Summer Solstice 2022
Over at Al Jazeera – where I am pleased to write posts from a liberal constitutionalist perspective – I have written about what the Lord Geidt resignation tells us about British politics.
Somewhat flatteringly, that post has been chosen as a ‘best column’ by The Week magazine:
From a personal perspective, the post is one of very few I have written for the mainstream media with which I am happy.
(One day I will get the hang of writing paragraphs with more than one sentence.)
On the back of that Al Jazeera post I thought I would add here some thoughts about constitutionalism and absolute power.
For, as Lord Acton famously once said (and to which I allude in the Al Jazeera post), power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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One problem with many – if not most – proposed or imagined political systems is that there is little or nothing to check or balance those who will have the most power under that system.
The hope is presumably that those with the most power will be selfless patriots – good kings, good chaps, and so on.
But, of course, what will tend to happen is that those with power will be corrupted, and those with absolute power will be corrupted absolutely.
And not just corrupted in a narrow financial sense, but in the broader sense of becoming debased.
In this way Orwell’s pigs in Animal Farm may be a more realistic guide to what happens with sustained one party control than the focused O’Brien in Nineteen Eighty-four.
Alan Moore – who I mention expressly in the Al Jazeera post – has repeatedly shown in his stories what can happen when individuals get unchecked power.
In Watchmen – there is a character with absolute superpowers who goes quite mad, a character with immense wealth who becomes immensely destructive, and a character with complete government protection who does whatever he wants to whoever he wants.
And these are the supposed good guys – and none of them is the supposedly unhinged one, Rorschach.
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Switching from imagined communities to historical examples, there are actually few examples of that most peculiar figure ‘the enlightened despot’.
What we do have are despots with good P.R. and gullible historians.
For if a leader is ‘enlightened’, they do not need to be a despot.
Even the supposed good guys of the modern age – the British – have a wretched record if you look closely enough – for example in Kenya, in Northern Ireland, and in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The documented evidence of torture and war crimes by the British cannot be denied, but few realise or care.
For that is what happens when you have good P.R. and gullible historians.
Even the popular comedy meme about ‘Are we the bad guys?’ is dressed in foreign uniforms.
But corruption – in both its narrow and broad sense – is not just about what happens to foreigners.
It can happen in any polity – and with any rulers, if they believe they can get away with it.
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That is why any political system which confers great power on any individuals is suspect.
Yes, you may have a selfless patriot as an initial ruler, but what do you get when the selfless patriots die away?
The primary job of any liberal constitution is not that it provides and allocates powers, but that it effectively checks and balances those with powers.
It assumes the worst – even if there are hopes for the best.
And if those with the greatest powers in any political system are without checks and balances then it should not come as a surprise that powers are abused.
Indeed, it would be more of a surprise if they were not.
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A recent example of an enlightened despot would be Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore.
Enlightened? Yes, he worked tirelessly for the prosperity and security of his people.
Despot? Well, they always had free elections but the effective suppression of opposition and gerrymandering of constituencies meant that he was guaranteed to win comfirtably every time.
Very glad to see you mention Kenya as an under-explored example of British abuse of power. It might be worth saying that one of the lead theorists of the anti-Mau Mau war also went on to define the first stage of the Ulster emergency from 1969. This is one of man examples of how “colonial” standards (very low) have been brought back to the metropole (see also post-Algeria policing in Paris, early 1960s). But really, just wanted to say how much I enjoy your blog. Might be a roundabout way of saying it, for which I apologise.
Gen Gerald Templer? Maj Gen Robert Forde? The latter was C in C NI on Bloody Sunday.
It strikes me that this particular Government is led by a man who acts as though Britain still has an Empire. His Cabinet is overflowing with sycophants who will not stand up to him. Why should they? His patronage is what keeps them there.
I wonder how many other people out there feel as I do – that the country is out of control? Our tethers – the rule of law, accountability, transparency, integrity in government- have disappeared into the black hole of chaos created by the PM.
“One day I will get the hang of writing paragraphs with more than one sentence.”
Don’t – some of us likes your writing style.
