Mandates and Majorities: May's abuse of the FTPA to protect her minority government has broken the Parliamentary system

Theresa May continues to cling to power. Despite promising to resign to retain hold of the leadership of her party, despite being defeated on her Finance Bill, despite a historic defeat in Parliament, May utterly refuses to compromise or alter course.

You would think, from her actions, that the Prime Minister sits on an electoral majority with a clear mandate. She doesn't. She heads an internally divided minority government, with no electoral majority - which means she has no mandate, let alone a clear one.

And the arithmetic of Parliament is divided too. Parties are divided and across a number of different lines, not just Brexit vs Remain. Yet the Prime Minister refuses to accept the fundamental fact that Parliament is right to rein her in and take a leading role - instead calling them rebels and traitors.

The big question is how can Theresa May act like she has so much more power than she does? That would be the disastrous affect that the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (FTPA) has had on the constitution.

When it was first introduced, there were positives. A useful restriction on executive power, such as limiting government abuse of it's executive powers over calling elections brought by setting fixed dates for elections - and how restricting how they could be called.

During the Coalition, this was intended to keep the alliance between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats stable - with neither party, especially the Lib Dems, able to hold the other hostage to an election over policy squabbles.

But there have been unintended consequences. The act has extraordinarily empowered minority governments, changing the conditions of a government's fall to make it overwhelmingly difficult for Parliament to vote out a minority government.

This has become a crucial factor in the present consitutional crisis. Theresa May cannot govern, especially on the key piece of her legislative agenda, and yet cannot be toppled. Using the FTPA, she has near single-handedly brought the functioning of the Parliamentary system to a halt.

The ridiculous nature of what the FTPA and May's use of it have done is shown in how her government survived last week: despite the largest margin of defeat for any government on Parliamentary record, a critical and embarrasing disaster, she survived the vote of no confidence the following day.

How? Thanks to the Act, she was able to separate her key legislation from confidence in the government - literally, separate being able to competently govern from whether or not they should govern. As a result, her own MPs rejected her Brexit deal in a humiliation, demonstrating their inability to govern, but then voted to keep themselves in power.

This needs to be addressed by future governments. It cannot be that a government can stand, despite dmonstrably being unable to govern. While that is a common occurance in the American system, it is not in the Westminster system of Parliamentary democracy - where the fundamental principle has always been that a government that cannot govern, does not.

Without a majority, Theresa May doesn't have a mandate. She doesn't have the authority to force through her deal - especially when it has been rejected multiple times. However, unfortunately, the Parliamentary system has been hindered and restricted in it's ability to prevent her pursuing this course.

Labour and the Lib Dems are close on policy, but they have a caustic relationship that hinders shared progressive aims

Party conference season is well under way and with it the pointless partisan finger pointing. Holding authority to account is never pointless, but progressive parties taking pot shots at each other is - with no real meaningful returns.

That has been a particularly lamentable feature of relations between Labour and the Liberal Democrats over the past decade, and a sad situation when the two parties have for a long time been very close in terms of policy.

The Liberal Democrat conference had some predictable elements, like the focus on resisting Brexit. But there were a number of policies that made it onto the table at the conference that tell an interesting story of the party's internal dynamics.

Although their leadership, through a few iterations now, have been committed to a centrist, split-the-difference, approach to how they present their policies to the public - placing them half way between Labour and the Tories - that stance doesn't reflect the wider scope of Lib Dem policy.

In our breakdown of party policies for the 2017 elections, it was clear there a not only a distinctly centre left theme, but that the gap between the Lib Dems and Labour was far narrower than you would think from either side's rhetoric.

Both parties had a positive economic outlook, aiming to increase long term public investment by hundreds of billions. Both sought to reverse tax cuts for corporations and raise taxes on the wealthiest. While the Lib Dems proposed loosening the Tories restrictions on welfare, Labour called for more democratic power for workers in their workplaces - whether through coops or through more locally owned utilities.

That same closeness can be seen in the ideas that the radical liberal factions of the Liberal Democrats put on the agenda at their conference. Policies like a redistributive sovereign wealth fund, taxing wealth to reinvest; pushing for better support for cooperatives, social enterprises and for stakeholders over shareholders; and support for a basic income trial in Wales.

