I have a confession to make. Prior to her recent Commons tour de force, I was culpably unaware of the achievements (and existence) of Dr. Ellie Chowns, the recently elected Green Party MP for North Herefordshire.
Dr. Chowns (an expert in “factors influencing sustainability in Malawi’s rural water supply sector”) has caused quite the stir on social media following a maiden speech in which she suggested several “improvements” to the procedures of the House of Commons, intended to increase the efficiency of the legislative process. Felicitously – and doubtless coincidentally – these would also increase the comfort and convenience of Honourable and Right Honourable members themselves. Who’d a thunk it?
Her suggestions include: the abolition of the lobby tradition and its replacement by a system of electronic voting; less “bobbing up and down” in often forlorn attempts to catch the Speaker’s eye; that provision be made for allocated desks (Dr. Chowns finds it “extraordinary” that there is insufficient room for all MPs – I can only assume she’s never tuned in to watch a debate on vaccine harms); and the replacement of daily Christian prayer (not appropriate “for this day and age”) with something more representative of “a range of faiths”. And none, presumably. Perhaps in Green Utopia, MPs will be sworn in while gripping a well-thumbed copy of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion.
Is it stuffy of me to find all this a bit discourteous? The Commons is a centuries-old institution, which has navigated its fair share of bother and whose members are guests, not freeholders. Would Dr. Chowns accept an invitation to a dinner party only to insist on changing the “old-fashioned decor”? Would she presume to rewrite grace?
I very much fear that she might.
I have no wish to improve the comfort of MPs; no desire to make the execution of their parliamentary responsibilities more convenient; and I am horrified at the very suggestion that we should improve the efficiency of the legislative process. What good ever comes of yet more laws? The opportunity to make a law should be like the opportunity to own a gun: it should present itself only in exigent circumstances. And never to the people most eager to make use of it. To be fair to Dr. Chowns, she cut her teeth in the EU Potemkin Parliament, an expensive caricature of the democratic ideal, and a body which is forbidden by the EU nomenklatura of initiating any legislation not handed to it via European Commission stitch-up. Doubtless, she is chomping at the bit.
The inconveniences that attend Commons procedures are, in fact, quite benign. The lobby interactions facilitate unlikely cross-party friendships; and the seemingly interminable waiting around between votes reminds MPs that they are part of something bigger than themselves – a reality check that many, if not all, of them should find salutary. The traditions of the House serve to put them in their rightful place.
The Green Party’s reformist instinct is an expression of progressive beliefs which are at least honestly held (one might contrast them with the convenient progressivism of the One Nation milquetoast “Tories” and their doomed quest for an imaginary “centre ground” – but that’s another discussion). But the instinct to reform all too frequently is supplanted by the instinct to change for the sake of it.
The House of Commons should not serve as an experiment in progressivism. The fit is not right. The traditions of Parliament are tried and tested remnants of a history we have no business unpicking. For what will replace it? The progressive reformist is a bit like that person who would gladly travel back in time to assassinate Hitler, oblivious to the fact that they are thereby risking a present which may be many times worse than the one history has gifted to us.
This perhaps, then, is the primary conceit of the progressive worldview: that its modern certainties are any sort of match for, and indeed should supersede, the lessons of history. The House of Commons exercises good manners and will find a way to accommodate that conceit because, despite not having individual desks, it always does. But it should not bend to it.
On that latter point, though, I am less optimistic. Now that the Mrs. Dutt-Pauker types have migrated from the columns of Peter Simple and inserted themselves into public life we’re in for a bumpy ride.
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