The most tangible result of New Labour’s first term in government will be its constitutional reform programme. For those in Scotland, Wales or London, the results of the government’s constitutional reforms are clear: a parliament with some tax-varying powers; an elected assembly; an elected mayor presiding over a city-wide assembly. It might be slightly harder for the rest of us to taste the fruits of democratic change: a Human Rights Act, most heriditary peers have been cast out of the Lords and proportional representation has been introduced for some elections – but not all.
This is beginning to have an impact on where power lies: for most of these measures are designed to move power away from the centre. The details can be argued about, but reform has happened on an amazing scale. However, there is a striking absence of a principled justification for the reform agenda as a whole. No cabinet minister has stood up on a major public platform and declared Labour’s reforms a success in which we should take pride. In fact, the grudging implementation of the later reforms may cause one to wonder if the government is merely going through the motions with no commitment to the outcomes. It is as if the government’s most radical programme is one from which they prefer to hide. And now there are those who say that this was an agenda which may have been unwise to embark upon in the first place and argue that it is one Labour should leave well alone in its second term.
Labour’s conversion to constitutional reform has been slow. The British left has traditionally been ambivalent towards the constitution.In general, Labour governments have been more concerned with social and economic policy than ‘constitutional meddling’. Their concern has been to concentrate on what the state does, rather than what the state should be.
It is important to bear in mind that the Westminster model of government allows an enormous amount of power to be centralised in the hands of the British executive and prime minister. It is a model, therefore, which holds attractions to any incoming government with radical ambitions. Our first-past-the-post electoral system, which tends to deliver substantial majorities, and the legislative dominance of the Commons over the unelected Lords mean that governments can, with rare exceptions, pass whatever policies they wish. It is not really in their interest to reform a constitution which delivers such advantages. And yet Labour came in to power in 1997 with a raft of constitutional reforms. By implementing them, arguably they have recast the British constitution more in the past three years than any government has in the past 300.
So why did the Labour Party turn to reforming the constitution? Historically, the answer to this is found in the Conservative Party’s reaction to opposition in the 1970s. They realised that it was possible for a Labour government, with only the slimmest of popular mandates, to use the British state for radical socialist ends. The fear that the conventions which kept government in check would not hold led Lord Hailsham to label the powers of the prime minister and his cabinet an ‘elective dictatorship’. Conservatives began to call for a written constitution to act as a check on the government. Most, however, lost such reformist zeal after the 1979 election delivered them power again with an economic and social agenda so radical that it was only deliverable by this same ‘elective dictatorship’.
The reality of electoral politics in the 1980s gave Labour the impetus to turn its mind to reforming the British state. A party which looked unelectable started the process of reforming itself and began to see the advantages of reforming the rules that determined how politics was played. The political juggernaut of Thatcherite majorities seemed to be without challenge under the existing constitutional settlement. Labour’s was a deathbed conversion to help save the party. However, the final and most powerful push came in the late 1990s when Labour made a strong electoral link between the sleaze of the previous Conservative governments and the constitution: for the first time constitutional reform of sorts became a ‘tabloid’ issue. The Labour Party argued that the Tories could not be trusted; a new Labour government would be cleaner. If elected the party would reform government to be more open and more accountable and less prone to sleaze; it would be a government in touch with the people.
The question is: did the architects of the ‘New Labour project’ really believe in the reforms they signed up to? Most of the reforms that Labour put forward in its 1997 manifesto – and has acted on – primarily grew out of commitments that the late John Smith had persuaded the party to take on board. Smith’s passion for constitutional reform was rooted in the belief that the British people believed in government. However, he was worried that government would lose its legitimacy if it could not reform itself to become more accountable to the people it sought to serve. He said: ‘The role of government in our society ought to be instrumental and subordinate – subordinate, above all to the democratic will.’ Smith’s constitutional reform programme had an overrriding purpose: to create institutional and legal checks that made it impossible for future governments to impose their will on society as Thatcher had done. He also recognised that without a root and branch reform, the body politic would never recover from the effects of an increasingly cynical electorate.
However, the democratic agenda was never truly part of Blair’s mission. One only has to observe the manner in which Labour has governed. There is much talk of giving power to the people, moving power away from the centre, empowering and consulting the people, but its instinct is to centralise. In sharp contrast to its theoretical constitutional reform programme, in practice it wants to retain rather than disseminate decision making. Labour in power reeks of a government which believes that only a strong centre can deliver and imposes its will on an unwitting electorate. At the heart of the Labour machine, democracy is regarded as inefficient and outcomes are considered better served through the iron will of the centre.
And so in implementing its programme of reform, Labour has taken care not to meddle with anything which preserves its own unique position. The prerogative powers, the secrecy and the executive discretion remain largely untouched. Take freedom of information, a policy to which Labour has long been committed. This reform has been so compromised that the release of advice and factual information is left to the ultimate discretion of ministers. Ministers will decide which reports from authorities like the Health and Safety Executive can be released. The culture of secrecy, which meant that warnings about BSE were hidden from the public for so long, will remain largely unchanged. And reform of the House of Lords, arguably Labour’s most popular constitutional change, has been compromised by the same reluctance to challenge the fundamentals on which the system is built.
