3. Government and governmental networks

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1 1. Governing in the UK 1.1. Counter-powers: 3. Government and governmental networks In the UK, the Prime Minister has progressively gained more power. As Lord Chancellor Hailsham said: The sovereignty of Parliament has increasingly become, in practice, the sovereignty of the Commons, and the sovereignty of the Government which, in addition to its influence in Parliament, controls the party whips, the party machine, and the Civil Service. This means that what has always been an elective dictatorship in theory, but one in which the component parts operated in practice to control one another, has become a machine in which one of these parts has come to exercise a predominant influence over the rest. (1976) In theory, Parliament is indeed the first institution to present a check on government power in the form of parliamentary reviews or during debates which are often simply ritual exchanges of party political propaganda 1. Parliament may indeed introduce a vote of no confidence to send back the government. MPs and peers can ask their questions during the Prime Minister s Question Time 2, once a week in both houses of Parliament. The attendance rates in both Houses of Parliament, however, are not high: less than 65% for the Commons and less than 50% for the Lords (2008 and 2010 figures). Finally, even the power of the Lords, whose members are mostly politically neutral cross-benchers, has been more and more limited: because Lords are not elected, they are not legitimate enough to oppose elected MPs. Citizens too can oppose government policy by asking for judicial review but the system is complex as they require leave requirement and cost a lot of money, with few results. The authority of the government is contested on a daily basis by Her Majesty s Opposition which consists of the Leader of the Opposition and the Shadow Cabinet. Twenty days a year, during opposition days also known as supply or allotted days the Opposition can set the parliamentary agenda. If a matter is considered important, it may ask the Speaker of the House to organize an adjournement debate. Government policy, in addition, is regularly examined by select committees and standing committees (for more specific matters) whose investigative power remains somewhat limited. Similarly, the Parliamentary Ombudsman has a consultative role only. When a party has the majority in Parliament, it thus becomes difficult to control the government but the Opposition can choose to support it for strategic reasons 3. Backbenchers, furthermore, have a crucial role to play: in spite of the pressure imposed on them by whips, some of them may rebel against their party s policy The Prime Minister: In 1963, as the Consensus years were drawing to a close, Labour MP Richard Crossman declared that the post war epoch has seen the final transformation of the cabinet government into prime ministerial government. Causing even more concern was the emergence, with Thatcher s election in 1979, of conviction politics, a tendency that extended into the 21 st century with T. Blair ( ). Political power became more personalized though at the expense of collective policy-making. It means that the Prime Minister has become more than just primus inter pares. Some of their decisions can be taken without consulting the Cabinet: 1 Weir S. and D. Beetham. Political Power and Democratic Control in Britain. London: Routledge, 1999, A Deputy Prime Minister s Question Time has also existed since : In 1997, before his election, Blair imposed a three-line whip asking Labour MPs not to oppose the 1994 law on criminality because he did not want to appear soft on crime.