Your short paragraphs makes your comments very readable (low paragraph-‘lix’) and gives the reader just that little but valuable time to absorb and think before the next text.
Arguably – and it is argued often – the US constitution with its checks and balances is the acme of a Liberal constitution. “Every tin-pot dictator has a bill of rights” as Justice Scalia used to enjoy remarking. But is the US now really a Liberal haven? Does corruption now reside not in the exercise of power but in its frustration?
It is the presidents who rode roughshod over the constitution who we remember as good: Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Did power corrupt them?
Not to mention “Mister” Washington judged by the king he betrayed as “The greatest character of the age”.
“Power Corrupts” is a good soundbite but the truth is more nuanced.
And can anyone seriously argue that a certain British Prime Minister has been corrupted by power rather than bringing corruption in with him as part and parcel of his being?
Moore’s parable is a masterpiece of technical storytelling, but the story itself is naive and contradictory. IMO.
That is a thought-provoking reply – thank you.
I agree that the certain British PM brought his corruption in with him. I think another challenge is to create a polity that attracts the right kind of politician and discourages the wrong kind. Isabel Hardman’s book “Why We Get The Wrong Politicians” is interesting in this regard.
“Power corrupts — that has been said and written so often that it has become a cliché. But what is never said, but is just as true, is that power reveals.” — Robert Caro
I remember something a sex worker who worked for high paying clients once said, about how you’ll never know what you’ll say no to until it’s offered to you. In this case, it was something that crossed a big moral line for her and she was surprised at the physical revulsion she felt when she was offered a lot of money to do it.
Whilst I’m sure there are certainly well meaning people in power who have had to make moral compromises in pursuit of their goals, the more common thing that has happened is that people who are completely unsuited to holding positions of power find their way into them, and then do whatever they can get away with. Power didn’t corrupt Trump or Johnson, didn’t cause them to act in any way that was not eminently predictable. In both cases the bigger problem wasn’t any check on their powers but an unwillingness to actually use them. Trump was impeached twice, in the second case for actions that could have led to the violent death of legislators. That still wasn’t enough for members of his party to turn on him and use the tools available to them to punish him.
Power doesn’t corrupt individuals, but it can corrupt organisations as the people who want to uphold the standards leave and the remaining members are those who never felt physical revulsion about being asked to do things that cross their moral lines.
[i]”Even the popular comedy meme about ‘Are we the bad guys?’ is dressed in foreign uniforms.”[/i]
I trust that was a reference to this:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
Popular it may be, but there’s a remote possibility that one or two of your readers have missed it and that would never do.
(So much for that method. Any other suggesions about how to do italics?)
Failing suggesions, I’ll accept suggestions.
/italic/
_underlined_
*Emphasised*
An older convention.
I think HTML tags work like this
That was like this with “i” inside angle brackets but without the hyphens.
I tried underlining with “u” the other day and it did not work. Perhaps bold with “b”? Or em and strong?
If there are italics in this reply, then my suggestion has worked: try angle brackets, rather than square ones.
Russian Pornbots are not traditionally known for their love of mid-2000s BBC sketch comedy.
Though the reference would probably add to the bemusement factor.
Mr. Green:
I am an admirer of your postings and always find them enlightening. Please don’t take any of my comments as criticism, just commentary that continues the discussion.
As you suggest, the issue of who guards the guardians, or who watches the watchmen, comes up in every constitutional order.
I think, however, that the discussion is not moved forward particularly by Lord Acton’s formulation. All power does not necessarily corrupt, but absolute power surely does. The problem with his formulation is that it moves discussion in the direction of confusing the two.
As John Le Carre was once supposed to have said, “power corrupts, but someone must govern”. Same confusion, in a sense, but it moves us closer to the real issue.
Pitt the Elder once commented that “absolute power tends to corrupt the mind”. Presumably he had reason to know.
The issue is how to make sure power, which is necessary to govern, is not allowed to turn into absolute power.
To a large extent, this may not be a matter of laws, but of culture and conventions – norms.
There was a time when the party system, and party selection rules, ensured that the candidates for the highest office were people of some substance, and honour. It didn’t always work, but it pointed matters in a certain direction. There was a time when conventions around personal behaviour and honour absolutely required that resignation was the only response to serious charges of misbehavior, lying, and so on.
