7th November 2021
Yesterday this blog averred that the lies and corruption of the current government are consequences of the failure of the opposition to politically counter the rise of the current prime minister and his supporters.
This is the sort of politics that one will get when not enough is done to counter the appeal of such cynical politics to knaves and fools.
And there is no practical purpose to exposing lies and corruption when the electorate do not care sufficiently about those lies and corruption.
(Though it is still a public good to expose this anyway – even just for the record.)
The difficult task now for those politically opposed to the prime minister is not so much to expose lies and corruption but to make the electorate care about the lies and corruption.
To make voters want to have a principled-based politics instead of a principle-free politics.
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Today’s post develops these points by looking at lies and corruption from a constitutionalist perspective.
An account of the constitution of the United Kingdom (and of other countries) will often cite fine-sounding phrases such as the rule of law, accountability, and checks and balances.
Invoking these phrases sometimes have a magic effect, making the person using the phrase and the person hearing or reading the phrase to both nod-along.
Almost more like incantations rather than descriptions of constitutional principle.
But what is perhaps lost in the use of such elevating concepts is, well, what they actually mean – and what is the purpose of having such concepts.
Here we must go from the rarified air of the study of the constitutional law professor to the grubby back streets of the politically expedient.
The rule of law is the means by which rule-breakers are kept from breaking rules.
Accountability means that the dishonest cannot mask their dishonesty or the corrupt hide their corruption.
And we have checks and balances to stop those who will misuse and abuse power from having the freedom to do so.
Each of these concepts deal with grim truths about political – and indeed human – nature.
But each of these concepts, in turn, rest on a deeper constitutional foundation – the most important quality of any constitution.
That is: legitimacy.
Without legitimacy any constitution is essentially worthless.
Literally: the essence of that constitution will have no worth.
If a constitution does not have legitimacy then those elements of the constitution that exist to limit and prevent the knavery and foolishness of those with political power lose their effect.
And the consequence of this is that the politically expedient no longer need to hide in the political backstreets, with the constant worry of discovery and disapproval.
They can instead parade their knavery and foolishness in the public glare.
And this will be a consequence if the current prime minister and his political and media supporters continue with their assault on institutions that uphold the rule of law, accountability, and checks and balances.
There will be nothing within the constitution to stop them, for too few will care.
So in this way the politics of Johnson are both a consequence of a political-media culture that allowed him to rise but also may be a cause of a fundamental structural weakening of the polity itself.
Brace, brace.
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Thank you, DAG, for your invaluable considerations. May I add:
“It is not enough that the social order be ‘legal’; it must also appear symbolically legitimate. It is also necessary that, as a ‘free individual’, not as a fearful subject but as a convinced cituzen, one perceives the social norms as one’s own . One must internalise them and fuse external compulsion and internal impulse into a new unit until the former is no longer distinguishable from the latter. This fusion is what we usually call ‘consent’ or ‘legitimation’. If the Bildungsroman appears to us still today as an essential, pivotal point of our history, this is because it has succeeded in representing this fusion with a force of conviction and optimistic clarity that will never be equalled again.”
Franco Moretti, The Way of the World, London, 1987, also quoted by Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Oxford, 1990.
It would be interesting to have your view on the legitimacy of our constitution. I question its legitimacy on two main grounds. First past the post almost always leads to governments for which most of those who voted did not vote. Secondly, our unelected second chamber has no democratic legitimacy which would enable it to effectively check and balance government.
We gave Germany a very good constitution after WW2 but failed to adopt it ourselves. I suspect an unspoken conspiracy between the two main parties to entrench their monopoly of power.
For the electorate to be motivated to dissapprove enough for politians to behave, voters must be educated enough to know right from wrong and then informed of what is happening so they can see. The education system seems broadly ok. The information system for the aged electorate i guess still depends on the press. If the web provides a free press to the yoof, it also provides many warped views and the ability to silo. Too bad for democracy.