Evolutionary politics

A terrific piece in the FT by the man who taught a generation of teenagers to scribble.

It is time to update the ancient constitution

By Larry Siedentop

Published: May 24 2009 22:10 | Last updated: May 24 2009 22:10

Alexis de Tocqueville remarked that the British see things very clearly but can see only one thing at a time. He had a point. The storm over MPs’ expenses and the issue of their accountability has led to talk of a “constitutional crisis” – understood as a loss of confidence in the political class. But the crisis is more profound than that.

It is not just the mores of the political class but the political system as a whole that is in crisis. For Britain has reached an impasse. The process of piecemeal reform – at which the nation excelled historically – is no longer adequate to the problems it faces. Britain needs a new constitutional settlement.

Has reliance on piecemeal reform, however, impaired the ability to think constitutionally in the very country that inspired liberal constitutionalism in the l8th century?

To talk of a constitutional crisis in a country with a codified constitution is one thing – illustrated in the US by threats to “the separation of powers” revealed by the Watergate affair. But in a nation without a codified constitution – in which the political system rests on precedent and an appeal to “common sense” rather than the idea of fundamental law – a constitutional crisis becomes more far-reaching.

Britain has reached the point where the structure of society can no longer sustain its traditional political culture. To see this, one has only to look at the appeal to “common sense” that looms so large in political rhetoric. For what happens when “sense” is no longer “common” – that is, when the attitudes and habits creating a political class able to mobilise and shape consent can no longer be taken for granted.

At that point a traditional political culture dissolves. Take, for example, arrangements for the dispersal of power. Ever since Margaret Thatcher’s assault on local government it has been clear that the British constitution offers no adequate safeguards against centralisation. Local autonomy, we can now see, rested on good manners or common sense not fundamental law.

Something similar can be said about central government. The separation of powers has become more formal than real. Later 19th-century reform bills led to the emergence of a party system that created, first, cabinet control of the House of Commons and, then, prime ministerial control of the cabinet. Of late, the stranglehold of the executive has been further increased through Treasury control. It is now hard to think of a democratic political system more centralised than Britain’s. Only the judiciary has, at times, struggled against this trend.

What social changes have contributed to this? And why do they spell the doom of a traditional political culture, the so-called “unwritten constitution”.

The first is the erosion of the class system and the virtual disappearance of deference. For all of the injustices it involved, the system helped to create a political class that had the confidence and wealth to limit the centralising of power. They took much for granted – too much. But they were not careerist politicians in the contemporary sense. Their assumption of a “right to govern” also had an impact locally, where they had no interest in seeing local government replaced by local administration directed from Whitehall.

A parliament made up of people with more modest means combined with the rapid growth of prime ministerial patronage has changed all that. It has revealed how manners rather than constitutional law underpinned the British political system – giving it an extraordinary flexibility but also making it vulnerable to social change.

To the erosion of a class system has now been added massive immigration, the development of a multicultural society. That has only compounded the challenges facing a traditional political culture, reducing the plausibility of appeals to “common sense”. And it raises the question of what can create consensus, in a diverse society lacking a clear normative framework.

Britain’s problem is not so much the violation of norms as their absence.

What can people hold on to? The asymmetrical devolution introduced by New Labour has made the system of government even less easy to grasp. Arguably, it also confuses expediency with justice. What are people to make of a system that makes it possible for European Union students, like Scottish students, to attend Scottish universities without paying fees while students from England are required to do so?

Membership of the EU has been the final nail in the coffin of the ancient constitution. For attempting to integrate a common law culture – with its emphasis on precedent rather than rational coherence – into political cultures shaped by Roman law and statute has introduced serious difficulties. Implementing human rights legislation has not been easy. The absence of a codified constitution also makes it harder for Britain to assert itself in the EU. There is nothing here like the German Constitutional Court’s opinion setting limits on the EU’s jurisdiction.

A new constitutional settlement is imperative. It must include a British charter of rights, a parliament reformed by serious bicameralism (which would transform the party system and make executive control of the legislature far more difficult) and symmetrical devolution. The ancient constitution was a wonderful thing in its time. But its time is over. It created the attitudes and habits of a free people, but it is now undermining them.

The writer is Emeritus Fellow, Keble College, Oxford

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Google's Labour Theory of Under Value

Google says it has an algorithm for employers which can identify "employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving".

See here in the WSJ for more on a quantitative approach to a qualitative discipline.

Frightening.

The Amazing Dr Singh

The remarkable Congress victory in India's elections is as dramatic a result as the mandate Sonia Gandhi managed five years ago. The Congress has got more than 200 seats, the best showing for 18 years. The 2009 election marks the end of the rise of the smaller, regional parties and the broadening of the voters' viewpoint. It sees the Left chastened. The Hindu nationalist BJP is already introspecting about the fact the party and its core ideology repels Muslims.

But let's make this personal. Post-independent Indian history of the post Gandhi family age will remember one towering figure: Manmohan Singh. I was one who did think it was wrong not to have an elected but selected PM like Dr Singh. But these historical quirks aside Dr Singh will if he can take steps to rescue the faltering economy and right the growth path be compared to Deng Xiaoping in years to come.

Like Deng, Dr Singh was an outsider. He saw the chaos of partition, crossing over as a poor boy on foot from Pakistan. Congress' Indian nationalism was an easy option over the sulphuric odours of the Sangh. But not for him the sycophancy of Congress apparatchiks or the genuflections of Gandhi family courtiers.

Instead he viewed India's problems through the lens of an academics' chesma, coming to the conclusion as a young economist that India's Nehruvian autarky was a one way ride to economic ruin. He was right.

Singh spent a great deal of his life working to undo the effects of this debilitating mindset as a bureaucrat. By all accounts he displayed a ruthless intellectualism, a quality that usually marks the end of a political careers not the making of one. But favoured by perhaps the wiliest Indian politician of the last sixty years, Narasimha Rao, Singh grew in stature. It is a tribute to Singh that he could balance his friendship with Rao and the Gandhis, who loathed Rao's slippery politics.

Perhaps Singh's most impressive quality is that his thinking is deeply ingrained with the idea that when reform from the top becomes impossible, revolution from the bottom becomes inevitable. He understands that people of privilege will risk destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. The rich think their privileges are a God-given right. Singh has tried to undermine this in a quietly determined way.

His government has not relented from telling corporate bosses not to indulge in vulgar displays of conspicuous consumption and pushing forward with the Bismarkian employment schemes for the poor. He's given millions of Indian government employees pay increases. He calls caste, a pernicious hierarchy, a version of apartheid.

In terms of political acts Singh's decision to jettison as Finance Minister in 1991 decades of Indian economic thinking about self-sufficiency and embrace an import-friendly regime will be recalled as important as Deng's conversion to capitalism. Singh's been PM for five years, he'll probably see out the next five paving the way for another reformer to take over. Let me make one prediction: Singh's revolution will be only complete when a truly competent successor takes over. This means Rahul Gandhi - may like his mother - campaign, win and then step aside for a better man or woman to be PM.

Rich Men Read Newspapers

Someone has to pay for making society accountable...

"As (newspapers) disappear, I think what replaces them won't be as desirable as what we're losing," Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger told shareholders on Saturday. Warren Buffett added: "Charlie and I read five a day. We'll never give them up. We would not buy them at any price. They have the possibility of going to unending losses."

Straight talking expression

"I think it's important to understand that some of that wealth was illusory in the first place." - Barack Obama in the NYT on pre-crash America.