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(The Bullingdon Club)

When is a reformation not a reformation?

Exhibit #1.

Ed Milliband’s recent call for “Reform” :

• More power for parliamentary select committees to scrutinise legislation.

• More power to be devolved to local government.

• The language of the chamber – such as calling MPs “my right honourable friend”.

• The ceremonial garb of Commons officials.

• The amount of time the Commons sits during the year. eg: September sittings.

• The format of PMQs.

Exhibit #2:

David Cameron’s recent call for “Reform” :

• Limit the power of the prime minister by giving serious consideration to introducing fixed-term parliaments, ending the right of Downing Street to control the timing of general elections.

• End the “pliant” role of parliament by giving MPs free votes during the consideration of bills at committee stage. MPs would also be handed the crucial power of deciding the timetable of bills.

• Boost the power of backbench MPs – and limit the powers of the executive – by allowing MPs to choose the chairs and members of Commons select committees.

• Open up the legislative process to outsiders by sending out text alerts on the progress of parliamentary bills and by posting proceedings on YouTube.

• Curb the power of the executive by limiting the use of the royal prerogative which allows the prime minister, in the name of the monarch, to make major decisions. Gordon Brown is making sweeping changes in this area in the constitutional renewal bill, but Cameron says he would go further.

• Publish the expenses claims of all public servants earning more than £150,000.

• Strengthen local government by giving councils the power of “competence”. This would allow councils to reverse Whitehall decisions to close popular services, such as a local post office or a railway station, by giving them the power to raise money to keep them open.

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So what have we got? Here’s a glib truism:

The founding priorities of any institution fall to second place upon formation – and the first priority becomes self-preservation.

What we are “given” is a series of empty gestures that are so facile, that you could change the context and they’d become satire. What we will always be “given” as reforms from they-that-would-be-reformed, falls into two main categories:

1) gestures designed to placate, so business can carry on as normal

2) shock-doctrine tactics designed to push through (same-old) agendas that were previously unpopular, ie: bad.

Really, I’m not bothered what MPs wear, they can dress up as giant bees for all I care, so long as they don’t:

- sell 220 million worth of IR buildings to a company (that we now (and forever) (have to) pay rent to) operating out of a tax haven
- commit us to 200 billion in future spending in highly dubious PFI deals
- get us into an illegal war, ignoring millions of people who took to the streets and protested, and about which we were told lie after lie after lie

and so on.

And as I am paranoid, I’m inclined to interpret David Cameron’s call for “giving power back to individuals” as being a species of the “small government” new-speak as lovingly crafted by the massively corporate-funded free-market think-tanks in America.

“Small Government” is slight of hand for reducing democratically mandated control over corporations – so creeping privatisation becomes galloping privatisation, the 4th Estate consolidates to become even more of an arm (or mouth) of the ruling elite than it already is, and externalisation of corporate costs can become even more egregious and exploitative than they already are.

It’s not about reducing the power of government, it’s about reducing the power of democracy. It’s about ceding power back to a baronial class.

And this (given the photograph at the top) really ought come as no surprise to anyone.

So… we can’t let the terms of reform come from political incumbents – they’ve got to come from us.

So what do we want? What questions do we need to be asking ourselves?