22nd August 2021
A couple of days ago the post on this blog was about Dominic Raab and ministerial resignations.
In that post I averred that this clamour for a ministerial resignation tells us three things: that the minister had enemies within government (else the incriminating material would not be available); that the press was not protecting the minister; and that there was sufficient interest from the public for the issue to be subject of so many news reports.
The one thing the clamour did not tell us – at least directly – was whether the minister had actually done anything wrong.
And ministers get things wrong all the time – it is just that the relevant material is not disclosed and/or the press do not join the attack and/or few outside Westminster would be interested.
Accordingly, a sustained clamour for a ministerial resignation will always tend to tell you more about political weakness rather than policy failure.
In essence: a political scandal is a function of having political or media enemies and not of policy incompetence.
Now, I want to develop this point to say that even when there is a resignation, this is not an especially practical form of accountability.
The failures that may have prompted the resignation will usually still be there – and the catharsis of the resignation may change the political mood, but may not mean any substantial change, still less redress or compensation for those affected.
The minister who has resigned often does not have any long-term adverse effects to their political career – and after a suitable period, they will often resume their senior political roles – sometimes again and again.
In this way, a ministerial resignation is too often not an exercise in accountability – but a substitute for it.
The resignations – which now can have a ritualistic quality – are what the political and media classes do to pretend to themselves and others that there is accountability within our political system.
‘there are calls on [x] to resign’
‘there is increasing pressure on [x] to resign’
‘[x] has resigned’
[…]
‘[x] returns to office’
And nothing else changes.
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More effective accountability would be for [x] to stay in office, and account for failures and the reasons for the failures on the floor of the house of commons and before select committees, to appear before relevant public inquiries, and to co-operate with bodies such as the national audit office.
That is for ministers to own their mistakes and to, well, account for them – for that is the very meaning of that word: accountability.
But we get none of this, and we get cosmetic personnel changes instead.
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Much the same as the above can also be said for ministerial sackings.
Again, this is often political theatre – even soap opera.
Little if anything actually changes with a sacking, little is accounted for.
Some political drama, perhaps, that is forgotten in a day or two.
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Dismissals and resignations are, of course, part of any system of accountability – as resorts and sanctions.
But they are not the entirety of any meaningful form of political accountability.
For meaningful political accountability is the last thing any politician actually wants.
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View from the netherlands.
It used to be the decent thing to do to explain your behaviour as minister to parliament. And in the end the question was ( and ought to be) do we still have confidence in this minister. This confidence question was paramount.
Normally, the debate took two rounds of questions and answers. but it could wel be that the minister felt after the first round that his position was untenable and then he would announce his resignation before a motion was put.
In my opinion that should be the right question: do we trust the minister, do we have confidence.
The only reason to step down before a possible debate is when a minister has no selfconfidence. ( or when he feels that his party will not support him, but that only works in coalition government)
I agree in theory with your argument, David. However, when a minister is not up to the job – for example, by serious instances of poor judgement – and thereby potentially, or actually, causing avoidable harm, would it not be better to remove them? And then there should, of course, be an account of what went wrong under that minister, who should be rebuked and/or debarred from office, or suffer some other penalty. It’s not that difficult to devise some form of accountability.
It has always struck me as bonkers that politicians walk away from these posts without any noticeable repercussions. Far more likely they are offered lucrative posts on boards, or as advisors, thus compounding the offence to the electorate and effectively giving them a golden handshake.
‘I agree in theory with your argument, David. However, when a minister is not up to the job – for example, by serious instances of poor judgement – and thereby potentially, or actually, causing avoidable harm, would it not be better to remove them?’
I really hoped I had anticipated this objection with my point towards the end: ‘Dismissals and resignations are, of course, part of any system of accountability – as resorts and sanctions.’
“It has always struck me as bonkers that politicians walk away from these posts without any noticeable repercussions.”
I remember Lord Carrington.
He did resign as Foreign Secretary, having failed to protect the Falklands.
Then they put him in charge of NATO, to protect the entire West…
Thanks for your blogposts which are invariably both informative & entertaining. On this topic – can I suggest that true accountability would be to have both the loss of position AND an ongoing responsibility to account for actions taken during tenure of the post? Anything identified as incompetence could be seen as ‘time served’ by dint of removal from role, but anything worse than that should still be investigated & where merited, punished?