None of these conventions have ever worked absolutely, and every political history, and most political memoirs, will be replete with stories about attempts to overcome them. But they point in a direction.
As a friend of mine once said, Rule One in politics is that those who step forward to take credit for successes must be the same ones who are willing to be accountable for failures. Rule Two, of course, is that every successful politician knows how to subvert Rule One.
The issue, then, becomes how to make sure Rule One applies “absolutely”. It’s what we are all grappling with, but so far, we’re still grappling.
ut pergere disputationem
Thank you DAG. Your commentary underlines just how much constitutional, electoral reform etc we need in the UK. I suppose it is a bit like technologies: the one we once had was regarded as the original mould breaker, only to be overtaken and leap frogged by everyone else, leaving us as the out of date laggard.
“Power doesn’t corrupt individuals, but it can corrupt organisations as the people who want to uphold the standards leave and the remaining members are those who never felt physical revulsion about being asked to do things that cross their moral lines.”
This is the nub of the current state of our democracy. Johnson offends and thumbs his nose at the electorate. But the Lord of Misrule is there at the behest of others. And their morality is notably absent. Both puppet and masters bear the mantle of corruption.
As an aside, I see Lubov Chernukhin attended yesterday’s Tory ‘donor dinner’ at the V&A. I cannot but wonder how Johnson’s new best friend feels about the continued support of Johnson by the wife of a Russian ex minister, or the massive donations she has made to the party (in excess of £2million to date, I believe). I wonder whether the Party has yet handed over her donations to Ukrainian humanitarian agencies yet?
Hi David,
Sorry, but just couldn’t resist your ‘paragraphs’ comment. I bow to you in all matters Law and Policy but as a long time journalist, i do know a little about organising text into paras. So, at the risk of impertinence and overlaps with grandmotherly egg consumption, here is my ten pence worth: Paragraphs 101.
The basic rule here is that sentences that share a common theme or thought belong together in a shared para. New thought or shift of topic equals new par. So, to take your latest blog as exemplar:
First four sentences (actually first three as the middle one becomes redundant) are your first paragraph, referring to the AJ article and introducing overall theme.
Introducing the question of checks and balances also introduces need for a new para, which contains next three sentences, all dealing with corruption.
Shift of focus to Alan Moore and Watchmen is cue for para four, and the word ‘Switching’ is an alert it’s time for para five, with a couple of sentences on despotism. Para six deals with Britain’s um ‘chequered’ history in human rights and spin (three sentences) and the following three also contain a joined up thought (it’s not just foreigners) for a single para. The two sentences after that set up a question (paragraph), with two more providing the first part of the answer (paragraph) and the final two delivering the overall conclusion, and your closing para.
So, that’s how i would organise it if I was editing. But would that make it more readable? You can argue either way. Your staccato style is quite distinctive and some followers might well become discombobulated were you to change it. All one can safely say is that it would mean less scrolling… 😀
Well.
Well, well, well. Now you know, our David.
Or even
Well.
Well.
Well.
Or as I heard frequently in my childhood in a small village just outside Redditch: “yow wudn’t cred ditt it, wud yow”.
I like the style of the blog.
It is similar to much of what we see on the interwebnetthing, on forums &c. and is familiar and easy to read.
There is also a stream of conscientiousness feeling to it, as if these are the unmediated thoughts, which does work well as a blogging style.
Paras might be more useful in a print medium, where ideas get dressed up in finery and put into ‹i›articles‹i›. There is a cadence to the blog style, almost poetic, which would be a shame to fence in with the tyranny of the multiple sentence paragraph.
Of course now we have the added complication of social media and targeted messages that can influence attitudes and behaviour in ways that undermine democratic government.
“It’s the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?” John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
It’s at times like this I look to that most noble of warrior-poets, Terry Pratchett.
From Pratchett’s “Men at Arms” (1993).
A conversation between Capt. Sam Vimes and Corp. Carrot Ironfoundersson…
‘But that’s not right, see? One man with the power of life and death.’ [Vimes]
‘But if he’s a good man—’ Carrot began.