Yet their leaders, elected representatives and talking heads, still feel the need to attack each other. For progressives, these caustic relationships are of no use, serving only to drive allies apart and make progressive goals harder to achieve.

Criticism is necessary. Dissent is necessary. While progressive parties have plenty in common, they often differ when it comes to priorities and methods. But being drawn into the politics-to-media-to-politics cycle of personal attacks achieves nothing.

Dissent shouldn't be a barrier to cooperation, nor should it be a cause to resort to crude attacks. It is the basis of rational debate, that holds to us to a higher standard. Progress is built on that foundation. Progressive leaders need to remember that.

Carillion: When private service providers keep proving so inept and unethical, how can we be asked to back privatisation?

Photograph: Future site of the Library of Birmingham, from 2009, by Elliott Brown (License) (Cropped)

Carillion, a services behemoth, has collapsed. With it, it takes billions in government contracts and puts tens of thousands of jobs at risk. The construction and services company accrued £1.5bn in debt - of which £600m was owed to it's pension fund.

Fortunately, despite Carillion's own recklessness, the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) has stepped in to assure workers that their pensions will be protected - despite the complete failure of the company to meet it's commitments to workers.

However, numerous government projects, and smaller businesses to whom Carillion outsourced work, face an uncertain future. A result of what David Lammy described as, "privatise profits when things go well and nationalise risks so the taxpayer picks up the bill when things go wrong".

This government has tried to convince us of, or slip past us, a privatisations agenda, trusting private companies in the public sector. But how cane we back privatisation, when private sector providers keep proving so inept and unethical?

Carillion is not the only major private concern, even in the past year, to go bust and to do so revealing a massive pensions deficit - having taken profits for executive pay, but left workers' futures in peril, in what must surely be a major ethical breach.

When the steel industry nearly collapsed with the Tata Steel decision to close it's plants, workers' pensions were a huge block on a deal to save the industry. Incoming buyers did not want to take on responsibility for the pensions.

The unwillingness of private sector companies to take up their responsibilities in this case left workers with steel pensions in uncertain circumstances, where they have been prey to financial advice groups - now under investigation over their predatory behaviour.

The thing is, the government isn't just pushing privatisation for services, but for things like social insurance and pensions. It wants us all to do these things on personal, private terms, rather than in big collective government funds.

Yet, how can we trust the government's much vaunted workplace pensions scheme, when private companies treat workers' pensions as the first thing to drop when their isn't enough money for every commitment the company has made.

And what about Virgin? A global corporation that bitterly scraps for government contracts, even to the point of suing commissioners when they don't get them - suing parts of a cherished health service in financial distress. It was later awarded a huge contract, to much public outcry.

The government must now move to salvage what it can of Carillion, nationalising projects and departments to keep their vital work going and keep people employed. But what shape that takes is yet to be seen.

The speculation is that the government will continue to it's neoliberal trend of nationalising failure and debt, while returning the profitable parts to the private sector for executives to enjoy the benefits.

It would be refreshing to see something. Like the private sector picking up the tab for it's colossal failure? Yeah, right. Perhaps less fanciful would be consolidating parts of Carillion into a cooperative, run by it's workers?

As a cooperative, the still functional, still profitable parts could serve workers. The profits would deliver dividends for the workers, that would be of direct benefit their communities.

Whatever the government chooses to do, take note. This is one of those 'true colours' moments, where the rhetoric is paper transparently thin and the tropes are well known, enough to allow us to see what the governing party really values.

US Presidential Election 2016: Alexander Hamilton said it had fallen to America to prove citizens capable of unselfish government that served the public good

Alexander Hamilton, Founding Father of the United States and the chief champion of its constitution. Image: Alexander Hamilton from Marion Doss (License) (Cropped)

In The Federalist No.1, arguing for the ratification of America's then brand new constitution, Alexander Hamilton wrote that:

"It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."

Hamilton drew up an image of a grave responsibility having fallen upon America, as the symbol and example of citizen government, to prove that government by consent, by reason and by dispassionate and sound judgement was something of which ordinary people - once removed from the compulsions of force or fear or hierarchical and servial duties - were capable.

But Hamilton also warned of the prejudicial interests which the new Constitution must overcome to pursue that ideal. Not least the "perverted ambition" of those who seek to "flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation" or "aggrandise themselves by the confusions of their country".

Sound like anyone?

