Tantrums and principles

Tweet The one common factor to emerge from the bust up in Westminster over reform of the House of Lords and changes to constituency boundaries is the utter cynicism of some politicians.  None of the three UK parties emerges with much credit.

Those in the Conservative party who seem to think that they can sign up to an agreement with another party and then pick and choose which elements of the agreement they support have displayed a certain amount of arrogance as well.  I even saw one of them suggesting that the response by Nick Clegg was immature.  It didn’t look to me as though the immaturity was entirely one-sided.

Then we have the Labour Party, who claim to support reform of the House of Lords but decided to vote against it largely to put the Liberal Democrats on the spot.  And then we have the Lib Dems themselves who've responded to an act of bad faith with what looks like petty petulance.

Clearly, Clegg found himself in a position where simply rolling over and accepting that the Conservatives were not going to deliver on one of their coalition pledges would have left him looking weak - or perhaps that should be ‘even weaker’.  However, given his commitment to the continuation of the coalition, he needed to find a form of retaliation which was nonlethal. 

Protecting MPs from a cull may achieve that aim, but it isn't exactly the most populist issue he could have chosen to start drawing lines in the sand.  Worse still from his perspective, it might even secretly please more Tories than it upsets, given the worries many were facing over their own seats.  Heads they win, tails the Lib Dems lose.

Boundaries and protests

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The howls of protest from some quarters about the proposed new constituency boundaries were entirely predictable, and had probably been rehearsed for weeks if not months.  That doesn’t mean that they’re entirely unjustified, of course.  Some of the boundaries look highly artificial to me, and seem to ignore geographical and community links.  It’s not a problem unique to Wales, though; merely more acute because of the greater proportionate change here.

The outcome is a more or less inevitable result of giving primacy to the argument that MPs should have, as nearly as possible, equal numbers of constituents.  It’s a difficult argument to counter, but it does depend to some extent on what we see as the primary rôle of MPs.

If they are there, first and foremost, to make laws on behalf of the UK as a whole, then the argument for parity of constituencies is a strong one.  But if they are there, first and foremost, to be representatives of the people and communities in their constituencies, then the extent of geographical spread and homogeneity (or lack thereof) in constituencies becomes a more important one. 

It’s clear which of those two drivers is uppermost in the government’s mind – MPs are there to support (or oppose) the government’s legislative programme, and do as they are told.  But the reality is that we expect them to do both.  In a sense, the second element has become less important in Wales and Scotland as much of the representative work is now done elsewhere, so perhaps we should be less worried.

There is another aspect, though, and it is the extent to which Wales’ voice is lost in a parliament where the overwhelming majority of MPs come from English constituencies.  There are still plenty of issues of concern to Wales being discussed and decided in London, and the size and clarity of the Welsh voice is important in that regard.

Whether the difference between 30 and 40 out of 600 is really significant is another question entirely; and the inability of most of Wales’ MPs to find a specifically Welsh voice rather then being simply the Welsh wing of their UK parties undermines their argument for Welsh over-representation.  The argument for deliberate over-representation of the smaller nations in the UK Parliament is, in essence a ‘nationalist’ argument.  It is rooted in the idea that Wales is a nation which needs to have its voice heard, rather than a region to be treated on the same basis as the regions of England.

It’s fascinating to hear that argument, albeit not in quite those terms, being put by politicians in the UK parties.  The problem is that given their track record it simply sounds like an altruistic cover for protecting their own personal and party interests.  Labour, in particular, have long had a tendency to conflate their party’s interests with those of Wales, but it’s no more credible on the issue of constituency boundaries than it is on a host of other issues.

It’s also fascinating that some nationalists at least seem to be welcoming the reduction in Welsh representation.  If I could be certain that it is just another step on the road to independence than I might be tempted to join them.  But there is no guarantee that it is, and as long as Wales is part of the UK, I really don’t see why anyone would argue against the idea of maximising our representation.