28th November 2022
Somebody over on Twitter thoughtfully dug up something I wrote back in 2017:
https://twitter.com/sunildvr/status/1595914638109048832
I think the piece – which links Brexit with the Iraq invasion and other follies – holds up well.
But I also now think the problem identified is only part of the problem.
This because “easy answers” are only possible when hard questions are easily evaded.
For example, one of the most depressing features of contemporary political discourse is the frequency of answers that begin with “I will take no lectures from…”, “I give no apologies for…”, “what people want to know is…”, “what the public expects is….”, and, of course, “let me be absolutely clear….”.
These non-answers render almost all political interviews – and many parliamentary questions – pointless.
Few questions can land, and accountability is brushed off.
And what is most depressing: those watching and listening do not seem to care.
*
This blog has previously averred that the problem is not so much that politicians lie but that voters do not seem to care about being lied to.
And so, until and unless voters care about being lied to, then politicians will get away with their dishonesty.
Similarly, until and unless voters care about politicians not answering questions, then politicians will get away with their evasions.
Often this is not the fault of the interviewer or other questioner.
There are some cracking questions asked of politicians.
But there are not many cracking answers.
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There is a fundamental disconnect about accountability in our politics.
At law, of course, a witness will be under pain of perjury.
(And the professional advocate asking the questions will be under their own rules about what questions can be properly put.)
There is an attractive notion that ministers, for example, should also be put under pain of perjury for their answers.
Attractive – but misguided.
The solution to the failure of accountability in parliament is not, in my view, to make parliament more like a court.
It is to make those in and watching Parliament care more about the standard of answers.
As it stands, neither the Speaker nor anyone else is personally responsible for ensuring that questions are properly answered in Parliament.
Instead, as with the investigation into Boris Johnson, it is left to a committee some months later to make a determination or not.
*
Rather than some paper reforms or legislative changes, it is the culture of Parliament which is most urgently in need of reform.
Members of Parliament, on both sides of the House of Commons, need to care more about the answers they are given, and to be less tolerant of evasions – even if the questions are from political opponents.
For when questions have purchase – where questions cannot be deflected – then non-answers and easy answers have no hiding place.
Politicians showing leadership on this matter makes it more likely that the public will come to care more about what they are told – and what they are not told.
And that is the real answer to the hard question of how political accountability and scrutiny is made more effective.
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Some years back, I did ask my (now retired) MP whether statements in the House should be subject to the same standards as the advertising industry. Their answer was no (unsurprisingly) as it would prevent the hyperbole and bravado that is integral to Parliament. While I tend to agree MPs should not be held to account in the press interview (and certainly not perjury-esque) as a good interviewer should be able to hold them to account (per local radio presenters interviewing Liz Truss who did not fear being ostracised in the Lobby), I do wonder if there is a case for having a standard in the House?
„Often this is not the fault of the interviewer or questioner.“. I really must take issue with this claim. The questions put by journalists (of all sorts, but particularly on visual media) are indeed often well formulated and searching, but I cannot remember a single occasion when a reply that is an outright lie has been followed up by a challenge, giving the real facts. In the case of a complex question, requiring an in depth knowledge of the relevant facts, the journalist may (may) be forgiven, but so often the lie is one that has been repeatedly trotted out, and where the facts are well known. If viewers see a lie continually accepted as fact by the media, it‘s not surprising that they accept it. Journalists are failing the public in so many cases, with a few noble exceptions.
I care about the lies and non answers. But I don’t know what to do about it that will make a difference.
I too care very strenuously about the lies and the non-answers, and feel equally helpless. I have written to my MP several times about this; I even wrote to the Speaker of HoC, asking why he did not insist on Boris Johnson correcting his manifest lies. The Speaker wrote back saying he had no power to compel MPs to speak the truth, and that I should write to my MP about it. What else can I do in the face of such circularity of rebuff? March on Westminster with placards and loudhailers, demanding probity and honesty … and be arrested for causing noise and disruption?
My thought process too, Jennifer. Letters to my MP have been fruitless exercises.