2 Refusing the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (EEMR), Thatcher increased the independence the Bank of England without the consultation of Cabinet. Emphasizing that New Labour would not dismantle Thatcherism, Blair s first act of government was coated in Conservatism as he went even beyond Thatcher by granting the Bank of England full control of interest rate policy. The decision took the entire political establishment by surprise and created more dissension within the Labour party. In the context of Blair s decision to wage war on Iraq, his government s key policy decisions were criticized for having been made by a small clique and special advisors (like spin doctors) without proper Cabinet consultation. Blair announced an end to "sofa-style" government, stating that future crises would be dealt with by a formal ad hoc Cabinet committee. The Cameron-Clegg coalition government (2010-5), in retrospect, collective responsibility was more difficult. In this respect, the Coalition Committee was created to coordinate the two partieslib-dem ministers could disagree over some policies such as the raising of tuition fees and nuclear energy policy. It has become clear that cabinet government is not constituted merely by the weekly meeting of the fifteen to twenty plus ministers: to take account of the fact that it covers more than full meetings of the cabinet, concepts such as the core executive or the cabinet system have come to be used in the literature 4. But unlike the American President, the Prime Minister was not directly elected, so he or she might be dismissed by his or her own party The State: To understand how the state works, you have to get acquainted with contractual governance, thereby the people accept to give up certain rights in exchange for protection from the State. In the UK, the word state originally refers to the head of State (the Queen), but it can be extended to government insofar as there exists a Welfare State responsible for social security. More than just protecting, the British state must also be an enabling force, that is to say, it must enable citizens to be responsible for themselves. This trend developed in the 1970s- 80s, as Thatcher sought to roll back the frontiers of the state to make way for the free market. For the same reason, successive British governments have reduced the overall tax rates for businesses and progressively deregulated the market to give managers back the right to manage. Following the so-called Big Bang of 1986, the UK self-regulatory system was placed into a statutory framework 5, reducing the role of the State accordingly and limiting access to allowance policy. Paradoxically enough, as Thatcher reduced state intervention in the economy, social control and regulation became more important, policing those trying to defraud social security. One of the most illustrative example of that tendency was during the miners strike as it generated violent clashes the police. In the 1980s, moreover, the state did not seek the structural causes for the social ills it was trying to combat instead, it sought to change the people directly, invoking individual responsibility 6. The trend did not change in the 1990s and 2000s under Blair s leadership. In fact, the distinction between civil law and criminal law became even more blurry. Such laws as the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005) and the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act (2011) voted by the coalition clearly infringed on individual liberties. 4 In their work on Unlocking the Cabinet, Mackie and Hogwood introduced the term arenas to refer to the different decisionmaking contexts that form part of the cabinet system. 5 Sweeping reform in the regulation of the UK investment industry started with the Financial Services Act (1986) whose comprehensive government regular (the Securities and Investment Board between and the Financial Services Authority since then) was consolidated due to the Financial Services and Markets Act (2000). Following the 2007 financial crisis, the FSA worked with the Bank of England and the Treasury (the Tripartite Authorities) to reform and strengthen the existing UK framework. 6 Family intervention projects, for example, were aimed at helping those seen as antisocial find the cause by themselves.

3 LEA - Civi GB Session Democracy and election system 2.1. First-past-the-post voting: The first-past-the-post voting (FPTP) method is one of the several plurality voting systems: voters indicate on the ballot the candidate they chose, and the candidate who receives more votes in a constituency wins. In that there are some 650 constituencies in the UK, constituency voters may feel better represented. The effect of a system based on single-seat constituencies is that the larger parties gain a disproportionately large share of seats, insuring a working majority while smaller parties are left with a disproportionately small one. The two-party system excluding minority parties, Her Majesty s Opposition in Parliament remains relatively strong, imposing what J.S. Mill called the tyranny of the majority. The winner party, however, is not necessarily the one with more votes: 18 out of 23 general elections since 1922 have produced a single party majority government. In 1951, Labour had some 250,000 more votes than the Conservatives but the latter won more constituencies and Churchill got reelected. Conversely, in 1974, Wilson was reelected because Labour had secured more constituencies than the Conservatives, but had less votes. If there is no majority, there is a hung parliament Reforming the electoral system: The Electoral Reform Society is a British political pressure group which promotes the abolition of FPTP for all national and local elections, arguing it is bad for democracy. Even after the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act (2011), indeed, the geographical distribution of votes in a constituency remains unfair. In addition, FPTP is usually responsible for tactical voting behaviors. Because a lot of votes are wasted once a candidate has reached the majority of votes (+50%), the British tend to vote against instead of for a candidate. Single transferable voting: After their 2011 referendum on Alternative Vote (AV), Lib-Dems proposed to replace FPTP with single transferable voting: 68% of voters were in favor of electoral reform. But the Conservatives rejected that option and limited the project to preferential voting, or ranked-choice voting (RCV), thereby voters can rank the candidates in order of preference 7. Less votes would be wasted and tactical voting would no longer be necessary, but the project was rejected. Another proposition was the Additional Member System, thereby an elector has two votes: the constituency vote (relative to FPTP) and the regional vote (proportional). 