-
- guardian.co.uk, Sunday June 3 2001 03.26 BST
It's a nasty last throw by a desperate Conservative establishment facing its own immolation, but it is not the only complainant. Charter 88 has been mounting meetings all over the country, putting candidates on the spot over how they would improve Britain's democratic workings. Judging by the Charter 88 meeting I chaired in my constituency, the issues cross the party divide.
More than 300 people crowded into our local Baptist church to vent their spleen about Britain's democratic defects. It might be the honours system or the lack of an elected second chamber - the passion of the arguments made it the nearest to an old fashioned political hustings I have attended for years. The issues were disparate, but the same thread connected them. Anything that smacks of top-down, unresponsive government is on the rack.
In a sense, the complaints are unfair. New Labour has launched the biggest set of constitutional reforms since the nineteenth century. The reason why it enjoys the opinion poll lead it does is because it has judged the country's preoccupations better than the Tories. It is hardly dictatorship to do what the people want - and sometimes what the people want, notably over asylum, is not very edifying. Labour is playing the democratic game by British rules, and part of the Right's reaction is that it does not accept the legitimacy of the game now that Labour is winning.
But something more is afoot, and not just in Britain. In France, there is growing concern that direct action is becoming contagious and that fundamental French liberties, notably freedom of movement, are under assault from unions and direct-action groups all too ready to blockade ports, stations and motorways to achieve their ends. The mood is spreading to Britain. Thus the Countryside Alliance and the petrol protesters. Thus the public-sector workers who have drawn a lesson from the effectiveness of direct action; it is no accident that the RMT won its guarantees over pay and job security by threatening a Tube strike in the week of an election.
But what makes governmental response difficult is that the public broadly sympathises with street protest, direct action and blockades. An intriguing poll in the State of the Nation series supported by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust reports that 81 per cent of British people agree that 'if governments don't listen', peaceful protests and blockades are legitimate ways of expressing concerns. Only just over half - some 53 per cent - think that governments should stand by the policies that won them general elections. A growing proportion of Britons think government should be permanently responsive to changing events and opinions.
And that is the way it is developing. The dictatorship charge levelled against a party with a parliamentary majority of more than 150 made more sense 30 years ago than now. It is true that the scope of British executive power remains unequalled by international standards, but that authority confronts a greatly empowered civil society in alliance with greatly strengthened media, not to overlook the influences of international treaties and the EU. The Government may control the House of Commons and the institutions of the state, but that only gets it to first base.
One of the constant criticisms levelled at New Labour in the last parliament was that it was too timid. It has been careful not to oppose a well-organised lobby or interest group; so, for example, because the NFU opposed vaccination rather than culling to create protective 'firewalls' during the foot-and-mouth epidemic, there was no vaccination. The climbdown after pensioners protested over the infamous 75 pence increase in the state pension was also spectacular. New roads and airport extensions are delayed or cancelled for fear of the public reaction. More worryingly, powerful private monopolies and insiders play the same game. It is a matter of indifference to Murdoch, Ecclestone, the CBI or a multinational whether the Government's majority is 20 or 200 - they want concessions and they get them.
This is altogether too tumultuous a process of governing to conform to any idea of an ' elective dictatorship', but it hardly corresponds to a conception of democracy. Those who shout loudest or have more brute economic power win the arguments. The Blairite constitutional reforms were designed to open up British government, but not fundamentally to challenge the core; executive power remains awesome.
The paradox is that this disables more than it helps good government. It certainly allows the Government, say, to appoint its election dissolution peers as it did on Friday as if nothing had happened, or to run Britain through myriad PPPs and quangos. But it doesn't solve the larger problem of how to govern legitimately and with the consent of those who are governed
The Government needs to be more sensitive more quickly to genuine and well-argued grievances. And it needs to be seen to be legitimate in the way it governs, makes choices and wins arguments. Here Mr Blair needs the courage of his earlier convictions about the case for constitutional reform, and which the current Labour manifesto still reflects.
New Labour will launch English regional assemblies and it could still go for a House of Lords with more elected 'lords'. Most important of all, if Mr Blair wills it, there could be a referendum on proportional representation. In 1997, our electoral system produced the least fair distribution of seats in relation to votes of any leading democracy; it will do worse on Thursday.
More proportionality won't alone solve our democratic defects, but it will ensure that national opinion is more fairly reflected in Parliament. It will also legitimise the actions of government. These are great prizes and, as it starts a second term determined to deliver, New Labour will want them more than ever. Need and conviction may yet persuade it to finish the reforms it started.
Interactive guide
Election countdown: the key dates up to June 7
Comment and analysis
01.06.2001: James Fenton on the campaign trail with William Hague
01.06.2001, Hugo Young: We too have twisted the truth
01.06.2001, Polly Toynbee: Snooker the Tories
Interactive quizzes
Can you be bothered?
Election? What election?
Election game
Pick a political penpal in our email game
The candidate
Sign up for our daily election email
Cartoons
01.06.2001: Steve Bell
25.05.2001: Steve Bell
Steve Bell's election sketchbook
See the Guardian's cartoonist's diary
Weblog election special
The best election journalism on the net
Video
Watch the party broadcasts
Talk about it
Is a big Labour win good for democracy?
Who are my candidates?
Ask Aristotle
Polls
Latest polls
My election
Robin Page
More links
Key election websites
Light relief
Who do I vote for?
Am I electable or not?
My Little Tony
SpinOn.com
You are Tony Blair game
