Elections alone don’t make a democracy. Britain’s institutions are under strain, and trust in the state is slipping
Do we live in a democracy? Well, do we? That may seem an odd question to ask. On at least a superficial level Britain is certainly a democracy; we have elections; we elected a Government. So that is it, right? Well, not really.
Democracy is more than simply the ritual of elections. Russia and China have those. It also involves more than having “free and fair’ elections, which Russia and China don’t. But what if we vote for Governments that can’t — or won’t — reflect the will of the electorate? Are we still in a democracy if on key issues Governments over many years fails to deliver on their democratic mandates? Maybe it’s not quite so simple?
This is the question posed in the Centre for a Better Britain’s new paper, “Do we live in a Democracy”, looking at British democracy from its historical foundations to its current ability to deliver for the British voter. What we found is that the British state is undergoing a profound crisis of legitimacy, with age-old assumptions about our democracy no longer holding.
First, some good news. In the minds of the electorate, the foundations of the legitimacy of the British state are based on much deeper and wider foundations than many other states.
Some states base their legitimacy on just one pillar — say the historical traditions of the state, such as in the Gulf monarchies, or representative democracy, such as in many newly independent or newly democratic states. Other states base their rule on a claim to competence — which is why China has, over time, moved away from Communist ideology to base its claim to rule on delivering economic growth. Other states or organisations base their legitimacy on ‘the rule of law’ or even the (limited) legitimacy of a single charismatic personality. Legitimacy has long interested political philosophers, who are constantly asking; if a state that rests on force alone is illegitimate, what makes it legitimate in the eyes of the people?
Britain is fortunate in that our state has (or had) at least four pillars of legitimacy:
- Representative democracy
- Customary or traditional loyalty
- The rule of law
- Competence
The bad news is that each of these pillars of legitimacy is showing signs of erosion.
First our representative democracy. We are a mass democracy, and a reasonably old one. Yet consistently polls of British electors show that large sections of the electorate — particularly the young — have given up on democracy, telling pollsters they would prefer to live in a dictatorship.
It is clear that our current system is not delivering. There are many reasons for this, but at root the problem is simple: when the electorate vote for a policy — say, reduced immigration, increased economic growth or cheaper energy — they then watch as their government ignores them, pulls the levers, and nothing happens. Their scepticism is therefore entirely justified. So why is this the case?
A range of causes, we argue, have cumulatively disarmed UK Ministers and so broken the transmission mechanism from electorate to policy delivery. The dissipation of powers to Quangos, to devolved administrations or international judges; the inability of Ministers to manage their departments — because of limited competence, curtailed authority, and short tenures, all worsened by party and intra-party dysfunction — all play a part.
More controversially the paper looks at the nature of the British electorate. To have a democracy you need a “demos” a people with shared experience able to have a national conversation. However, mass migration, lax rules on who can vote and political atomisation has led to a breakdown in traditional party politics, in some areas producing a turn towards sectarian politics of the kind long associated with Northern Ireland.
Secondly, on the “customary or traditional loyalty” of the electorate to the British state. This loyalty — corresponding largely to what Walter Bagehot described as the “dignified” parts of the British Constitution — is less potent than it once was, but it remains highly relevant. The accumulated history of the Monarch, Parliament and other institutions is made visible at the State Opening of Parliament and in numerous other ceremonies and occasions. This matters, yet for decades successive Governments have attempted to define themselves in contradiction to British tradition. We will always need tradition and ceremony, the accumulated wisdom of ages, to underpin our system. It is better that this is provided by the King in Parliament than allow the workings of Parliamentary debates themselves to become ceremonial, while real power is wielded elsewhere.
Thirdly, the “rule of law”. This is a much-abused concept that has changed its nature over the years. Once, it was simply the theory that the law applies to everyone and the courts should follow Parliament as set out in the Bill of Rights 1688. Now, with the importation of international law via the Human Rights Act and residual EU law, the concept has morphed into something closer to the ‘rule of lawyers’. The high priests of this new legal order sit in the UK courts, and their Bible is Lord Bingham’s The Rule of Law, which argues for a view of judicial power so expansive they could throw out statues passed by Parliament. This is a revolutionary position adopted by far too many lawyerly Conservative MPs of mixed abilities and taken to its extreme by the current Attorney General, who chose the “Bingham Lecture” to set out his personal philosophy — which drove him to justify the handover of the Chagos Islands and the Chagossians.
Lastly, “competence”. Britain was once renowned for a competent civil service, which underpinned its rise as a global power, its victories in two world wars, and the rebuilding of the country after 1945. It was regarded as impartial, and it was taken for granted that it acted in the interests of the public. That assumption is no longer widely held — nor is it borne out by the facts. Across many topics the British state has visibly failed; it has grown larger yet more inefficient, and seems more interested in pursuing its own political goals than those of its political masters. On whatever issue you take — energy, migration, infrastructure delivery, defence procurement, productivity — the state is not working.
So where does this leave the British state. Is it still legitimate in the eyes of the electorate? Are we still living in a democracy?
The answer is yes, yes we do — for now. There are now unmistakable warning signs that the electorate is challenging the legitimacy of the state itself, in a manner unseen in Britain since the Civil War. While the state and our democracy remain secure, there are mounting problems that need urgent action; the legal system, re-empowering ministers to act and a political culture that responds to the legitimate ambitions of the people. These reforms are possible, but must happen without further delay.