8 This system tends to generate coalition government instead of strong government. Direct democracy: In opposition to representative democracy, direct democracy means citizens acquire power to abide by public decisions and have the right to take part equally and fairly in the entire process that generates these decisions. Direct democracy institutions comprise citizen-initiated mechanisms (CI- MDDs) serving as intermittent safety valves with many different forms: mandatory plebiscites, or obligatory referenda, are one of them (Altman: 1-5). In the UK, participation rates in local elections has decreased since 1950 (80%), reaching 65% in And yet a lot referenda have been organized in recent decades. In 1973, the first UK referendum was organized to settle the question of Northern Ireland s membership in the Union. Successive UK governments, such as G. Brown s ( ), have also encouraged direct democracy initiatives such as citizen s juries (= forums) or e-petitions introduced by the coalition government in the 2010s. In 2011, however, the House of Lords rejected an initiative empowering citizens to elect constables. Unsurprisingly, then, direct action initiatives became more popular: civil disobedience, boycott, blockade etc. 7 The difference is that instant runoff voting (IRV) such as preferential voting is not a proportional voting system, unlike single transferable voting. Like all winner-take-all voting systems, IRV tends to exaggerate the number of seats won by the largest parties. 8 The Scottish Parliament adopted this practice to rectify regional inequality.

4 Ethnic minority and women: British democracy, in many respects, remains quite elitist: in 2010, 7% Britons had been to private schools, against 35% for MPs. Former Prime Minister Cameron comes from Eton College and his former Deputy (N. Clegg), from Westminster School. Both, moreover, studied in Oxbridge, as did 28% of all British MPs. In spite of the Sex Discrimination Act (2002), women, moreover, are still underrepresented. Although technically illegal, political parties may resort to all-women shortlists, as did the Labour Party in 1997, to have more women then nicknamed Blair s Babes serving as MPs. In 2006, the Conservatives adopted a priority list (the A list ) in which half of the candidates had to be women. The fact that T. May was appointed Home Minister in 2010 was the result of the Women2Win campaign group. Ethnic minorities, moreover, are underrepresented too: the first mixed-race Cabinet Minister in Britain was Paul Boateng, whose mother was Scottish and father was Ghanaian and was appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury in May 2002 only. At the local level, the first ethnic minority woman to be elected as MP was Diane Abbott (with the Labour Party). Other parties like the Lib-Dems or the Conservatives also work towards more diversity as seen with the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats or the Priority List adopted by the Conservatives in Critics argue that experience prevails over ethnicity, and that a lot of ethnic minority MPs are but token representatives Renewing democracy: In recent years, the image of the British government has been tarnished by a few political scandals, most notably involving lobbying though not exclusively: the student protests (Nov-Dec. 2010) against further cuts to education, the Belfast City Hall flag protests (2012) revived the tensions between nationalists in Northern Ireland and Unionists, the emergence of the anti-austerity movement (2010-present) or the ongoing mystery surrounding the Westminster paedophile dossier have seriously eroded the population s confidence. According to the British Social Attitudes Survey, moreover, 60% Britons said they did not trust their political leaders. Some laws sought to revive democracy, such as the Freedom of Information Act (2000) but some laws sought to restrict citizens freedom, such as the Identity Cards Act (2006), creating the National Identity Register (NIR), later destroyed as a result of the Identity Documents Act (2010), a bill originally introduced by T. May. The House of Lords: The House of Lords Act (1999) was the first step in the reform of the upper house. Since the recommendations made in the Wakeham report (2000), British officials have managed to agree on the question of whether Lords should be appointed or elected. During the Votes of February 2003, some like T. Blair favored a hybrid House. Blair also created the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) in June so as to debate constitutional reform involving not only the House of Lords, but also the soon-to-be-created Supreme Court. In its September report entitled Constitutional Reform: Next Steps for the House of Lords, the DCA argued in favor a fully appointed house. Discussions reprised early in 2006 in the aftermath of the Cash for Peerages affair concerning the connection between political donations and the award of life peerages 9. Following attempts by the Lords to block (or add safeguards to, according to viewpoint), recent controversial legislation, a short majority of Britons felt that a jury of the general public should decide on the House s future. During the Votes of March 2007, the House of Commons unexpectedly voted by a large majority for an allelected Upper House while, one week later, the House of Lords pronounced in favor of an all-appointed House by a larger majority. It was not until the coalition government that the House of Lords Reform Bill (2012) was drafted and introduced by N. Clegg. Labour called for more scrutiny of the bill and said it would vote against the program motion, along with several Conservative MPs. On 10 July 2012, some 91 Conservative MPs voted against the three-line whip and 19 more abstained. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg had to abandon the bill due to the opposition from Conservative backbench MPs, claiming that their party had broken the coalition contract. In spite of two recent acts voted in 2014 and 2015, allowing Lords to retire, and to expel or suspend members, the debate is still open. 9 To cut a long story short, Blair appointed Lords who were eventually rejected by the Judicial Appointments Commission. It was found that these candidates had given money to finance the Labour Party s campaign.

