Labour and the Church of England are both navel-gazing while calamity awaits them, says Nigel Nelson
The Labour Party has much in common with the Church of England. Both are so obsessed with local climate change that they fail to spot the cyclone about to engulf them.
Labour busies itself with factionalism, petty rivalries and ideology. For the church it is factionalism, petty rivalries and theology. And both are more concerned about who leads them than where they are going.
If the C of E could see further than gay priests and woman bishops, it might notice there may soon not be much of an institution left to accommodate either. And Labour is always happiest fighting itself.
The storm they are both inert to is constitutional change, now gathering force just over the horizon because of the MPs’ expenses scandal. And when the whirlwind hits it will knock the body politic off its feet.
The House of Lords has escaped fundamental reform because constitutionalists dallied so MPs dithered. As no one was quite sure what to do, nothing very much got done. But this inertia will spare their lordships no longer.
It is difficult to see how any democracy could go through such a wind of change without a wholly elected second chamber. Out will go the 26 bishops, making Iran the only state left with unelected clergy in its legislature.
Disestablishment cannot be far away. A canny church would seize the opportunity that brings and retrench from struggling rural parishes to its inner-city strongholds . It could then present the Government with the multi-billion pound bill to look after the listed buildings it abandons. Ben Bradshaw’s new role as Secretary of State for Fun may turn out not to be such a laugh after all.
Neither of the two main political parties will embrace proportional representation willingly, whatever approving noises they make about it now. But a parliamentary democracy rebuilding its foundations will not be able to resist PR for long.
And coalition government may follow. Personally, I rather like the idea of a cabinet which contains Vince Cable as Chancellor and William Hague as Foreign Secretary. Neither may it necessarily be a bad thing to have the odd oddball BNP and UKIP MP. The parliamentary scrutiny they would get would expose them for the head-bangers they are.
Fixed-term parliaments? That’s the kind of strait-jacket Gordon Brown could have done with when committing political harakiri over an election date.
Votes at 16? Now that’s out of the box, try squeezing it back in.
Constitutional reform is a risky business, and there will be unintended consequences along the way. But if we get a British parliament more in tune with the Britain it represents, it will be worth at least two cheers for democracy.
Nigel Nelson is political editor of The People