I hoped I had anticipated this objection with my point towards the end: ‘Dismissals and resignations are, of course, part of any system of accountability – as resorts and sanctions.’
Makes me think of Hugh Abbot in The Thick of It being told by Malcolm Tucker that it’s possible to have a good resignation. The point there was to resign and pretend it was mainly because of being hounded out by the press rather than hanging on until people in the pub are saying, “he’s got to go”.
The end result of the good resignation being people saying, “respect”, “fair play” and getting a good job again after a discreet interval.
One should surely distinguish between resignations triggered by peccadilloes, resignations triggered by blunders and resignations because of a potential conflict of interest.
Peccadilloes include Peter Mandelson’s resignation over inaccurate declarations to the Britannia Building Society and Cecil Parkinson’s over extra-marital hanky panky. They also include David Blunkett’s over impropriety over a nanny’s work permit – both Mandelson and Blunkett returned to office, only to be forced to resign again.
The most famous recent resignations over a blunder were Peter Carrington’s from the Foreign Office after the Falklands and Amber Rudd’s from Home Secretary. There have of course been cases of ministers sacked for, in the words of Attlee, being “no bloody good”. But accepting responsibility for a cock-up is unusual – nobody, for instance, has resigned over the huge over runs on the defence procurement budget.
In 1972, Reggie Maudling resigned as Home Secretary when the Met (for which he was responsible) started an investigation into a business associate. An earlier example is the resignation of Austen Chamberlain as Secretary of State for India in 1917, after a select committee to investigate the Mesopotamia campaign had been set up – Chamberlain thought it wrong to remain in office while his policies were investigated. This was even at the time regarded as more than was required.
Surely one reason for demanding ministerial resignations is that, potentially at least, it opens up the possibility is someone better being appointed. Someone possibly more competent and more honest.
David Cameron should not have resigned after the Referendum.
He had any choice but to resign. Having campaigned for Remain his position as PM was untenable. Also it was all his own fault. He chose to hold a refendum purely for party political reasons. Had he not done so the UK would still be in the EU.
Apart from anything else, he was clearly delighted to be free to stand down. He had created a consitutional crisis and could now walk away from it and leave it to someone else to resolve.
I’m not quite sure whether we’re agreeing or not! Do you mean he had “no choice,” rather than “any choice”? If the latter, you neatly illustrate the reasons why I think he should Not have resigned.
It should read “He hadn’t any choice but to resign.” The rest of my post makes that clear. He would have been a lame duck, without any authority. No use to leave supporters, despised by remain supporters.
What good could him staying in power possibly have done?
Politicians resigning or getting sacked is more “pour encourager les autres.” A show of prime ministerial strength to keep the others in line. It also satisfies an angry public reaction.
Of course with a weak or indecisive prime minister, unwilling to upset their friends in the resulting reshuffle, it won’t happen. That leaves the impression that the incumbents are fireproof which is unhealthy for democracy.
Very true. When a politician says that there are questions to be answered or lessons to be learned you can almost guarantee that this won’t happen.
I don’t see how anyone even thought there was a democracy in the first place. The sheep vote for the Shepard that makes the best false promises, expecting only to be sheared and not caring who ends up in the stew. Government have always acted with self interest as their paramount concern, it’s the people who have fallen into selfishness which allows for government to get away with their abuses. When the people care more for their own self interests and not the interests of the people as a whole, it’s not democratic, it’s ME and not WE. It’s about time the people accepted some accountability for their failure to HOLD the government accountable.
Resignations or “sackings” of political figures should be, but never are subjected by the media to the simple question: “so what?”
There are the few that leave in such ignominy, they never recover such as Perfumo or Stonehouse; but why is it that incompetence in government or in Parliament results merely in a slapped wrist?
The reason IMO that Westminster accountability is in such short supply is an electoral system (FPTP) which militates against members’ accountability to their own electorate.
A “so what?” question of a disgraced MP in a fairer PR electoral system would see him or her roundly kicked out in the following election or sooner if “recalled”.
As is well known, when speaking of the Conservative Party attitude to its leaders, Winston Churchill opined that the leader must be given absolute loyalty but if “he is no good, then he must be poleaxed”.
At another time he explicated that by “no good” he meant that the Leader was an electoral liability.
So Raab is quite safe unless the Tory party decide he is such a liability and with an election years away and the opposition in disarray and the ending of UK involvement in what is an unpopular war he is safe.