5 LEA - Civi GB Session 03 The House of Commons: The lower house too was subject to reform. Under the provisions of the Fixed-term Parliament Act (2011), parliamentary elections must be held every five years, beginning in Initially, the Septennial Act (1715) provided that a Parliament expired seven years after it had been summoned this period was reduced to five years by the Parliament Act (1911); though, in any case, Parliament was never allowed to reach its maximum statutory length, as the monarch always dissolved it before its expiry. Before the passage of the 2011 Act, Parliament could thus be dissolved by royal proclamation by virtue of the Royal Prerogative. By the nineteenth century, prime ministers had a great deal of de facto control over the timings of general elections. Furthermore, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act (2011) made provisions for both the Alternative Vote referendum and the Sixth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies. Reviewing is the process by which parliamentary constituencies to the House of Commons are being reviewed by the four boundary commissions (= non-departmental public bodies responsible for determining the boundaries of constituencies for elections to all Parliament, including national ones). At the turn of the 2010s, finally, the Backbench Business Committee was created to give an opportunity to backbenchers to bring forward debates of their choice 10. The Petitions Committee is the body charged with overseeing the e-petitions system. 3. The networks of power 3.1. Interest groups: Business lobbies ( any business-related group that tries to persuade politicians to change sth ): In the UK, big business interests are represented by over 3,000 trade associations such as the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) which has unmatched influence with government. Though originally the CBI tends to work more closely with the Conservatives, T. Blair was the first Labour Prime Minister to intervene in the 1997 annual conference of the Confederation. New Labour has indeed proved to have closer relationships with the business world, like Sir David Simon, former chief executive of BP Oil International, who was appointed Minister for Trade and Competitiveness in Europe, after the 1997 election 11. Some among these businessmen, like Lord Patrick Carter, were even invited to give political advice on issues such health, sports or justice. Moreover, the City of London has eventually become a major contributor to Labour s political campaigns. In 1970, however, the Labour Party had promoted a Companies bill whose provisions would have forced companies to disclose their political contributions. The ensuing Acts of 1976 and 1985 were superseded by the Companies Acts of 2004 and Businessmen generally can access privileged circles of government like the Leader s Group but they may also pay for professional lobbyists to promote community interest companies. Think tanks ( a group of experts brought together, usually by a government, to develop ideas on a particular subject and to make suggestions for action ): Think tanks are ostensibly independent research groups used to promote business interests. The Adam Smith Institute, for instance, campaigned in favor of privatization. Some big businesses, like Group 4 Securicor (G4S), founded in 2004 as a multinational security services company, have had their own think tanks: the Serco Institute was vested with the mission to study competition and contracting in public services. As of 2007, there were over 100 think tanks in the UK. Already in the Thatcher years, the Institute for Economic Affairs would have pushed the government to enact monetarist policy just as in the Blair years, when the Institute for Public Policy Research gave legitimacy to Labour s Third Way politics. Pressure groups ( a group of people who work together to try to influence what other people or the government think about a particular subject, in order to achieve the things they want ): Trade associations such as the British Medical Association, the Law Society or even the Society for the Protection of Birds have more members than political parties. Pressure groups like Liberty (created in 2006) are a means for citizens to make their voices heard. 10 The Committee can consider subjects raised in national or local campaigns, reports by select committees and other groups and issues suggested by constituents, including paper or electronic petitions with no restriction on the number of signatures. 11 Sir David Simon was a leading member of the European Roundtable of Industrialists and former member of the EU's Competitiveness Advisory Group (CAG). One of his first moves as a minister was an -- unsuccessful -- attempt to make Labour MPs vote against a directive to regulate company take-overs. New Labour, he explained, favors self-regulation over legal regulation.

