The Madness of Parliament

How is one to explain the spiteful and capricious madness that seems to have infected honourable members since the EU Referendum?  As a well-established democracy, what has happened to the guiding principles of tolerance, cooperation and compromise? Rather, were those qualities ever only skin deep and that government of the people, by the people and for the people was only a myth?  Through recent history, the people have been content to accept the judgement of their betters. I take the medicine my doctor prescribes because I trust his professional competence. I respect the advice of my lawyer and bank manager or my child’s teacher.  And I trust my member of parliament to do his best to represent me within the constraints of the principle of majority rule. Not any longer; if I trip over a brick in the road my first reaction is to sue the Council and not book an appointment with the optician, if my investment falls I file a claim for mis-selling or if a child has problems at school we rage at the classroom door.  Similarly with politics the myth of a parliamentary democracy accepting the concept of majority rule, like the King’s new suit of clothes, has been exposed and supplanted by the primacy of minority interests, both real and, more sinisterly, imagined.  Written rules now regularly trump common sense.  As the Spectator leader puts it today, recent events show a trend for our pro-remain politicians to think of new ways to put the myth of democracy out of the reach of the people and into the hands of law.

When I observed in my last post that most MPs would be able to resume employment in the law following Mushroom’s summary purge of Parliament, I quoted the idea of PFI contracting as being a fruitful source of remuneration.  After I left the Royal Air Force I was proud to have worked for Serco in the days when it was the leader of creative outsourcing.  Serco operated on the principle that my word is my bond – if that’s what we said we would do then we will do it, and better.  Of course there was a written contract but the hope was that there would never be a need to consult it such being the trust between the client and the contractor.  But my eyes were opened during preliminary discussions with contract lawyers negotiating the terms of a huge PFI contract to supply air-to-air refuelling service to the Royal Air Force.  I was only a humble ex-pilot, untutored in the commercial law of the jungle but here I found the imperative to tie-down the contract with impenetrable legalese questioned one’s faith in human nature.  Worse, for the taxpayer, it would, clearly, lead to sub-optimal contract performance as both sides monitored each other for nit-picking compliance instead of doing their best to excel in service delivery. This was twenty years ago but perhaps that was a symptom of the more general mutual erosion of trust between the ordinary people and the professional class who, increasingly, owes its livelihood to the so-called establishment.  For me, in retrospect, this was a sign of the thin end of a wedge that now divides Parliament from the people it is supposed to represent.  Subsequently, and stemming from that break-down of trust, we now see a cowardly reluctance to take responsibility for action.  Those who should be making difficult decisions on our behalf now find it safer for their careers to hide behind third party advice and public enquiries.  Finally, as Douglas Murray points out, there is now the spectre of every corporate action being minutely scrutinised for possible offence, either real or imagined.  Why would anyone put their head above the parapet in such circumstances and how else can the failure to get Brexit done be explained?