{"id":2638,"date":"2019-06-12T11:33:39","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T11:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2638"},"modified":"2019-06-12T11:34:21","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T11:34:21","slug":"politics-has-turned-nasty-we-need-a-return-to-civility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2638","title":{"rendered":"Politics has turned nasty. We need a return to civility"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Earlier this\nyear, I gave\nevidence<\/a> to the House of Commons Liaison Committee (alongside\nProfessor Meg Russell, director of the Constitution Unit) on the topic of the\neffectiveness  and influence of select\ncommittees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that\nsession, I was asked about the reforms instituted as a result of the\nrecommendations in the 2009 report of the Reform\nof the House Committee<\/a>, on which I served as chair. That committee\ncame about because the expenses scandal had spurred me into writing to the prime\nminister, Gordon Brown, in a bid to encourage him to reform parliament in a way\nthat might increase public regard for it, at a time when it was perhaps lower\nthan it had ever been. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reforms\nmade as a result of what is now called the Wright Committee have, I think,\nproved relatively successful. However, in that same letter I also proposed\nsetting up what I called \u2018a democracy commission\u2019 to think through what kind of\ndemocracy we now wanted. Part of the problem I wanted that committee to deal\nwith was the fact that people were increasingly disengaged from politics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten years\nlater, it is extraordinary what has happened: we have had democracy by the\nbucketload, so it\u2019s claimed, and people\u2019s engagement with politics has most\ndefinitely increased. But it wasn\u2019t supposed to be quite like this. People like\nme had spent years looking for ways to replace or improve upon representative\ndemocracy, but now events have caused us to come to its defence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is because\nthis established democratic model is under assault across \u2013 and indeed beyond \u2013\nthe western world, and from all directions. In this country, the 2016\nreferendum was the spur for this. And the result of that referendum was\ntraumatic not just because we lost the vote, but because we lost the democratic\nargument. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By this, I\nmean that we lost the argument when it comes to the idea of democracy itself.\nThe leave campaigns were the ones making the argument for democracy; they made\nthe case for democratic self-government and sovereignty. And that case went\nunanswered, because instead of making a democratic argument, those campaigning\nfor remain focused on economics and how we would be \u2018better off in\u2019. There was\na different argument that could have been made by remainers, albeit a more\ncomplicated one. But it wasn\u2019t made, and because of this, the proponents of a\ncertain view of democracy prevailed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now we find\nourselves in a state of democratic despair. To fix this, we have to give people\na feeling that democracy can deliver for them after a long period of it failing\nto do so. Democracy is not just a matter of institutions, but it is a way of\ndoing politics \u2013 a culture and a spirit. The culture and spirit now is bad \u2013\nit\u2019s nasty \u2013 and a return to civility is required. If we need something to\nrally around, perhaps we can rally around that.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, I gave evidence to the House of Commons Liaison Committee (alongside Professor Meg Russell, director of the Constitution Unit) on the topic of the effectiveness  and influence of select committees. At that session, I was asked about the reforms instituted as a result of the recommendations in the 2009 report of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":2639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1556],"class_list":["post-2638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-other"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Politics-has-turned-nasty-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2638"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}