6 3.2. Trade unions and political advisers: Ever since the creation of the Trade Union Congress in 1868, trade unions have had some influence on government policy. In some instances, their influence was so significant that they sapped the government in power at the time, as in 1974 with E. Heath and the National Union of Mineworkers. The fact its membership declined between 2008 (6.5 million) and 2016 (5.8 million) also reflects the fact that their influence has diminished in the last decades, most notably in the Thatcher years: the changing job market, high unemployment, the abolition of the closed shop (= the employer agrees to hire union members only, and employees must remain members of the union at all times in order to remain employed) and picketing (= a form of protest in which picketers congregate outside a place of work or location where an event is taking place). Even during the Blair years, trade unions tended to be removed from the political process. A 2010 report published by the UK s leading (Conservative) think tank Policy Exchange in Sept. even recommended more legislative restrictions to trade unions Media and spin doctors : In the UK, the media tend to have their own commercial and ideological interests. Like other interest groups, some have lost influence: as early as 2006, News of the World, a national red top newspaper published from 1843 to 2011 and one of the biggest-selling English-language newspaper around the globe, became engulfed in allegations of phone hacking. Back in 2000, the populist newspaper had published the names of 150 sexual offenders guilty of child abuse in the wake of the 8-year old Sarah Payne murder. Though the newspaper had to retract from disclosing the name of sex offenders, it continued to lobby for the introduction of a Sarah s Law in the UK that would enable any family to consult the Sex Offenders Register 12. It was not until 2007 that a lighter version of the law was voted, enabling single mothers to consult the registry. Political officials are thus well aware that they need to collaborate with media moguls, as T. Blair with Rupert Murdoch. The so-called Tony press echoing the Tory press however eventually turned the media tide against New Labour. The most recent event to illustrate that phenomenon would be the phone-hacking scandal (2011). Whilst investigations conducted in the mid-2000s limited the paper s phone hacking activities to celebrities, politicians and members of the British Royal Family, in July 2011 it was revealed that the phones of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, relatives of deceased British soldiers and victims of the London bombings (7 July 2005) had also been hacked. The resulting public outcry led to several high-profile resignations, including Murdoch s. The revelation was all the more surprising considering that spin doctors have had an increasing role in British politics. For example, Alastair Campbell, former editor for the Daily Mirror, is remembered as the epitome of the spin doctor for his work as Downing Street Press Secretary ( ), followed by Director of Communications and Strategy (2000 3). His role in the Iraq War ( ) was considerable 13. The same argument goes with special advisers, whose number between 1997 (38) and 2009 (74). There is no legal limit on the number of special advisers, although the current total is less than it was under Blair and Brown. 12 Sarah s Law was inspired from the US Megan s Law with similar provisions. 13 Campbell was involved in the preparation and release of the September Dossier in 2002 and the Iraq Dossier (or Dodgy Dossier ) in February These documents argued the case for concern over possible weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq but were criticized as overstating or distorting the actual intelligence findings. Subsequent investigation revealed that the September Dossier had been altered, on Campbell's orders, to be consistent with United States officials.