‘What? What? OK. OK. Let’s believe he’s a good man. But his second-in-command – is he a good man too? You’d better hope so. Because he’s the supreme ruler, too, in the name of the king. And the rest of the court… they’ve got to be good men. Because if just one of them’s a bad man the result is bribery and patronage.’
Sir Terry wrote extensively and well on the topic. Indeed, The Patrician is an iconic Elightened Despot. A self-proclaimed tyrant, definitely not a ‘good guy’ in that sense, keeping Ankh-Morpork running via a precarious balancing act of competing factions’ interests.
Probably the nicest thing one can say about him is that he, like the examples mentioned above, has not allowed to power to corrupt him in the same way it did so many of the Big Wahoonie’s erstwhile rulers. Lawful Neutral, if ever I saw it.
(Side-note: I will happily debate, in detail and at length, my argument that PTerry was a better writer than Moore is. But DAG’s comment section is not the place for that… At least, until we got a Lore And Fantasy post, anyway.)
It’s easier to point towards ways of empowering “us” against “them” than to identify how “we” could get “them” to put into effect these solutions. Suggestions, however …
1. Teaching kids at school (and marginalised, stigmatised groups) how to think logically and critically would give them some protection against being lied to … and ways of fighting back. “Critical thinking” lessons have been tried OCCASIONALLY and have proved useful for all ages of “student”. They improve pupils’ attainment levels in academic subjects also.
2. As “we” can’t protect ourselves against “them” without quality media and strong “freedom of information” safeguards in the UK, the task of removing the defects of both is urgent and overwhelming. In reality, what we’ve got now may be better than what we’ll have in the near future.
3. Constituency residents need effective ways of blocking the few TRULY ROTTEN CANDIDATES for MP and Councillor posts from the initial stages of being selected by their political party. If a Mayoral candidate could be barred because of his / her proven serial lying in earlier posts, for example, we wouldn’t now have the problems of dealing with such a man as Prime Minister.
Although they don’t answer your question directly, I find Tony Benn’s five tests of democracy a good starting point:
“What power have you got?
“Where did you get it from?
“In whose interests do you use it?
“To whom are you accountable?
“How do we get rid of you?”
Thank you for the insightful blogs.
So true…. And sadly applicable to the United Nations no less, if you can believe the BBC’s troubling documentary on sexual abuse: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-61826551
What was most shocking to me was the completely insular and unaccountable nature of their Whistleblowing policy. Speaks volumes that those willing to Whistleblow were sacked within days…
With regard to pagination, may I suggest ‘Backspace’ or the ‘Delete’ key?
Please do keep doing one sentence paragraphs! It makes for easy reading. And thanks for sharing your very valuable insights with the rest of us plonkers.
I’ll say again, and will probably keep saying until somebody explains why it is wrong, but the mechanism to regulate this misconduct is already there, because this misconduct by the prime minister is a criminal offence: it just needs to be prosecuted.
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/misconduct-public-office#_Toc519523916
DAG wrote:
> The primary job of any liberal constitution is not that it
> provides and allocates powers, but that it effectively
> checks and balances those with powers.
I have an intuition (i.e. I cannot prove) that attempts to
produce a perfect democratic system of government, or indeed
a perfect “any” system of government, will suffer from a
political analogy to the attempts of mathematics to place
itself on a 100% certain logical foundation. Then along came
Kurt Gödel to prove that such an attempt was futile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems
The mathematics are difficult, but the result is easy to
understand. What is being attempted is futile.
In politics it suggests to me that a perfect system is
impossible, but you can choose what sort of badness you would
prefer to tolerate or cope with.
Adding more checks and balances to perfect the system will be
like adding another layer of watchmen. It will be turtles
all the way down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
DAG wrote:
> Switching from imagined communities to historical examples,
> there are actually few examples of that most peculiar
> figure ‘the enlightened despot’.
The open-source software community has somewhat jokingly
given the title of Benevolent Dictator For Life to several
of its leaders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life
Of course anyone who reveals an ambition to become a
Benevolent Dictator For Life should be treated with
extreme suspicion.