The Future of Politics

I don’t blame people for having these opinions. There are many aspects of British politics I dislike. Westminster politics, structured around the two-party system for so long, often looks personal, petty and adversarial. Even with the advent of the so-called ‘Blair Babes’, Parliament often seems like an exclusive gentlemen’s club. I do not believe in dismantling tradition indiscriminately, but much of the day-to-day ritual and protocol at the Palace of Westminster contributes to people’s sense that what goes on there is distant from, if not irrelevant to, their lives.1

Members of Parliament often suffer similar feelings about their place of work. I remember vividly that when the Berlin Wall collapsed in November 1990, my colleague in the Commons Russell Johnston (formerly MP for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber), suggested suspending the scheduled business, in order to hold an emergency debate on the titanic developments in Germany 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.

On 2 June 1992, the state of Denmark suddenly became the focus of worldwide attention, when its citizens voted ‘no’ in their referendum to approve the Maastricht Treaty. The treaty essentially provided the framework for greater economic unity between all the European nations and changed the European Economic Community to the European Union. Denmark’s ‘no’ was, in a sense, a ‘no’ to the notion of Europe.

I was standing at the Members’ Entrance of the Commons, awaiting a mid-evening taxi, when a journalist from the Independent broke the news that there was something rotten in the state of Denmark. The next morning, I awoke to an unusually uncertain Douglas Hurd on Radio Four’s Today programme, insisting that the Second Reading of the Bill, giving effect to Maastricht ratification, would proceed as planned. Paddy Ashdown phoned me and said he agreed. Nevertheless, we were all overtaken by the rapidity of events – by mid-morning, government whips had decreed that the Bill would be pulled. It taught me the folly of parking one’s political principles: while the government sat inert, Eurosceptics on both sides of the House were able to gather momentum.

Britain suffers the consequences to this day, in terms of its compromised position within Europe. While neighbouring states move towards closer union, and their citizens benefit from the greater stability and increased trade that this provides, Britain remains on the outside.

This profound tactical and strategic miscalculation propelled both John Major and John Smith into a parliamentary stand-off that was deeply injurious to themselves and their respective parties. If ever there was a case of the straitjacket of Westminster partisan politics triumphing over the greater good, then this was it.

It is worth standing back and reviewing the scenario at that point. A free vote over Maastricht ratification would, prior to the Danish ‘no’ vote, have commanded something like a four-fifths Commons majority in the division lobbies. Parliament was so essentially pro-European that there would have been practically no obstacle to us accepting the terms of Maastricht fully. Seasoned Tory Eurosceptics such as Teddy Taylor, Jonathan Aitken and Nicholas Budgen had become christened ‘The Night Watchmen’ for their readiness to keep the House sitting into the wee, small hours as they grilled ministers over the detail of harmonization measures. Long-standing Labour critics, including Peter Shore, Denzil Davies and Austin Mitchell, were characterized as ‘the usual suspects’.

The essential guilt will always lie with John Major – it was his government’s decision to postpone the Bill – but the late John Smith, much as I liked and admired him, has to shoulder his fair share of the blame as well. A combination of bad and short-term judgement on matters European would prove to be an exothermic elixir. As Roy Jenkins remarked to me at the time, Smith was ‘doing a Harold Wilson’ – ducking and weaving to appease both the modern elements of his party who were pro-Maastricht and the diehard Eurosceptics. He made certain that the debate centred disproportionately around the Social Chapter, the one element of Maastricht that every Labour Member agreed with, regardless of their feelings about the wider question of Europe. He was thus able to maintain an impression of party unity, without making any substantial steps towards ratification. His approach would, in fact, have prevented the treaty from being ratified, had my own party not voted with the Conservatives.

Postponing the Bill immediately elevated a decision made in Denmark into a meltdown in the so-called Mother of Parliaments. The (mainly) Tory Eurosceptics could hardly believe their unexpected good luck. They gained a foothold which they are still exploiting to this day.

John Major, meanwhile, fashioned a fumbling way forward and succeeded in throwing away what should have been an inbuilt parliamentary majority on this issue – a majority which was instinctively pro-Maastricht – and instead let loose Eurosceptical forces which were, ultimately, to destroy his premiership.