Follow and contribute to Fullfact.org and the Good Law Project. At least better than nothing.
I wasn’t aware of fullfact.org – thank you!
“The Speaker wrote back saying he had no power to compel MPs to speak the truth”
Isn’t the answer therefore to so empower the Speaker?
Or: given that he is expressly responsible for “…maintaining order in the House and ensuring Standing Orders (parliamentary rules) are upheld“; and is able to “… rule MPs out of order; require them to withdraw their comments; suspend MPs for a day (or invite the House to suspend them for longer by ‘naming them’); or, in extremis, suspend the House”
(https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/speaker-house-commons)
isn’t the power to properly veto and punish MPs’ lies already implicitly (I’d argue explicitly) there?
In the real world, the true crime seems to be that of exposing quite how rotten the system has become. Or was it always so?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2022/nov/29/online-safety-bill-rishi-sunak-uk-politics-live-news-latest
“The solution to the failure of accountability in parliament is not, in my view, to make parliament more like a court.”
The pre-revolutionary French “parlements” had judicial functions as, originally, did Parliament itself. I still think that Blair could and should have been impeached over Iraq. Didn’t he do more than anyone else to make bare-faced lying acceptable?
As for solutions, perhaps the French got this one right? https://images.app.goo.gl/zLbqGXPzyUJ1AmfY8
“Didn’t he do more than anyone else to make bare-faced lying acceptable?”
Only if you accept that he was lying, as opposed to telling the truth as he believed it to be at the time.
Personally I gravitate towards the latter explanation…
Disagree. Boris Johnson so obviously knows he’s lying when he lies, which is exceedingly often, and what is disgusting is the endless dance on the head of a pin to discuss whether he did or whether he didn’t. Bending and twisting the rules and the law and thereby wasting everyone’s time, energy and money, while the world deteriorated/s around him.
Surely it is the responsibility of the Speaker to ensure that questions are answered; a responsibility he has to Parliament and the wider public. Behaving like a pathetic nanny continually lowers what little standing Parliament has.
In a democracy voters are perfectly at liberty to prefer comforting or entertaining lies over harsh and upsetting truths
Most Conservative MPs were against Brexit. After the referendum result they pretended to have changed their minds. Accountability disappears when personal ambition and servility to the Party line are the dominant values of political life.
Excellent points. Could not agree more.
Thank you
The problem (I think) is not so much that people don’t care, but that they’re encouraged or persuaded not to. It reminds me of a brilliant passage in the Autobiography of RG Collingwood, who writes about the role of the media (newspapers in his day): ‘I became conscious of a change for the worse during the 1890s. The newspapers of the Victorian age made it their first business to give their readers full and accurate information about matters of public concern. Then came the ‘Daily Mail’, the first English newspaper for which the word ‘news’ lost its old meaning of facts which readers ought to know if they were to vote intelligently, and acquired the new meaning of facts, or fictions, which it might amuse them to read. By reading such a paper they were no longer teaching themselves to vote. They were teaching themselves not to vote; for they were teaching themselves to think of ‘the news’ not as the situation in which they were to act, but as a mere spectacle for idle moments.’
I’ve changed the pronouns to suit today’s norms, but otherwise, it’s the same sorry spectacle that has brought us to where we are. And, amazingly, the Daily Mail is still at the heart of the horror.
Really appreciate your blog! All best wishes
Ah, David. The rhetoric of truth – or deception and faux truth. You’ve used the Rees-Mogg ‘Let me be absolutely clear about this’. Then there’s the more populist ‘Let us/let’s be absolutely clear about this’. Again the Moggy ‘Can I be absolutely clear abou this’ suggests the listener is too stupid to have understood ‘X’ so I will explain it to them.
And what about the ubiquitous ‘The reality is…’. Of course, the reality of this politician or public figure invariably differs from the previous person’s ‘reality’
I pick out two reasons why government accountability to the Commons has declined so much.
The first is the weakness of the current Speaker, who is much too soft on badly behaving ministers. Bercow may have been an odious bully to his staff, but he stood up for the rights of MPs to hold the government to account.
