the point where supposed democracy reformists now propose citizen’s assemblies which reinforces the notion that parliament is a domain of professional politicians. They don’t even grasp what democracy is.

Part of the reason our government is crap is because it’s expanded far beyond its essential functions to the point where half the country doesn’t know what it’s actually for and would blow a gasket if it did more of the things it should do and less of the things it shouldn’t. The major takehome from Covid is the urgent need to rebuild local authorities, a major devolution of power to the most local level possible and a constitutional control mechanism to stop central government stealing that power.

If there is still a role for an archaic system like Westminster then it should sit infrequently and concern itself only with matters of foreign affairs, defence and matters of whole UK significance. All other decisions should be taken locally, preferably by referendums where practical, which would then revive meaningful local democracy worthy of the name and would see a rebirth of local media. Media follows power so we can’t be surprised that, as power had shifted to London, local media has all but shut up shop.

Thanks to the agglomeration of media into one giant London based sordid bubble, with central government communicating through it, it in no way reflects the values of the country. As such it can command neither the respect nor the trust of the people. It is alien to them and this is, in part, why we’re seeing a people versus the establishment culture war dominating our politics, with dangerous ramifications for future national unity and security.

In every major crisis we have looked to central government as it takes control of events and time after time it fails and it fails hard. A system that has no connection with the people it supposedly serves, for whom it holds no loyalty or affinity, will always end up serving the agendas of the globalists and the elites. Centralised power attracts criminals and sociopaths like flies to horseshit. Our obsolete party system can easily be captured by corporate interests and with a parliament forever distracted and absorbed with trivia, there is nothing especially to stop government doing as it pleases even if parliament sat all day, every day.

Brexit was all about returning powers that should never have been given away. But Brexit clearly isn’t enough. I no more want to be ruled by a secretive and paranoid cabal in Downing Street than I want to be ruled by anonymous technocrats in Brussels. If Brexit is to mean anything at all we need to go the whole way and put real power in the hands of the people.

The left recently tried to install Corbyn in Number Ten. He was 70’s era socialist throwback. He wanted to renationalise things that, prior to nationalisation, were traditionally the property of local publicly owned corporations. When they were nationalised it was an act of theft by central government and in that regard, privatisation was Thatcher peddling stolen property. Having robbed local government of utilities that should not be run for the enrichment of a Shanghai based hedge fund, and having broken off the central functions of local government such as public health into regional and national quangos, local authorities are little more than welfare agencies to organise bin collection on the side. This is neither local nor is it democracy.

If we want a fair society with real participatory democracy then with must dismantle the antiquated shambles on the Thames and formally make redundant the wastrels and imbeciles who occupy it. Until then, we are simply ruled by progressively more corrupt gangs and our only control over them is an increasingly meaningless periodic voting ritual that actively encourages passivity and apathy, where elections are won in the margins and wins are mere accidents of numbers rather than a true reflection of the political mood in the country. We vote in the basis of who is the least awful. We’ve long given up on the idea of positive mandates.

In the age of internet we are more than capable of representing ourselves and making our own decisions without them being filtered through a single MP who couldn’t possibly adequately represent the hopes and aspirations of their constituents. This dinosauric model was designed in an age when London was a three day horse ride away that necessitated the election of a delegate or representative. How can we expect to have government befitting a new age with new challenges and threats when the apparatus of our so-called democracy is a creaking ossified relic from centuries ago? Were we to view it as visitors from another planet we’d regard it as a sick joke. Isn’t it time we fixed it?