Strong opposition is not an end in itself

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Some analysis of the so-called beauty parade at the Tory Conference this week has been based on the assumption that democracy requires that any government needs a strong opposition to perform this magic function called ‘holding to account’ and that, in current circumstances, that requires a functioning Tory Party. What anything in that last sentence actually means is generally left unexplained on the basis of another assumption: that we all know what it means. But do we really?

If ‘holding to account’ simply means automatic gainsaying of anything the government says, regardless of any evidence, is it actually performing any useful function? In the Senedd, we have a whole opposition party utterly dedicated to simply disagreeing with everything the administration says – even if, in the process, they find themselves obliged to contradict either what they themselves have said in the past or else what their masters in London are saying – in pursuit of a headline or two, the more lurid the better. But the degree of luridity and the number of column inches thus gained is no measure of the usefulness of the process. Some might argue that it’s useful in keeping lazy journalists employed, although many of us might just doubt the value of that as well.

It might be argued that democracy is best served by presenting voters with alternative views of the world and allowing voters to choose between them, but that isn’t the same thing as presenting the same view of the world and merely offering a choice of implementation teams, which is where UK politics currently operates. That’s not to underestimate the value of replacing an incompetent team with a competent one, although recent events suggest that the last election didn’t even achieve that, however much it might have appeared in advance that almost anyone would be able to do a better job. Turns out that ‘almost anyone’ didn’t encompass the main opposition party.

Even if it were true that the UK’s semi-democracy is stronger where there is a strong and clear opposition party, it doesn’t follow – as much of the speculation around the next leader of the English Conservative Party seems to assume – that that opposition must be composed of the party that was last in government. Maybe, even in the case that having a strong opposition is always and necessarily a good thing, it would actually be better to sweep the last lot aside and build anew around another option which actually offers something different. Choosing the least worst new leader in the expectation that (s)he would be capable of replacing the current government with a revamped version of its predecessor and that we would be better off as a result would be another triumph of hope over experience.

There’s more to strengthening democracy than simply preparing the Conservative Party to return to power the next time the pendulum swings. Abolishing the House of Lords, implementing an electoral system which doesn’t give absolute power to one party on the basis of one third of the votes, and further devolution of power would all be better first steps. Ensuring that a party committed to none of those things can only ever be replaced by another party committed to none of those things is a recipe for continuation politics and economics. Rather than being what we need most – which is what the talk of a strong opposition seems to assume – it’s really what we need least. We should be asking ourselves whose interests are being served by restricting the choice.