Epitaph for a politician

Since Gordon Brown, for whom Wills has been a speech writer, became Prime Minister in 2007, Wills has been a Minister of State at the Department of Justice charged with the development of the tentative proposals for a start on constitutional reform set out in the Green Paper ‘The Governance of Britain’ issued shortly after Brown took office. We all know what that Green Paper has led to – very little - and it is clear that Michael Wills has had a difficult and deeply frustrating time. He has decided to retire from Parliament at the next election and, given our bizarre convention (it is only a convention and one with a murky history) that no-one may be a member of the government unless they are also a member of one of the two houses of Parliament, it is unlikely that he will ever serve us again as a minister.

What can we expect by way of a swan song from Wills? It seems that we may have had it already in a personal overview of Accountability under Democratic Constitutions delivered by him at the start of a conference in early February and published on OurKingdom very recently. Mythology tells us that the song of a swan before its demise is of great sweetness. Sadly, that personal overview comes over as a hoarse, tired and somewhat authoritarian croak.

This is partly because Wills has a rather dry, didactic style and likes to discuss constitutional questions in terms of the distribution of power - and the accountability of those who have power. ‘Our constitutional arrangements reflect – and determine – how power is distributed in our country. And that determines how every other question in our public life will be answered.’ he says. Leaving aside whether that is a correct analysis, a belief expressed in such terms is unlikely to inspire people and will not ring as music in the ears of those – and there are many of them – who would like our constitutional arrangements – and the manner in which they are made – to reflect the way in which ‘we’, all of us, exercise our sovereignty as a free people.

It is also partly because of the way in which Wills seems to see the role of Members of Parliament, his support of the political party system and his conviction of the need for a strong, decisive central executive to govern us and support (some) approved ‘localism’.

Take a look at his own constituency website. It is highly informative and clearly reflects his views on the importance of accountability. He tells his constituents what he is doing about things of local (constituency) interest, how he has voted on national matters and what speeches he has made. His account of the expenses he has claimed is impeccable and an admirable example of how a responsible person should behave in relation to the use of other people’s money. It also reflects the way in which he engages with his constituents on local matters, what is happening in the constituency and how the elected and appointed members of the local authorities are ‘getting on’ in their relationships with central government.

But it is also clear that, in no sense, does he see himself as a delegate for his constituents – particularly in respect of national matters. He does not seek to represent (or, one suspects, to establish) their views on topics such as our electoral system or the invasion of Iraq. He makes no secret of his own views and those of his political party (when it has them) and stands by them. But they are not ‘the views of’ those who elect him. If his constituents do not like the consequences they can chuck him (and his party) out at the next election. That is how he thinks representative democracy should work and, in that sense, he is a child of those politicians in the eighteenth century who killed off the notion of MPs as delegates, cautioned against too much democracy and established a party based system with Parliament (not the people) as sovereign ruling over the rest of us not as citizens but as subjects.

It is very surprising therefore that, in a paper published by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) in mid 2006, it was Wills who floated the idea of introducing a large degree of deliberative democracy into our national affairs by the establishment of a fully elected constitutional convention ‘to heal the fractures in our politics’ and ‘to explore and decide on the measures needed to rejuvenate not just Parliament but our constitutional arrangements as a whole.’

That paper was titled A New Agenda: Labour and Democracy and seemed to represent, in essence, the thinking of a politician on how to do something for his nation and, at the same time, to advance the interests of his Party as the proper servant and leader of the nation. The opening words were ‘This essay is a contribution to the debate about the Left’s future. It argues that the circumstances that have sustained Labour for so long are evaporating and that the Government requires radical renewal to win a fourth term. And it suggests a starting point for that long and difficult process.’

I do not know whether Wills wrote those things entirely off his own bat or whether there was another hand in it. I set out the salient features of his starting point (the constitutional convention) below. But I remark now that presenting an imaginative idea based on the notion of popular sovereignty as part of a ‘radical renewal’ to enable a Labour Government ‘to win a fourth term’ was a terrible blunder. It was likely to alienate the many people, to whom it could otherwise appeal, who would neither think of themselves as being ‘of the Left’ nor that ‘their’ constitution should be in the tactical hands of any political party. It made constitutional reform a party political issue inviting opposition by other parties ‘de rigeur’. And, most importantly, it made it almost impossible for politically unaligned organisations (including charities with money) to pick the idea up, develop it and generate both popular and cross party support for it. Wills did not seem to have grasped that there could be something deeply wrong, even offensive, with offering recognition of ‘our’ sovereignty to ‘us’ as an inducement to keep ‘his’ party in power.

