This has been a good parliament

The parliament elected in the early summer of 2017 is coming to an end, having lasted only just over half the time provided for by the “infamous” Fixed Term Parliaments Act wished on us by the Liberal Democrats in 2010. That Act may expire, regretted by few. It’s not British. Fixed term elections may be all right for the Americans and some other foreigners, but not for us, even though Westminster’s Scotland Act mandated a fixed term for the devolved Scottish Parliament.

Be that as it may, the general mood will, it seems, be one of relief. It’s been a rotten parliament (as my editor says) unable to get anything done, most importantly unwilling and unable to make Brexit happen. Accordingly many will greet its end with a sigh of relief or even lusty cheering. Even some Remainers are fed up with it.

Once again I find myself in a minority, While others celebrate its demise, I echo Sam Goldwyn and say “include me out”. I think it’s been rather a good parliament, good, first, because it has mirrored the mood of the country. Of course it hasn’t got Brexit done, but this is because there is no consensus as to what Brexit should be, what form it should take. There’s no such consensus in the country, and so there is none in parliament. Even Brexiteers in the Commons can’t agree on how clean the break from the EU should be.

Mrs May negotiated a Withdrawal Agreement, and did so when she had notionally or nominally a majority in the Commons, thanks to her understanding with the DUP. Usually a government with a tiny or fragile majority can get its business through the Commons. Back in the late Seventies, Jim Callaghan was just able to govern because of the pact he had made with the Liberals, and because his own Labour party was loyal and disciplined, while he also had the support of the SNP until they deserted him after the failure of the 1979 referendum on Scottish devolution.

Then in 2010 the Conservatives were some way short of a majority, but the coalition with the Liberal Democrats held for five years, and got its business done. In short a government with a majority, even if that depends on the support of a smaller party, has been able to exercise power. The opposition may cavil and criticize, but it has been essentially impotent.

Consequently, Parliament has almost always been obedient to the government of the day. Churchill said that a majority of one is a majority, and so long as the government whips do their job, we have had effective government. The House of Commons became a mere debating chamber. The official opposition and minor parties might have argued and asked questions, but essentially they were powerless so long as the government majority held firm. Only the development of the committee systems imposed any sort of check on the government of the day.

May’s majority crumbled and she was unable to get parliamentary approval for her Withdrawal Agreement because the government whips lost authority and therefore control, and a large part of her own party rebelled. I am not concerned here with the merits of her Brexit deal. I am merely pointing out that it was defeated because so many of her own Conservative MPs who were eager for a clean-break Brexit deserted her. That desertion meant that the Commons was back in business as it had seldom been since the middle of the nineteenth century. It was no longer a mere debating chamber, and this was because the government had no secure majority. Opposition MPs and backbench Tory MPs could even take control of  business and dictate the agenda in the Commons.

The government has had no majority at all in the Commons since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in July. No wonder it has had to bow repeatedly to the will of parliament as expressed by temporary, if shifting, ad hoc majorities. You can’t expect a minority government to have its way.

We have long been accustomed to strong government in which the distinction between the Crown, that is the Executive, and the Legislature has been blurred as it isn’t in, for example, the USA. There have been advantages. The Executive has generally been able to translate its will into action. We have grown accustomed to this, so accustomed that we subscribe to a conventional hypocrisy, closing our eyes to the reality which is that a one-party government with a majority in the Commons never represents a majority of the electorate. If we have usually been content with this, it is because on the whole it has worked.

However, events since 2017 have exposed the hypocrisy to the light. Parliament, no longer docile (even if it was sullen), has remembered that it does not exist only to enact what the Executive decrees. It has another function, another duty, which is to question and check the Executive. It has done this rather well. That is why I think it has been a good parliament. It has been one in which a remarkable number of MPs have defied the Whips.

Tory Brexiteers found May’s Withdrawal Agreement unsatisfactory, rebelled and broke her government. Tory Remainers thwarted Johnson. Some Labour MPs backed both May’s Brexit and Johnson’s. The Liberal Democrats and the SNP spoke up for the 16.1m Britons who voted Remain in 2016. Nobody today knows whether there is still a majority in the country in favour of Brexit just as nobody knows just what form of Brexit the 17.4m who voted Leave envisaged. Parliament has been right to reflect the public’s uncertainty, no matter how irritating its own uncertainties have been.

The election may give Johnson the Tory majority he seeks. It would of course be a majority in the Commons, not the country, but we accept this, just as Americans accept that a President is elected by a majority in the Electoral College, not by a majority of the popular vote. If Johnson wins his Commons majority then it is likely that his Withdrawal Agreement will be approved by parliament and we shall leave the EU on its terms, ready for the negotiations in the transition period which will determine our future relationship with the EU.

If, however, there is a hung parliament, the government that is formed must recognise that it cannot impose its will on the House of Commons, but must respect the diversity existing there and in the country; it would be in the business of persuasion, not command. We might then consider what that French admirer of the eighteenth century British Constitution, Montesquieu, recognised. This, as Richard Pares put it in George III and the Politicians, was “the truth that the dispersion of political power between independent sovereignties or agencies, by neutralising the strength and efficiency of government as a whole, enlarged the scope of civil liberties.” To put it more concisely, we might be on the way to consigning the dictatorship of a single party, able to override or ignore opposition, to the past.