The second is that the parties have discouraged MPs from engaging in policy matters. MPs have been turned into social workers on behalf of their constituents, representing their personal interests to government and even to local government, surely the job of local councillors.
There are plenty of other reasons, but these two are rarely picked out.
“[W]hat people want to know is…” is a phrase that reminds me of Tony Benn’s frequent use of the expression “people at home” – which I always found incredibly patronising, as if the Philosopher Kings (of whom Benn, obviously, was one) knew exactly what the little people needed even if they didn’t know it themselves.
Throughout my career as a probation officer and social work tutor I’ve held to the view that I’d rather have questions which cannot be answered, than answers which cannot be questioned.
I don’t think accountability has much to do with what ministers might say, unhelpful as their statements might be for our conflicted politics.
When we say to someone, “you are accountable for this”, we mean “you were responsible for running this, and you will have to shoulder the consequences of what happens.” In public administration, what they did and what happened is usually a matter of record.
The main venue where there is a formal attempt to assess what ministers did and what effect it had is in parliamentary committees. The committees examine evidence, and publish their report on the evidence. As the product of a partisan political system it is remarkable how often you do find the pragmatic nub of the matter plainly set out in these reports, and the minister’s failures laid bare.
The final accountability is to voters, but that is blunt tool with little distinction to the performance of individual ministers. It is nothing new that voters are swayed by feelings and concepts the politicians create, regardless of their consistency with facts. It is well recorded that the truth is little defence against such myth-making.
We don’t like playing the game this way, because a different way of playing would be a lot more healthy. But it’s very hard to do much about it.
“… Similarly, until and unless voters care about politicians not answering questions, then politicians will get away with their evasions…”
A great post today.
Irrespective of the way people voted, the Brexit referendum did us all a great favour in the longer term- for it demonstrated just how badly we, the people, have come to be served on a discredited system of representative democracy.
During the various interminable debates on the EU Withdrawal Agreement by the HoC and the fractious scenes seen during the rogue parliament of 2017-2019 it became increasingly apparent that Parliament & its members knew relatively little of what the UK had signed up to with the EU & its predecessor organisations since 1972.
The Single Market got conflated with the Customs Union, few MPs understood ( or even today understand) what the EEA is or EFTA was. Yet, a broken system of representative democracy was/is allowed to be perpetuated to this day, because we the people didn’t take the trouble to learn what the EU was/is and has become.
The greatest shame in all of this is that with the EU, its law (lex) , procedures are all there in plain site for all to read with an internet connection.
As an illustration, the EUs ” notices to stakeholders* on Brexit preparation” clearly & categorically stated the implications of what leaving the EU meant.
https://ec.europa.eu/info/brexit-preparedness/brexit-notices-explanation_en
The utter tragedy of Brexit is not that it happened, rather that a whole political class (and civil service acolytes) failed in its duty to inform itself of what leaving or remaining would mean.
There is absolutely no going back despite the current siren voices.
We the Public were not even clever enough to ask the really tough questions of our representatives – equally, as has become more than evident, most of these representatives didn’t even know what was happening around them for the past 45 years.
We’ve got no better or worse than we that deserve but at least we’ve got an outcome (Brexit) albeit that it’s more painful than it ought to have been.
Excellent point. I especially remember Nadine Dorries speaking about the Single Market in ways that clearly demonstrated that she didn’t have a clue. I was genuinely surprised that her career didn’t come to an abrupt end.
But, in blaming politicians and civil servants, don’t forget to add that other lot who must be included: the journalists and editors who were and still are part of the brexit circus.
The many “civil service acolytes” I know were all perfectly aware of the consequences of Brexit.
The consequences of Brexit – stay or leave were massively consequential.
Cameron & Osborne forbade any leave planning & Theresa May invoked ( with eventual HoC permission) Article 50 without a strategy.
The one individual who could have helped steer a ‘better Brexit ‘ was Sir Ivan Rogers, the UKs Permanent Representative at the EU – he bailed out.