Assuming that he was not simply advancing ‘a good wheeze’ for Labour, Wills may have thought it necessary and expedient to present his thinking in that ‘good for the Party’ way. He knew that it would be viewed with suspicion both by those Labour MPs who liked the security that the current, increasingly discredited situation gives them – the Roy Hattersley tradition that dismissed Charter 88 as ‘wankers’ in 1988 (the phrase was ascribed to Neil Kinnock, who in fact signed the Charter when John Smith became leader, it was leaked by Hattersley). And by those supporters of New Labour who had embraced the determining use of focus groups.

It is interesting that Gordon Brown had already been talking openly about the need to examine our constitutional arrangements apparently without thinking it necessary to put them in the context of potential electoral advantage. That had given the impression at the time that, on such matters, Brown was standing ‘statesman like’ as a man of principle above narrow party politics. Fairly or unfairly, Brown’s motivation is now regarded with deep suspicion. Ironically, in his ippr paper Wills came close to saying that David Cameron would say or do anything to ‘get the Tories in’. Brown is now suspected of being prepared to say or do anything to keep them out. Either way the inference is that part of the reason that our democracy is in such a horrid state is that the political establishment (which Wills is about to leave) deals with us, ’we the people’, with disrespect and deep cynicism.

Wills’ ‘starting point’ was not incorporated in The Governance of Britain but the thinking behind it undoubtedly influenced some of that Green Paper’s content. What Wills had suggested was far too rich a fare to be adopted as this government’s policy particularly in so far as it could ‘put the skids under’ parliamentary sovereignty (in practice executive sovereignty), something that his new boss, Jack Straw, was known to value greatly. When asked whether the omission reflected a change of his own views Wills would say, with a slightly embarrassed smile. ‘things are different when you are in government’. Not a new discovery for him! He had held a number of junior ministerial positions in Blair’s administrations before resigning over a European issue.

At the beginning of last year, when it was already crystal clear that the Governance of Britain initiative was in terminal difficulty, I was one amongst a number who were exploring ways (particularly involvement by unaligned outfits) to help Wills rescue something from the mess. This was a forlorn hope, far too late, associated with a wish to get something ‘on the go’ using, experimentally, forms of deliberative democracy to engage ordinary people in the formulation of policy proposals. ‘Values’ was the rather vague heading in which Wills was interested. The obvious difficulty was that, following the implosion of the banking system and worries that the UK was sliding into deep recession, it would be easy for the Government’s opponents to ask, with some justification, ‘What on earth are they up to giving any priority to or spending any money on airy fairy things that have no relevance to current problems which threaten our economy and the welfare of the whole population?’

In the course of my explorations, I had a ‘private’ discussion with someone who had been close to the Blair administrations and claimed to be on good terms with the new ‘people who matter in number 10’. I asked him if he had any idea how the land lay. Was Michael Wills in an isolated position? He told me, with conviction and emphasis ‘ I have talked with them. They do not like it. If Michael persists it could be the end of his political career’. I do not know who ‘they’ were but it was clear that Wills had been hoist on his own petard and that an approach to democratic renewal which he had advanced originally as attractive in electoral terms was now ‘off the table’ because others including, I suspect, unelected others saw the electoral situation quite differently.

I did not like the implications of what was going on and I could hear the ends and means justification - ‘If we don’t win elections we can’t do the good things we want to do’. A slippery slope! And one which we have all helped to fashion! Wills soldiered on and in the spring of last year a consultation was announced with views invited on the possible contents of legislation in the field of rights and responsibilities. All that was overtaken by the fall out from the parliamentary expenses scandal (rights and responsibilities!) and little has been heard of the matter since. In the autumn Wills told his constituents that he had decided to stand down as an MP.

What has happened to Michael Wills and what obstacles have been put in his way over the last 30 months is a matter of conjecture but a comparison between his proposed ‘starting point’ in his ippr paper of 2006 and his recent exposition of the Governments achievements in the field of constitutional reform is suggestive and illuminating.

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