The narrative which accompanies Labour’s programme of democratic reform does not concede the need to create a modern state which is responsive and aware of a new time. There is no overarching ambition to create new and varied centres of power and governance. Ultimately, the government has fought to ensure that its own position remains largely untouched. One is left wondering whether, if Labour had had more time before the 1997 election, whole rafts of the democratic reform programme might not have been quietly cast off.
So now it may be easy for Labour strategists to sit back and think that they have kept (most) of their promises on the constitution. (Reform of the electoral system for Westminster is the most glaring omission). For those who took up the constitution for narrow electoral advantage or because it was an inheritance they could not lose in time, it is not difficult to turn away from these rather dry reforms. Few grab headlines and fewer still (as they see it) will act as ‘eye-catching initiatives’ to inspire voters to turn out and re-elect Labour for an historic second term. If they used the constitution in 1997 because it was politically advantageous then, next time round a new set of advantageous ideas might take Labour somewhere else.
There is a painful logic for those who argue this case. But it is a logic based on a misapprehension of the constitutional reform agenda and the effect of Labour’s reforms. Whether Labour recognise it or not, they have only just begun on the constitution. It is no longer an issue which can be left behind. The reforms have a dynamic of their own and the genie cannot be put back into the bottle. The question at stake now is who owns our political system – the politicians or the people? There are three clear reasons why Labour has no choice but to continue with the reform agenda.
First, it linked constitutional reform to the idea of a new politics. The impetus for reforming the constitution may have been the result of inheritance and narrow electoral advantage but Labour strategists linked reform to a new project with a new politics. An illustration of how the project was seen as inextricably linked to reform of the constitution was the publication, just two months before the 1997 election, of a joint constitutional report with the Liberal Democrats. To abandon the constitution now is to abandon the concept of a new politics.
Second, Labour’s changes are not traditional piecemeal reforms that build on or refine the past and thus preserve the essence; some are too radical for that. The principles which guided the old constitution have been broken, except for centralisation, without replacing them. Most of the pillars of the past have been broken, leaving intact the powers of the prime minister. The rule of law and winner takes all voting have only been tinkered with. The absolute sovereignty of parliament is fatally undermined by the Human Rights Act, the unitary state is no more but we have no mechanisms by which to negotiate new relationships and settle disputes. The independence of the civil service has been further eroded and cabinet government is weaker. While Labour has broken or disregarded the old principles, it has not replaced them.
Third, there is a question of trust and legitimacy. The Prime Minister made much of the lack of trust in the run up to the 1997 election. He promised us a government that would be more open, more accountable and more in touch with the people. Trust, however, is a two way thing. The government call on us to trust them, yet show pitifully little trust in us. Research shows that people feel alienated from politics: they do not believe what politicians say. Turnout for all elections is falling. Feelings of dislocation are growing. Some dismiss this as apathy. But we are still interested in the outcomes: it is our faith in the process that has declined. This should be a wake up call for politics itself. We are a different electorate to the one of only twenty years ago even. Deference is dying, our communities changing, our loyalties increasingly dissipated. The British system functions to deprive voters of their sense of relevance. Labour seems content to continue as if none of this matters. But for how long can it behave like this? The challenge now for the Prime Minister is to establish his own democratic credentials. It is time to question the remnants of the old constitution which Labour has shied away from challenging. It cannot any longer talk about empowering the citizen, if it refuses to question its own centralising zeal. Its behaviour in Wales and in London, its desire to impose on the electorate, rather than let us choose for ourselves, exposed a distrust in both its own reforms and the people.
Labour’s democratic reform programme has ironically increased rather than sated our feelings of disillusionment with our democracy. Labour has failed to address those issues of representation and participation which exclude the majority of us from being involved in the decisions which affect our lives. Power remains distant from us. The challenge for Blair and the architects of New Labour must now be to find innovative and creative ways of including the electorate rather than expecting us to bend to their will. Including us means accepting that what we want and need in our different regions, cities and communities may be different from the grand vision held at the centre. Constitutional reform is not an end in itself. We believe in it because updating our institutions and reconfiguring where power lies will lead to better outcomes.
After the last election Labour rejected the argument that a new constitutional synthesis was required. It decided that it could push through the various commitments inherited from John Smith because they were of little significance – except as promises which had to be enacted to ensure that Labour kept its all important image as a party that delivers on its commitments.
But it does matter now. The forces that Labour has unleashed will lead to a new settlement. The question for the party is whether it wants to help define this journey. Without a defence of the ambition that unites its various reforms Labour is likely to continue to suffer the accusation of being inconsistent, ad hoc, perhaps unwise and certainly incoherent.
And Labour must also realise the totality of its ambition for new politics. A major part of this means a new electoral system for Westminster, one which is more representative of society as a whole and which creates a parliament in which the executive has continually to seek greater consent for its policies. Labour’s interest in electoral reform, like much of its constitutional proposals, may have come out of its experience of Thatcherism, but it must now place it at the heart of its recasting of both British politics and also the British constitution. New politics cannot be built on an informal, behind the scenes deal between parties. Electoral reform will ensure that parties can work together in a real and open way – agreeing and working together where they can but maintaining an open ability to disagree when they do not. This should be the first reform in the second wave of constitutional reform, and by instituting it, Tony Blair will begin to define his own democratic credentials.
Plural politics was a touchstone during the creation of New Labour. It should be a guiding principle behind the continuing evolution of Labour and the recasting of the constitution. Pluralism has always been part of the vocabulary of Labour and it is now time to institutionalise it and not see it as one policy among others.