As has been pointed out by many, the civil service ‘clerisey’ didn’t necessarily wish to make Brexit a success & it was left to a bunch of numpties in the HoC, with the help of a slightly rougue Speaker to create the conditions for an election in 2019 leading to the consequences of the oaf, that was Boris Johnson.
That we got a half baked rock- hard Brexit is very much of our own making.
Likewise, John – to suggest that civil servants were somehow routinely and willingly complicit in the car-crash that is Brexit implies a gross misunderstanding of their role.
I think David Cameron understood the EU better than he understood the UK.
I find this a bit rich from someone who time and again showed that he had a fairly loose grasp of what the EU was, how its structures work, how it has developed into what it is nowadays, with all its strengths and weaknesses.
There was no rogue parliament between 2017 and 2019.
“Irrespective of the way people voted, the Brexit referendum did us all a great favour in the longer term- for it demonstrated just how badly we, the people, have come to be served on a discredited system of representative democracy.”
Oh well, if you say so. I hope you, from now on, will devote your powers and contributions to promoting Proportional Representation and turn that discredited system around. Turn that big favour of the pro-Brexit vote into something that may bear some 21th century fruits.
At least you’ve got an outcome (Brexit) albeit that it’s more painful than it ought to have been? It’s exactly as painful as all the other possible outcomes, expect for the outcome that somehow was built upon the bouquet of fairy tales that the UK would hold all the cards, would be free to cherry pick the four freedoms, would be able to ignore the fact that you don’t HAVE borders (you SHARE borders with another political entity)…
The British polity, the press and the voters have produced this outcome. Many rivers to cross.
I could have added “And Cameron understood neither very well”
Your point is well made.
In 2016 I campaigned for remain, speaking with the public in various locations, and at events intended to inform individuals. Having exported services and goods to the EU and beyond for many years, I acted politically for the first (and only) time, attempting to explain the practicalities of trading outside of a block that shares unified standards. Most of my efforts were in West Kent, in an area that voted close to 50/50, mirroring the overall national trend.
In general, details of fact were cast aside as ‘project fear’ by those firmly believing that leave was the right choice. Those uncertain were more easily tempted by the ‘wishfulness’ of Mr Johnson’s cakery than the mundane practicality of documentation and standard maintenance essential when providing goods and services overseas.
At public meetings intended to inform, those representing Leave were often political or prominent public figures, well-marshalled by their coordinators, working together on a few key messages. Those representing remain were typically subject experts, not generally versed in ‘light touch messaging, opinion-led discourse, and appallingly (or un-) marshalled by the remain campaign. Event hosts and chairs held the two sides to different standards in an attempt to inform the public, mostly because they lacked understanding of pertinent detail.
For the most part, the general public sub-contract detail to experts, and sub-contract the preparation of legislation to their democratic representatives. They feel more comfortable with message management on their behalf, which is more palatable than time-consuming, complex, untidy reality.
A few years ago I was interested in ‘disinformation’ and spent lots of time tracing ‘fake news’ back to its sources. Then I had an epiphany; disinformation is not a supply side problem – it’s a demand side problem. This also seems to apply to low quality political discourse.
A great and thought-provoking point, thanks.
Thanks John – of course ‘fact checking’ and disinformation research has become a business in itself, so there is no incentive for those involved in it to recognise the appetite for nonsense.
I think Paul Williams touches on part of the problem.
The techniques of spin and propaganda have improved since say 1900 and since the mid 1950s the difficulties of handling ‘real’ problems have increased. Politicians have benefited from propaganda and spin but become cornered by the difficulty of doing anything substantive. Sadly the benefits of spin and propaganda have not kept pace with the real effects of ineffective policies – policies that quite likely never can be made effective.
An old complaint was the Civil Service always had a difficulty for every occasion. Quite possibly there really is a difficulty, several, for every occasion. One ‘solution’ was to hire SPADS who would provide a clever wheeze. A good way to hide the friction between politics and reality.
One advantage of ministers having to deal on a daily basis with fuddy duddy Civil Servants was that the snags and difficulties would be in the minister’s mind when standing up in Parliament. The cognitive dissonance between politics and reality might usefully temper the debates.