In the middle – literally and politically – were the Liberal Democrats. Rather than lament the past, I believe it is more helpful to analyse where we went wrong. We had said in our manifesto that we were pro-Maastricht and wanted to see its swift ratification. We did not back down from that position, even when things started to get worse, as they surely did. John Major, having blinked, then blinked twice. After postponing the Second Reading debate and vote, he then came up with a most curious constitutional device – a ‘paving motion’, so-called because it paved the way, by giving parliamentary legitimacy to further consideration of Maastricht. The Liberal Democrats had to vote for it on the basis of their conviction that Maastricht was right, along with the majority of Conservatives, but it was a marriage made in hell. And it was just a taste of things to come.

John Smith contrived successfully to portray this rather meaningless paving motion as somehow tantamount to a no confidence vote in the government – on the grounds that if Major was defeated, in part by a backbench revolt, it was a sure sign that no-one wanted him as leader. Labour’s Machiavellian skill in this was more than matched by Tory ineptitude, as several Cabinet Ministers announced via the airwaves the need for a show of confidence in Major and his administration. Which was, predictably, not the best way to inspire confidence.

This placed the Liberal Democrats generally, and myself as European spokesman in particular, in a position of acute difficulty. I felt the paving motion was no more than a device to cloak the real issue, and described it as such in my weekly Scotsman newspaper column. This was seized upon by my Labour opposite number, George Robertson, and by the SNP Leader, Alex Salmond. However, we were determined to act out of principle and support the spirit of Maastricht.

The more the Tories worried over being able to carry the vote, the more they had to stress the ‘confidence-in-John-Major’ angle, as a means of reining in their Eurosceptic recalcitrants. But the more they stressed this, the more difficult it became for Liberal Democrats to vote for it. We wanted Maastricht but, needless to say, we didn’t want a Tory government, so it stuck in the craw to be portrayed as saying, effectively, that we had confidence in it.

It was a tense and unhappy time, made worse by the fact that pro-Europeans in all three parties were finding themselves artificially divided as a result of Conservative maladroitness and Labour skullduggery. I defended our pitch along the media trail, but became increasingly unhappy that our consistent and principled approach was being sullied by association.

The Mirror’s excited Political Editor, one Alastair Campbell, used a radio discussion with me to put forward the patently absurd notion that somehow a defeat on the paving motion could unleash forces that might precipitate a general election. This was sheer wishful thinking and I wasted no time in debunking the idea. The worst thing was that, while the other parties hijacked the issue for their own ends, the public completely lost sight of the issue that had sparked the whole affair. The principles of Maastricht – of greater European unity – became completely obscured. I was bombarded with letters begging me not to vote with the Tories.

With a bad taste in our mouths, our votes were cast with the government and secured them a tight majority on the night. There was great bitterness at the outcome, particularly from the Labour camp. Some Labour MPs behaved shamefully on the floor of the House, delivering highly personalized abuse in our direction, while one, a long-standing, normally friendly acquaintance, refused even to acknowledge me as we passed each other in the Central Lobby. This was jaundiced politics at its worst.

So it was, under these distinctly inauspicious circumstances, that the tortuous process of activating the Maastricht Treaty began. It was an experience that taught me some hard lessons about politics in general, and Westminster-style politics in particular. Because the government had a majority of only twenty, and could not rely on its backbench rebels – some of whom seemed to make a career out of dissenting – they depended on our support to secure majorities in key divisions. So we were key players, and at the time, particularly at 3 in the morning, that was far from easy. As with most hard times, the benefits have only become visible in retrospect. The Liberal Democrats entered, and ultimately emerged from, this sequence of events with their integrity intact and, I believe, their reputation enhanced. This was due, in no small way, to the political acumen of our leader, Paddy Ashdown.

Paddy got a central judgement absolutely correct from the outset: we would give our support on key votes based on the issue at stake – and not in return for favours in other areas. But we will never forget the widespread apprehension and distaste with which we found ourselves presented as propping up a deeply unpopular government on a near-nightly basis, for months on end. We gained from that experience, and the fact that the party remained unified was down to strong leadership from the top. As a result, the image of the party gained coherence and credibility. A useful by-product was that it put us in the news, and kept us there.

