Labour will neuter parliament in the name of modernity

Starmer’s quest to sweep away ‘outdated practices’ risks ending proper parliamentary oversight

Sir Lindsay Hoyle is known in Parliament as a genial and kind man. After years of being ruled by a malign escapee from Disneyland’s Small World ride, most parliamentarians consider the affable MP for Chorley a step-up both in terms of standards and general sanity. Occasionally, however, Sir Lindsay explodes. Certain breaches of protocol elicit a full tongue-lashing, and nothing causes the eruption of the Lancashire Krakatoa more assuredly than ministers revealing policy via leak or interview before presentation to the Commons.
Though she wasn’t there to hear it, Rachel Reeves fell on the receiving end of one such outburst on Monday, having announced changes to the fiscal rules in an interview abroad. In her absence it fell to David Lammy to take the hit, days after receiving a similar verbal battering for signing away the Chagos Islands during recess. Budget pre-briefings in particular are almost a tradition in themselves. However the lack of shame about them has become more noticeable. Whereas in 1947 Hugh Dalton resigned after inadvertently leaking the merest hint of an upcoming budget to a newspaper, nowadays whole spreadsheets get pinged into journalistic inboxes with gay abandon.
Sadly this trend away from Parliament and its scrutinising role is merely a microcosm of our politics. Policy is increasingly made by and through committees and arms-length bodies. Our energy and housing needs are subject to legalistic jiggery-pokery. Last summer, Supreme Court judges agreed with activist Sarah Finch that carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels should be factored into future planning approvals; an under-discussed decision with calamitous consequences for future energy security. Thanks to Natural England, bat and newt wellbeing often trumps human prosperity in deciding housing approvals.
The response to excessive red tape is, er, more red tape. In lieu of policies, Rachel Reeves will unveil a new “Office for Value of Money” which sounds like a not-very-good parody organisation in a political satire. Nor is the trend confined to Labour. Boris Johnson recently blamed the Migration Advisory Committee for the unpopular explosion in immigration numbers under his watch. The idea that, as PM, he could have simply ignored their suggestions seems not to have occurred to him. The result is an identity crisis for politicians and a democracy itself, with accountability pooled between the elected and unelected.
In Keir Starmer we have a PM who appears inherently suspicious of the cut-and-thrust of Parliament. In a revealing interview, when asked to “choose between Davos or Westminster,” Starmer unhesitatingly replied “Davos”; describing Westminster as “too constrained”, and a “tribal, shouting place”. It isn’t just that he isn’t a “House of Commons man”. He seems committed to trying any and all extra-Parliamentary procedures to bypass scrutiny. Ministers may boast of their vast majority, but under this administration Parliament seems to matter less than ever.
He is unsurprisingly wary of ancient traditions. As a young barrister, Starmer called for judges and lawyers to be stripped of their wigs and gowns in a bid to make the courts feel “more like a GP’s office”. This view isn’t a personal one of the PM but the general creed of the party. New MP Blair McDougall gleefully tweeted that, with Lords reform, “a line going back to the Witan a millennia [sic] ago has been broken.” Whatever your view of hereditary peers, it is telling here that the erosion of history is viewed as an unqualified good in itself.
This suspicion of archaism mirrors a broader “year-zeroism” in constitutional matters. Tony Blair often spoke of wanting Britain to be seen as a “young country”. The vandalism inflicted on the constitutional settlement via changes to the Lords in 1998 and 2005 involved clearing away functional parts of the ancient constitution in favour of “modern” bodies modelled on American or European ones. The result has been a precipitous decline in the quality of legislation, endless legal deadlock and more power than ever in the hands of committees and quangos. Starmer evidently views his job as finishing what Blair started.
His new Attorney-General, Richard Hermer KC recently delivered an astonishing lecture which reveals much about this government’s direction. Speaking of his mission to “shore up the rule of law against the forces of populism”, Hermer cites institutions that he sees as sacrosanct and integral to a functioning democracy but which are threatened by populists. To critique them is therefore to subvert democracy. Tellingly, both “NGOs” and “the academy” get a specific mention; apparently “populism” is when you think that we shouldn’t be run by the charity industrial complex, or clueless academics.
The Starmerist vision reframes the “rule of law” as an article of faith, chanted like “the greater good!” in Hot Fuzz; both a cover for unpopular policy positions and an attempt to insulate them from debate.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle was right to be angry, but with a Labour majority this big, I suspect that his will be an increasingly lone voice against the prevailing tide. When it comes to the neutering of Parliament, pre-Budget briefing is just the tip of the iceberg.