Why £40 billion repairs won't fix the real problem with Westminster
Labour’s trials and tribulations and scandals over unelected Lords suggest Westminster is no longer fit for purpose
Crumbling, not fit for purpose and with 24-hour fire patrols, the Palace of Westminster may look terribly grand but it really isn’t a working environment fit for the 21st century. Anyone who has ever worked in the building will not have been surprised by the sight of a mouse dashing past Kemi Badenoch as she was giving a TV interview recently.
This week the Commission responsible for revamping the building reported warning that renovations could take decades and cost an eye-watering £40 billion (yes, you read that right).
It isn’t just the building, but what takes place within that has come under scrutiny. Lift the bonnet of Westminster and you will find arcane parliamentary practices badly in need of fresh thinking. This is particularly true of the House of Lords whose out-of-date procedures still manage to trip up politicians.
This week the Prime Minister had what was described as a ‘near death’ political experience. His premiership was arguably saved by the cack-handed intervention of Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, who managed to shore up the Prime Minister for now, whilst blowing a hole in his party’s credibility. The reprieve was brief and, at the end of the week, questions were again being raised about the Prime Minister’s judgment and lack of transparency.
Westminster psychodrama to claim another PM?
Starmer has been badly wounded by the Mandelson affair. That the Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson as US Ambassador, knowing of his relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, remains a key area of vulnerability for him. He also now has questions to answer over his appointment of his former head of communications, Matthew Doyle, to the Lords. He had the whip removed this week after it emerged he had campaigned for Sean Morton after Morton had been charged with having indecent images of children.
Again, Westminster is embroiled in a scandal over unelected peers, and yet another Prime Minister could be headed for the exit after another Westminster psychodrama. That might help fill column inches, like this one, but does little to tackle issues that matter to people, like the cost-of-living crisis and the UK’s low productivity. I have lost count of the amount of time taken up by avoidable scandals at Westminster, rather than issues of substance.
Labour is hardly alone in finding themselves in a funk. The Conservative government was immersed in scandals burning through five Prime Ministers in the aftermath of the EU referendum. It also got into trouble because of injudicious appointments to the House of Lords such as Union champion Michelle Mone who lost her party’s whip over allegations around PPE procurement during the pandemic. The Liberal Democrats Lord Chris Rennard also lost the whip amid a new investigation into sexual harassment claims.
Yet here’s the thing, we can think what we like about messieurs Mandelson, Doyle, Mone and Rennard but there isn’t anything we can do about it, Mandelson saved his party’s blushes by resigning from the upper chamber. Whereas MPs can ultimately be held to account by the voters, their Lordships (the majority of parliamentarians at Westminster) remain immune to democratic scrutiny.
Chosen by the electorate
Compare that to Holyrood where, in a few weeks, voters will have the opportunity to elect a new set of Members of the Scottish Parliament, not a proportion of them, all of them. Regardless of what you think of individual MSPs, or their respective parties, they are there because they were chosen by the electorate.
And what’s more they can be removed from their posts by the electorate. There is even provision to ensure that one party does not do disproportionately well, with the regional list system offsetting the constituency vote.
Compare that to Westminster where, as well as their noble Lords, the governing party in the Commons has two thirds of the seats on a third of the vote. That is before we have even mentioned the fact that the Head of State is also unelected, for good or ill, and the eighth in line to the throne in disgrace, his titles removed but not his position in the Line of Succession.
Last week Westminster again dissolved into introspection and faction fighting over the latest revelations over the lords and the Prime Minister’s judgment. That, understandably perhaps, left less space for debating actual policy.
Even Scottish Labour’s botched intervention was focused on politics not policy as Sarwar sought to get a word in over the latest soap opera. Scottish Labour, unlike Labour in other parts of the UK, failed to rebel over substantive issues such as child poverty, the winter fuel payment or the farm tax but did rebel when it came to the electability or otherwise of the Prime Minister. Hardly a substantial intervention.
As all of this was unfolding in London this week, Scotland’s First Minister was getting on with the day job, opening the first GP walk-in centre, visiting the site of the A9 dualling and passing groundbreaking community wealth legislation.
Beyond redemption
Democracies are not perfect, but they work better than the alternatives because politicians recognise that the electorate is the boss, it is they who decide on who should be in parliament. People need to see that their institutions work for them and decide on who sits in their legislatures.
Starmer must wish he had stayed in China after his recent visit. As one Westminster wag jibed, other visitors have taken burner phones to China whereas the UK had sent a burner Prime Minister.
That got some laughs, and rightly so. But there is a more serious point of whether Westminster is fit for purpose. This week we learned of the eye-watering cost of saving the building, but perhaps this out-dated method of governing is beyond redemption.
Stephen Gethins is the MP for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry
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