The contrast between the
reception given to Jacob Rees Mogg at Bristol University last week, and that to
Speaker John Bercow at Newcastle could not have been more marked. It provided
an interesting barometer on the approach of university students to politics
today. Mr Rees Mogg is a powerful advocate of free speech and independent
thinking from a traditional white male Catholic perspective, raised in
childhood by a nanny who now looks after his large family of children and where
the boys can expect to attend Eton and Oxbridge like their father, shouted down
by a small group of students. I was one of the hundreds turned away from
Newcastle University despite arriving half an hour before John Bercow due to
speak as the Insight programme of public lecture experienced is biggest
audience for 20 years and have had to rely on a recording of which had the
audience cheering before he started and when he finished outlining the reforms
he had achieved since becoming Speaker in 2009.
Before then he spoke warmly of
the role the Member of Parliament for Newcastle central was playing at
Westminster and he also mentioned the member of Parliament for South Shields
who had arranged for members of the Key club of South Shields to attend the
gathering, an interfaith group enabling the homeless to gain footholds more
stable lives. It is noteworthy that the member of South Shields was in th3
House of Commons on the Friday moving the second reading Bill pressing the
government to define food poverty as the Speaker was visited or had visited a
food bank in Newcastle. A second reading was no given without a vote.
One similarity between to the
two men is that they both started out on the extreme right of the Tory Party
with John Bercow advocating repatriation of immigrants, impressing Norman
Tebbit sufficiently to make him vice chairman of a group set up to organise
students to vote Conservative before the 1987 general election. After working
in in Merchant banking and public relations MT Bercow established with Dr
Julian Lewis a business in advanced speaking and campaigning which has trained
600 Conservatives many of whom became Members of Parliament. However, like St
Paul, John’s conversion is regarded as left of centre by sections of the Tory party
and led to a failed shabby attempt to prevent his reselection before the 2015
General Election, Rees Mogg has shown no such political shifting, being noted a
strong Thatcherite and a fervent Brexiteer with one Sunday Newspaper
forecasting moves to make him one of three saviours of the hard Leave campaign
together with friends again Boris Johnson and Michael Gove an replace Teresa
May and Philip Hammond in Downing Street..
Despite the arrival of more
women and those of non-white ethnicity in the House of Commons there remains a powerful
group of political and social Neanderthals within the Tory Party which John
Bercow explained existed when he supported the wish for a nursery in the Houses
of Parliament to replace one of the many drinking bars. The nursery opened and
the pistol shooting gallery closed. Perhaps the most important and timely
reform he has successfully achieved is the significant change in the balance of
power between the backbench Members of the House of Commons and the government
of the day which irrespective of political Party, if holding an election
mandate in numbers, has always tried to prevent challenge to its legislative
programme and avoid the detailed scrutiny of its decisions together with the
legislative outcomes.
To achieve this objective Mr Bercow
has gained sufficient support from across political parties to ensure that as
many Members of the House, as possible, can question Ministers on their
allotted half or hour on a cycle of Departments, Monday to Wednesday when
Parliament is sitting. Because of the growing length of the six question
exhange between the Official Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister at
noon on Wednesdays, the session has lengthened from the half period since the
two previous 15-minute sessions a week were amalgamated, to between forty and forty-five
minutes. The second important development is the speaker’s prerogative for
allowing backbenchers to question ministers about urgent political matters of
the day and which sometimes over the past five years has become two or three
such requests granted on one day from the occasional one. The total is 400
requests granted since the innovation was agreed. Mr Bercow also politely
reminds Ministers that they are there to be quizzed and not to make statements
on behalf of government policy and decision taking which they are also at
Liberty to do by formal statements and questioning, which the Speaker and the backbenchers
prefer than the written statement released at the weekend or when Parliament is
not in session, the printed newspaper article and the informal media leaks and briefings.
In addition, a backbench committee has been created to agree the subjects for
allotted days when they can open the subject at which the ministerial and
shadow ministerial team members participate but cannot necessarily direct the
outcome in terms of voting on any motions submitted.
Mr Bercow admitted less
success in the promotion of new legislation by backbenchers and even when there
is quantitative all party-political support, the willingness of the government
legislative lawyers to assist can prove a stumbling block to a Private Member
Bill making progress. A recent development has been the ability of any citizen
who can command support from four others to launch an E petition which if it
gains support of 10000 the Government responds with 100000 required for a
debate usually in Westminster Hall but 9 so far have made it to the House of
Commons.
A different dimension has been the John’s
approach to bringing Parliamentary democracy to people in addition to bringing
people to see what happens within the Palace of Westminster, John tries to accept every invitation to
speak and he is supported by an outreach team, the head of which spoke at a
reunion of Ruskin students two years ago which I attended the weekend of those fateful few days when the Member of
Parliament, Jo Cox, was assassinated by a right wing extremist and Britain voted by a narrow majority to leave the E.E,C. Mr Bercow mentioned that among the 1 million
visitors that come to Westminster there is a constant stream of school children
attending the Parliamentary education centre which is adjacent to the House of
Lords, which had also been a concern to some of their Lordships.
Just the day before his visit
to Newcastle the House of Commons, on a free vote. And against the approach of
the Leader of the House, agreed an amending motion proposed by the Labour
Opposition that the House should leave the Palace of Westminster from 2025 to
2031 so there could be complete repair and refurbishment costing a presently
estimated £3.5 thousand million. The Commons will move to a planned and prepared
site at Richmond House in Whitehall and the Lords, if they agree to the Queen
Elizabeth Hall which is across from Parliament Square. What is not clear if the
Commons will become a fit for purpose chamber enabling everyone elected to sit,
speak and vote and to have appropriate office accommodation with the support
staffing required. This should also address all the problems of the present
building which work against the need to address equality as well as general and
personal safety issues. In this respect the Speaker made the point that there
are some 7000-people working at Westminster of which some 750 are directly
employed in addition to elected Members of the Commons and the appointed
members of the Lords.
The Speaker made passing
reference to the role of the Party Whips giving the impression to me they are
regarded as a necessary evil in terms of his focus on representative Parliamentary
democracy and this goes to the heart of the issues raised in Parliamentary
Socialism, written by Ralph Miliband which influenced me in the 1960’s, the
issue of referendums with the Brexit vote of the people versus the majority
view in both Houses to remain and the way the political process should be
conducted in the age of global capitalism and global communications systems and
powers. These are issues for separate
debate and which will be part of my review of For the Many published by OR
books on taking Labour’s 2017 General Election Manifesto to the next level and
which has a preface from Ken Loach and an afterword by Jon Lansman.
Will the proposed changes prevent
Westminster returning as a cosy club for professional politicians, supported by
mainstream media, and public relations lobbying firms acting for global business
and finance interests? There also needs to be greater transparency for the All-party
Interests groups, and those who fund them and where there are some 500 for the 1300
Parliamentary. The televising of debates and the verbatim printings of the Official
record are insufficient for the average citizen to understand the extent and nature
of political and economic power in Britain.