There were considerable behind-the-scenes dealings with the Tory government throughout this period. Archy Kirkwood, our Chief Whip, Russell Johnston and myself were in constant touch with Richard Ryder, then Conservative Chief Whip, about likely voting intentions. On particularly key issues, Paddy Ashdown and Douglas Hurd became involved, but procedural glitches meant that nonetheless the bulk of the Maastricht business ended up being debated on the floor of the House, rather than dealt with swiftly in the Committee Rooms, which meant very late nights and frayed tempers.

What disappointed me then, and continues to do so to this day, was the damage that the Maastricht affair did to the popular conception of European unity, and the wider public image of politics. At first, the risk was that the public would respond to the scaremongering, and view Maastricht as some scourge from abroad that threatened the Union Jack and could potentially topple the government. The letters in my postbag demonstrated the extent to which people understood the debate in precisely those terms.

Then, as the debate dragged on – and drag it did, from May 1992 to July 1993 – people stopped viewing Maastricht as a demon and simply lost interest in the many good things that it offered the nation. It was a classic example of the way adversarial politics and intra-party chicanery serve to increase public uninterest in the political process.

This increased – albeit limited – exposure to the workings of a government proved very instructive for me. It certainly confirmed in my opinion the importance of cross-party co-operation, even though, self-evidently, after such a prolonged period of untrammelled power, the Conservatives were unprepared for such a close relationship. I think they found having to deal with the Liberal Democrats a vaguely demeaning experience. We, on the other hand, learned to take an entirely pragmatic approach. If it was something we wanted, like Maastricht, then we could and would co-operate to get it. This was a vital lesson for us.

But while Liberal Democrats learnt lessons, democracy suffered. The Conservative attitude at that time was rather akin to the Labour attitude over the Welsh Assembly in the early months of 2000, when Labour in London was determined to keep Alun Michael in charge. Co-operation sometimes seems to be a dirty word in British politics, which often resembles a game of rugby: opposing teams fighting to be the single victor. This is apparent in the half-hearted response I have received each time I have called upon Tony Blair and William Hague to join me in establishing a tripartite approach to drugs and pensions. Until and unless the Conservative Party comes to terms with a more pluralistic conduct of politics, it will wait a long time before being readmitted to the mainstream. Until Labour does so less half-heartedly, it will miss opportunities. Unless British politics can accommodate itself to inter-party co-operation, the public will continue to view issues in the way they came to view Maastricht.

I have gained something of a reputation for myself over the years as a radio broadcaster, perhaps most noticeably in my Today programme broadcasts with Austin Mitchell, the Labour MP and the Conservative, Julian Critchley. The ‘Mitch, Critch and Titch’ trio may have been popular with the listeners, but I found that, even within my own party, it attracted some hostility, largely because people disapproved of the idea that MPs of different leanings could get on and have a laugh, even allowing their own parties to be mocked by the others. But have a laugh we do; whenever I am in Yorkshire or Shropshire, I visit Austin and Julian, and think nothing of it. Many people seem to feel that any suggestion of amity trivializes politics, but I feel quite the opposite, preferring to recount the words of Winston Churchill, who upon returning to office in 1951 said: ‘Now perhaps there may be a lull in our party strife which will enable us to understand more what is good in our opponents.’ All the while politics is conducted in hushed, reverential tones, all the while it takes itself so seriously, and perpetuates intense and entrenched rivalry, then the nation will find it trivial.

The tribal model of politics does not even reflect the way people vote. In the eighties, my party had an unchallenged record for coming second in elections across the board: local, national and European. We did so because there was always a bloc of voters who would support the Labour or Conservative candidate regardless of the issues under discussion, but breakdowns of modern voting patterns show that people vote for a range of candidates and parties at different electoral levels. The old sectarian loyalties are breaking down and being replaced by a concern for issues. That is one reason why Ken Livingstone drew such wide and varied support when he stood independently of his party in the elections for London Mayor. A 1999 survey found that nearly two thirds of people polled had ‘not very much’ or ‘no interest at all’ in local politics and over one third felt the same about politics in general. Only 3 per cent of the country were members of a political party – lower than the figure for membership of the National Trust or the RSPB!