Then we may think that rhetoric in Parliament is a poor way to present or resolve problems. Where are the spreadsheets and footnotes and annotations and references to evidence. I fear the world has become much too complex for green benches and good lunches to be of any use at all – and it shows.
In the end however most policies quite likely never can be made effective.
I am not sure the Speaker of the Commons and journalists can be wholly absolved of blame.
The Speaker may not be able to force MPs to speak only the truth, but when someone has been incontrovertibly shown to have misled the House – inadvertently, naturally – surely the Speaker has the power to either demand a correction – in the House – or at the very least refuse the misleading statement to be repeated in the House?
As for journalists, yes, it’s a dance of mutual interest – the politician wants the publicity, the journalist wants continued access to the politicians. But it is possible to repeat a question that has not been answered, or at the very least point out it hasn’t been answered before moving on to the next question that won’t be answered.
Having said that, nothing will change, of course, as long as self-interest trumps all.
Many years ago I used to rock climb a lot and one of the main suppliers (to this day) of the protection gear used in that sport is the French manufacturer Petzl and a one point they had the memorable advertising slogan “Gravity is Strictly Enforced”.
DAG talks of how politicians now routinely give non-answers to evade hard truths and IMO the UK has reached the state where the UK political system and its institutions are incapable of self-reform and its only the reality of the end results stemming from the fact that Brexit was an act of taking the nation off a cliff that will provide real factual answers on an ongoing basis is the short, medium and long term.
Most politicians are held in contempt by the public – “they are all liars” seemingly a common response. That inept politicians have always dissembled is understood, why else would “Yes, Minister” remain such a favourite? But surely the degree of their shamelessness has increased significantly in the last 20 years (or is it my age?). The dominance of party politics over constituency, but particularly the rise, influence and ubiquity of Spads must carry much of the burden of this. “Spin” is everything and the ability of a Minister to evade answering a question on the “Today” programme or other serious media outlet, is regarded as a great victory rather than a reason for regret. Shameless unaccountability by Ministers is now the default because there are few consequences for failure and ineptitude. Spads have even less real skin in the game – as soon as they are dismissed they start up a political advocacy consultancy / lobbying outfit and get back to the trough. Lobbying in general and politically slanted lobby groups, masquerading as intellectually balanced “think tanks”, are another bane on the body politic, all of whose funding ought to be transparent and accountable. One could go on…
You have hit the right spot: the public get the government they deserve, through apathy and disinterest (both of which are the breeding ground for corruption and fraud).
“I’m Very Glad You Asked Me That”
First broadcast: Sun 13th Apr 1986, 23:15 on BBC Radio 4 FM
“The political interview on radio and TV is an important part of democracy, yet in its present form it’s a fairly recent innovation. Patrick Hannan looks at the way the craft has developed, and the way it has influenced politicians, with the help of Lord Wilson of Rievaulx The Rt Hon Norman Tebbit , mp The Rt Hon Gerald Kaufman , mp and Sir Robin Day”
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/540/20?filt=bbc_radio_four&q=Sir+Robin+Day#top
It may have been when listening to this programme, (or more likely another which I have failed to trace, called “The Right Sort of Chap”, about interviewing in general), that I first heard someone citing as the question which should be constantly at the front of the mind of any interviewer, “Why is this lying bastard lying to me?”. Good advice, no doubt, but only one of many steps needed in order to extract a word of truth from a politician.
Robin Day’s pioneering of an aggressive, non-derential style necessitated an eventual re-education of politicians by their media advisors in the arts of obfuscation and evasion. I have yet to hear one actually say, “Ooh, look! A flying penguin!”, but analogous exclamations are commonplace.
“Madam Secretary of State, why is the NHS short of x hundred thousand nurses, y tens of thousands of GPs and z thousands of consultants, and when will those vacancies be filled?”
