Wright Doing Politics

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-84954-313-2
Verlag: Biteback Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

A dose of sense from the voice of parliamentary reason.Throughout the expenses scandal and the lobbying scandal and all the other storms which have buffeted Parliament, Dr Tony Wright is the one MP who has consistently provided a measured, sane and sensible reaction to events. As Chair of the influential Public Administration Committee he has risen above party and partisan politics to offer a sometimes lone voice of reason. His new book considers the wider implications of the various political ructions and the public reaction to them, and argues that if we want to defend politics, then we also have to defend politicians: the class of people is intrinsic to the activity. Somebody has to do the messy business of accommodating conflicting demands and interests, choosing between competing options, negotiating unwelcome trade-offs, and taking responsibility for decisions that often represent the least worst course of action. That somebody is politicians. They give voice to our hopes, but they also, inevitably, feed our disappointments, even if their name is Obama. From one of our most erudite, intellectually rigorous yet sensible politicians, Doing Politics is just the book the nation needs.

Tony Wright is retiring as Labour MP for Cannock Chase at the 2010 general election. He is Chairman of the Committee on Reform of the House of Commons and Chairman of the Public Administration Committee. His earlier books include the acclaimed Politics: A short introduction.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wright, Tony

Leseproben

PART TWO WRITING ABOUT DOING POLITICS
What follows is a selection of pieces I have written over the years – before, during and after my time in the House of Commons. Each bears in some way on the activity of politics and reflects what I have thought about, observed and – on occasion – taken part in. In putting them together, I have come to see how my writings combine a belief in the indispensable value of politics with a profound dissatisfaction with the way it is usually conducted. It has become a wearisome cliché to espouse a ‘new politics’, but that has, nevertheless, been my running theme. This should not be misunderstood, however. It certainly does not mean a bloodless kind of politics. When The Times said, on my departure from the Commons, that I ‘always put the interests of the House above tribal politics’, it was not entirely accurate. My political origins were fiercely tribal and, when faced with the kind of rosy-cheeked public schoolboy who assumes he is born to rule, I can effortlessly lapse into the most unworthy and unseemly tribalism. But it is the bogus point-scoring partisanship, the ritual posturing and positioning that is really only a political game, that turns normal people away from politics altogether, and this must not be confused with the clash of ideas, values and interests that is the real stuff of politics. It is the former that I have railed against. If politics is about conflict and competition, it is also about compromise and co-operation. One without the other (as in the United States at present) is a formula for disaster. Nor should a new politics be identified with various kinds of mechanical fixes to the political system. Institutions matter and procedural reforms can be useful, but they are not a panacea, as the briefest glance around the world demonstrates. The fact that the young people massacred in Norway in 2011 were at a political summer camp suggests a democracy in vibrant health; yet the country has recently been lamenting its political malaise. I am a political reformer, and a range of reforms are discussed in the pieces here, but that makes it even more necessary to say that, in my view, what really matters is how politics is done. This emphasis on the culture of politics was the theme of the Political Quarterly annual lecture I delivered in 2009 when I was introduced to the lecture audience by my old friend Peter Hennessy. Doing Politics Differently
I am taken back to a summer evening, about twenty years ago, when Peter and I were on a boat moored on the Westminster embankment to celebrate the publication of a book by Ben Pimlott, our much-missed friend. Peter asked what I was up to. I told him that I had just been selected as the Labour Parliamentary candidate in a winnable seat. His reaction is forever etched in my memory. ‘Oh you poor boy,’ he exclaimed. ‘Just make sure you get yourself on a select committee; then it won’t be quite so bad.’ I have followed Peter’s advice, and it has not been so bad. Peter clearly thought I was wholly ill-equipped ever to run anything, and this is a view that has since been shared by others. When, in the early days, I read in a newspaper that Peter Mandelson had said of me, ‘He thinks too much’, I realised the true worth of the other Peter’s advice. During my first week in the House of Commons, I was stopped in the members’ cloakroom by Donald Dewar, also much missed. He wanted to offer me some advice. ‘Don’t fall into the John Mackintosh trap,’ he said. John Mackintosh was the academic Labour MP, elected in 1966, also an editor of the Political Quarterly, who died too early. I asked what that trap was. ‘People thought,’ replied Donald, ‘that he was only here so that he could write a second edition of his book on the British Cabinet.’ This was good advice, but I fear that I did not altogether manage to follow it. My original intention was to call this lecture ‘In Defence of Politicians’; however, this was vetoed by the organising committee as too implausible. But let me briefly tell you what I had in mind, as it leads to where I want to go. I had hoped that my old patron Bernard Crick would be here, and it is very sad his recent death means that he is not. Bernard’s brilliant book, In Defence of Politics, had a huge and lasting impact on me (as it has done on so many others) when I first read it as a student forty years ago. It was both a compelling argument for the centrality of politics as a civilising activity (in his words, ‘a great and civilising human activity … something to be valued almost as a pearl beyond price in the history of the human condition’) and a warning about the kinds of people, doctrines and forces that threatened this activity. I wanted to tease Bernard by suggesting that the defence of politics necessarily involved also, but less obviously or appealingly, the defence of politicians. I mean, of course, politicians as a category, not individual politicians, or the way politicians do politics; not politicians who abuse power, or tell lies, or use public money for private purposes. But if we want to defend politics, then we do have to defend politicians. The class of people is intrinsic to the activity. It is possible to say that you like football but do not like footballers; but it is not possible to defend politics without, in some sense, defending politicians. I absolutely do not mean, by the way, that politics is, or should be, the preserve of professional politicians. As Crick argued, politics is what citizens do. We badly need to expand the arenas in which citizenship can be practised. But when all this is said, the fact is that political systems require politicians. It is sometimes said that there are two kinds of politicians: those who want to exercise power and those who want to control the exercise of power. Both are essential, though one tends to be regarded as nobler than the other. It is because I have specialised in the latter – the noble world of scrutiny and accountability – that I want to emphasise the importance of the former. It is easier to ask questions than to answer them, and easier to hold to account than to exercise responsibility. That is why I come to defend politicians, in all their forms. Somebody has to do it. Somebody has to take on the messy business of accommodating conflicting demands and interests, choosing between competing options, negotiating unwelcome trade-offs, and bear the responsibility for decisions that may often represent the least bad course of action (like bailing out banks). This does not have to be done by pressure groups, or by newspaper columnists, or by professors, or by voters. But somebody has to do it, and that somebody is politicians. They give voice to our hopes, but they also – inevitably – feed our disappointments. This is so, even if their name is Obama. This is why I am suspicious of all those – even some of the enthusiasts for greater citizen participation – who seem to argue that all will be well if only the political class is somehow cleared out of the way. This line of reasoning unites the Daily Mail and Monbiot. At bottom, this is a version of the anti-politics that infects our age, and which a certain sort of newspaper serves up daily to malign effect. Their message is that all problems are simple and only the fact that politicians are knaves or fools (or both) prevents solutions. It is not surprising, as the latest survey commissioned by the Committee on Standards in Public Life shows, that it is the readers of such newspapers who are most cynical about politics and politicians. I do not know why the Prime Minister decided that the editor of the Daily Mail was the most appropriate person to conduct a review of the thirty-year rule. But it is surely beyond parody that Mr Dacre should introduce his review by lamenting ‘a corrosion of … trust between politicians and people over the past few years’ and expressing a hope that his review will help create ‘a more mature democracy in which there is a greater trust between the electors and the elected’. It is scarcely surprising, given the cultural force of anti-politics, that we have disappearing voters and collapsing trust. Anyway, that is the lecture I am not going to deliver. I am going to be critical of some of the ways in which we do politics, which contribute to our difficulties; but because of this I want to insert a little perspective. Most of the issues we face here – from declining voter turnout to how we manage our public services – are mirrored elsewhere. On international surveys of ‘good governance’ like those conducted by the World Bank and others, we are in the premier league, about mid-table, behind the Scandinavians. It is also worth recalling that thirty years ago the British political system, for so long seen as an exemplar of stable constitutionalism, was being widely described as a basket case of ungovernability, ‘a country on the verge of political breakdown’ as one leading political scientist put it. So whatever criticisms are made now, they are of a very different order from a generation before. Even the much-discussed decline in trust has to be set against the fact that distrust of politicians is nothing new; that standards of conduct are now exposed to a transparency that reveals what was formerly concealed; that there is now a whole regulatory apparatus surrounding standards that was entirely absent until relatively recently. So in many respects we are doing politics differently. There is much less voting, much less joining of parties and much less activity within parties. The hollowing out of formal...