The House of Commons has had its Alice Through the Looking Glass moment. But it remains in its own little wonderland. The belittling, sixth-form level election of the Speaker provided an engaging distraction for MPs disengaged and seemingly unable to re-engage with the outside world.
Not for a very long time have the corridors, bars and the terrace been as busily animated as during the six-hour ballot for Michael Martin’s replacement. Yet the election amounts to little, in spite of John Bercow’s lofty pledges to revive and reform Parliament. It will take more than the powers in his possession to restore trust in Parliament, though the replacement of a rifle range with a crèche in the Palace of Westminster within the next year would be a commendably symbolic step.
It means little to those outside Parliament who are losing their jobs and their homes, their post offices and rights at work. While the pantomime distracted MPs, it did little to deflect from the perception that Parliament and the Government are drifting, carried along on a mantra of reform and change, but changing nothing. The contemptuous presentation of the redacted official expenses records was an exclamatory confirmation that, in the universally understood and felt phrase, they just don’t get it.
The future, as Westminster writhed in self-indulgence, was across the Channel in Brussels, where David Cameron was using the smokescreen of the election to unveil his parties’ new alliance in the European Parliament, a coalition of fundamentalists from the right, religious and professional political crackpots. Mr Cameron’s only saving grace in taking his party into the margins of the European debate is that he is actually embarrassed about it.
What it underlines is a leader not in control of his own party, another leader imprisoned by the fanatical anti-Europe wing of the Conservatives. A leader capable in opposition of making such an ignoble, opportunist decision which begs questions about his judgment should ever he attain power. And that will be up to Labour, a party which has just been humiliatingly rejected at the polls. Everyone agrees it’s “Time for Change”. While, as Kevin Maguire states on page 14, Gordon Brown remains stuck in the policies formed in his mind in the early 1990s, what is happening within what is left of his party to drive change?
The answer is that there is a void. No meeting of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee to discuss the poll wipeout is scheduled until July 21, almost two months after the result. No meeting of the National Policy Forum is scheduled. It appears to have evaporated as a policy-making body. A meeting of a joint policy commission is due early next month. But this mechanism does not function, in large part because ministers do not turn up, and is widely derided within the party as useless. There is also the continuing question of whether the party is financially a going concern.
So where is change to come from? Must it continue to be that capricious old master, events?
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