20th January 2022
One day, perhaps soon, perhaps next week, Sue Gray will report on her investigation.
And then, over time, the Sue Gray investigation will fade from memories until only political obsessives will remember what it was ever about.
But.
These inquiries and inquiries are, in general, a Bad Thing.
This blog recently averred that such after-the-event inquiries and investigations are generally (but not always) not a welcome thing – as they usually signify a failure of the institutions of the State to properly scrutinise and hold accountable the executive at-the-time.
This, however, is not the only problem.
These investigations and inquiries are now becoming the go-to political and rhetorical device for evading any accountability.
That the Prime Minister and other ministers have spent the last few weeks evading accountability to Parliament and the media by reference to what is only an internal cvil service investigation is already a stock political joke.
One wonders what will happen when the Prime Minister and other ministers cannot, as a political and rhetorical reflex, any longer just incant the Sue Gray evasion spell.
Indeed one half-expects Boris Johnson to next week announce a further inquiry by Sue Gray to explain the meaning of the first investigation, so useful is this as a means of evasion.
A report, whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate. But which it will be Sue Gray's destiny eventually to design.
— Not A Number (@inert_wall) January 20, 2022
One has to allude to Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy to convey the full absurdity of the situation.
On the face of it, it seems terribly reasonable to say one has to await the results of an investigation.
If it said earnestly enough, the response will be understanding nods.
But each time it is used as an excuse not to give a substantive answer to a probing question, accountability is undermined.
And if politicians could get away with using it as an excuse for avoiding any accountability they would do so.
At some point there has to be a stop to this.
Court hearings – fine, yes, they should not be gainsaid by parliament.
But anything less – even statutory public inquiries – should never be an excuse for politicians not being accountable.
And there should be a prohibition on any civil servants – whether the cabinet secretary or otherwise – being charged with such investigations when they deflect political accountability.
That is not what the civil service is for.
Ministers love having some way of escaping actual accountability – they will tend to flock to whatever means are available.
But, unless this tendency is checked, our ministers will become even less open to scrutiny.
This dreadful and illiberal and undemocratic habit has to end.
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Not a court, no rules of evidence, no standard of proof, no authority.
Johnson is just the latest in a line of populist politicians but he has plumbed depths beyond anything seen in this country.
He has emasculated his party, surrounded by yes men and women and kicked out the sane moderates.
Will it be the Sun, the Mail or Telegraph that finally decides enough is enough? Unlikely unless they see the tide turn, they are tainted by other misdeeds.
I used to worry about the army instructed by a right wing government taking over, the SPG police force. Are we so far away from all that?
Why, I wonder, are those who would like to see accountability from Johnson participating in the construction of the edifice? What’s in it for them to carry on with the pre-report charade? Why don’t Labour (or the lobby journalists) say “there is no way this is going to be meaningful”?
I don’t think Johnson is evading accountability to the Hoise of Commons. He is there at PMQs and answers questions – or not- every Wednesday.
The problem is that the House is not – yet – holding him to account. For example the Liberal Democrats wrote a week or so ago to the Leader of the House – one Jacob Rees-Mogg – asking for time for a vote of no confidence in Johnson. No such vote has emerged.
There are signs that Tory members are losing patience with Prime Minister, but so far it is Parliament’s failure to censure a Prime Minister whose failings are plain for all to see that lies at the heart of the accountability problem.
If PMQs worked, it might be a form of accountability – but at the moment it’s simply theatre (and not very good theatre at that).
Sadly, the Speaker’s role – all of them, not just Hoyle – doesn’t include the line “Answer the bloody question, you bumbling idiot!”.
While we, as the electorate, accept bear-pit politics, we’re doomed to the current grandstanding masquerading as accountability.
Neither does it help when the media is complicit in politicians hiding behind Sue Gray’s skirts when we all know her report cannot, should not, will not offer a judgement and politicians are not called out that her report was commissioned by Johnson on a very narrow remit (as you have pointed out they are deliberately remitted to deliver the desired outcome) and that she reports to Johnson. By the way is there any undertaking that it will be published or made available to Parliament?
Parliament can never be expected to hold the Executive (PM and Cabinet) to account within a Party system which makes the party with the most seats the Executive. Voting to censor the executive is to vote against oneself. It is one of those comforting myths about the British parliamentary system. Only where the individual member is totally free to vote on any issue, accountable only to her constituency, itself having the power of recall, could she possibly and rationally exert any control over the executive unless under truly exceptional circumstances of criminal or immoral behaviour.
It is time to face up to the fact that the British Parliamentary system, a jewel of western civilisation, and the very foundation of our Democracy, is no longer fit for purpose.
There are no quick fixes.
The assumptions both explicit and explicit upon which is was based seem no longer to apply.
Members of Parliament are no longer independent individuals respected within their constituencies for intellect and integrity.
The voter is no longer the informed and involved member of the community with a personal stake in it.
What can possibly replace it and how could this possibly be achieved given the socio-cultural collapse we are now experiencing.
The centre indeed cannot hold; it is collapsing before our ignorance, complacency and neglect.
I agree with this post. The centre is indeed collapsing.
I couldn’t agree more about the worthlessness of inquiries and investigations instigated by the government into itself and I have said so repeatedly on Twittter. They are a device for delay and avoiding scrutiny.
In general, the only investigations and inquiries that have any value are those undertaken by and in the course of proceedings in a court of law. Those are precisely the ones that the government tries its hardest to avoid.
I hark back to a comment of mine on an earlier blog-post: if Sue Gray had the option of refusing the assignment, but accepted it, she knew precisely what the game was. So the suspicion must be that she is complicit in this charade. If she weren’t and found evidence of criminal activity by her boss, the Cabinet Secretary, and his boss, the P.M., it would be her bounden duty to report it immediately to the police, not wait till after her commissioned report has gone to the printer.
As to accountability and the future effectiveness of our parliamentary system, Peter, Lord Hennessy summed it up admirably on the Radio 4 programme “Start The Week”. Ours has been the jewel of parliamentary government which is/was admired the world over because it worked on the “decent chap” principle. It had entrenched customs, not rules, which left no doubt in the mind of the “indecent chap” that he was persona non grata. Consequently sticking around after he had dishonoured the reputation of the office he held was just about unthinkable.
Restoring that standard of expectation won’t happen overnight.
Regrettably, I have been forced to the inevitable conclusion that the UK ‘system’ is endemically corrupt.
This view was entrenched after being improperly dragged into legal proceedings with regards my reluctance to sanction a suspect property contract for sale (I as executor of the estate property)
As a self-representing litigant (trying to minimize costs to the estate) I endured dirty tactics and sharp practice by opposing legal representatives, undated witness statements (which were manipulated to give a false date, when the solicitor was under oath – and which the (masonic) judge accepted without question, and a judgment (containing a false recording of facts, evidence, and the truth, and written by opposing barrister, and rubber-stamped by the judge) Any appeal is worthless in face of a falsely constructed judgment.
The main reason for all this designed perversion and injustice was, of course, the Freemason corruption that clearly is prevalent in the UK legal and judicial system.
Like the current Johnson issue, any facts
can be fabricated and presented as the truth.
It, of course, rots the fabric of any decent society and destroys the lives of the decent. And it will, largely, be the same with the up-and-coming sham of an inquiry into what happened in this case.
And people will see it. And people will complain. And that is all they can do. No remedy. No restoration. No justice.
This is the UK today.
End of. Job done.