“Since 2019 the Government has graciously bestowed n billions of pounds on Our Beloved Health Service and, despite Covid, Ukraine, the totally inexplicable current Bank of England-imposed Interest Rate, the totally inexplicable Surge in Inflation and the monstrous Wave of Strikes fomented by Moscow-controlled trade unions (Ptuh! Ptuh!), we will always regard tackling the problems facing those heroic workers in the front line of Our Beloved Health Service as A Priority.”
In recent years a local radio presenter abruptly terminated an interview with a government minister after he persistently refused to give a straight answer to a straight question. I don’t know whether the presenter still has a job.
If the media mount a counter-attack with ever more ingenious methods of wrong-footing public figures, those figures’ personal trainers will equip them with even more ingenious methods of ducking and diving, of which the most straightforward (for those in a position to do so) is to isssue an order ensuring that that forthright presenter never works again.
I think we should start a flying penguin party!
“And that is the real answer to the hard question of how political accountability and scrutiny is made more effective.”
Do you think relying on a voluntary change in behaviour on the part of MPs would be a satisfactory long-term answer, David?
I’ve been arguing for many years that, in a mature society, there must be an acknowledged mechanism whereby the public can spontaneously initiate a change in government at any level. Getting such a mechanism established won’t be easy but. to my mind, that’s the only way that governments will ever be properly accountable. The way the system operates at the moment, I don’t see any prospect of MPs successfully demanding proper answers.
No ‘under oath’ or perjury in HoC or HoL, but answering the committees should be compulsory, ‘under oath’ and subject to perjury etc
All with rolling up suspension penalties so a minister who tries to avoid scrutiny by not turning up, rearranging the truth etc could find themselves facing recall
There should be no resistance to it because they all tell a supportable truth?
“This blog has previously averred that the problem is not so much that politicians lie but that voters do not seem to care about being lied to.”
I think that we should be very careful before we pin the blame on the current state of politics in this country on the voters. They are IMHO someway down the list on “who is to blame for how it all came to this”
I’m old enough to remember the 2019 General Election campaign and how the two main opposing party’s were scrutinised over their claims/manifesto pledges etc.
In the Red corner I vividly remember the cacophony of derision over the tree planting pledge as being entirely divorced from reality, absurd, ridiculous and absolutely impossible.
In the Blue corner well, take your pick from Levelling-up, 40 new hospitals and of course “Getting Brexit Done”. All treated with a seriousness totally absent from those critiquing the “will you nationalise sausages” party.
It’s easy now to see, and indeed say how ridiculous the “levelling Up” pledge was (it clearly meant a different thing to whoever was saying how great it was), how absurd it is to call painting a ward a “new Hospital” and well, how’s that ‘oven ready deal’ going?
So let’s not blame the voting public when the MSM presents them with, on the one hand, an absurdly vague manifesto as being a serious document full of serious policies vs another one as being total pie in the sky.
And that tree planting pledge, turns out it actually was achievable in the defined timescale and indeed had been achieved elsewhere in the world, who knew? Not the MSM apparently.
Indeed and two of my Labour friends voted Tory in the 2019 election, as well as six local Labour supporters, because none of them could bear Corbyn.
At PMQs, the Leader of the opposition reads his questions from a prepared list. I assume he is obliged to ask them all (having previously submitted them?). He ought to be able (if some convention presently prevents him from so doing) to ignore subsequent questions and continue to press for a proper answer (or just do that if there is no rule to be broken). Similarly all other MPs asking a question ought to have a right to press for a decent answer immediately on receiving a non-answer.
A behavioural psychologist told me, and I have subsequently found it to have value even if not always sufficient, that you cannot change values without first changing behaviours.
Once people behave differently, through some sort of compulsion, however mild, they are far more likely to accept the new values exemplified by the behaviours, and less likely to revert to their historic behaviours.
You appear to be appealing for a change of values, without requiring a change of behaviours.
MPs have a long a devoted attachment to often abusive behaviours that would not be accepted in polite company, or even some of the better social media platforms.
Until politicians’ behaviours that disrespect others are seen to cause at the least embarrassment, and ideally reputational damage, why would politicians change behaviours that have proved so successful for so long?