Donald Trump has, at every turn, taken the path of division and self-aggrandisement. At every turn he has taken the low road, driving wedges into the heart of the country to exploit fear, disenfranchisement and confusion.

As much as the citizens of the United States likes to see their country as something that stands apart, it has nonetheless remained on trend. The rise of the language of far right politics - sectarian, intolerant - is not unique to America. It is feeding on desperation and hopelessness wherever it can find it.

Around the world, opportunistic individuals are stoking confusion to aggrandise themselves and pursue perverted ambitions at the expense of the public good. Trump is part of that: someone who will use the people while they're useful, only to drop them and persecute them the moment they're not.

At the Presidential Election, and at the many Senate and Congressional and other elections happening this week, America faces a stark choice - almost nowhere else in the Western world has two-party politics so deeply embedded itself.

On the one hand, the Republican Party has been consumed by its own folly. Trump is just the vile symptom of a deeper sickness - the boil than alerts us to the plague hidden within. Intolerance and sectarianism were seized upon as electoral tools in the Sixties and the price is now come due: to be overthrown and subsumed beneath an egotistical populist.

For progressives, the failures of the Democrats are different. They are the product of compromise, of playing within the system, of trying to achieve gradual reform from the inside - that has left them tainted by association with those they have had to work with to build consensus.

Hillary Rodham Clinton symbolises those compromises to many on the Left, and beyond, perhaps more than any other Democrat. A life long career of those compromises have also made her perhaps the most qualified Presidential candidate in history.

That is the upside and down of trying to get things done from the inside: there is a cost to claims of being a reformer when you have been part of the establishment for so long. If a person spends long enough in the political arena, it becomes hard to see for what they actually.

But that is where the people come in: the activists, the radicals, the social reformers, ordinary citizens in thousands of constituencies. As Laurie Penny argues, those who want radical change always see those in power as an enemy and Hillary Clinton is the enemy she has wanted all her life.

Clinton is a centrist, a moderate, a woman, a political insider with a lifetime of experience: a graduate of Yale; a consistent campaigner for healthcare reform, achieving successes for children and reservists; as First Lady, she spoke in China to tell the world that Women's Rights were Human Rights; she built an international consensus to pull Iran in from the cold; and her name is cited as a leading campaigner for numerous reforming policies - like equal pay and care for 9/11 first responders.

For progressives, with narrow but stark options, voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Election is a vote for the public good. In his own time, Alexander Hamilton stood opposed to the political fortunes of Aaron Burr, because he believed him to serve no interest but his own. Between the pragmatic public servant and the self-serving egotist, there is no debate as to who the arch-Federalist Hamilton would have supported between Clinton and Trump. As Hamilton argued:

"Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good."

But it doesn't stop there. One person alone does not make the future. No President, no leader, of no country, not even America, wields that kind of power. That is the work of movements. Progressives must find theirs and with it their voice. Remember: politics doesn't end with an election.

Vote Hillary, but don't do so expecting that you can just leave everything in her lap. Hillary Rodham Clinton is not a perfect candidate. No candidate is. She is human and flawed. So progressives voters must be prepared to hold her to account, to provide scrutiny and be critical, prepared to demand excellence at every turn.

Responsible government: PM May and Ministers must be held accountable to Parliamentary scrutiny

The principle of responsible government demands that executive power, held by the Prime Minister and the Government, be accountable to the assembled elected representatives.

A word that was thrown around a lot during the referendum campaign was 'sovereignty'. Those campaigning for a British exit from the European Union offered a number of things - not least an increase in public funding - but above all the restoration of 'sovereignty'.

The brexiteers promised a vote to leave would 'take back control' from 'unelected Brussels bureaucrats'. However, while clear who they wanted to take power away from, it has been less clear to who that control will be restored.

From the way Theresa May's government has handled the matter of triggering Article 50 and launching Brexit negotiations, it seems that the intention is to hand the power straight to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.

The trouble with that plan is that so much executive power stands against one of the most basic principles of the Westminster System: responsible government. In short, that the Prime Minister and the Cabinet (the executive) should be accountable to Parliament (the legislative).

Over a long period of time, the power of governance in the UK has become increasingly centralised, further and further excluding Parliament. Thanks to the first-past-the-post electoral system, thanks to Parliamentary majorities, the government has been able to increasingly sideline the Commons.

Even with her presently weak majority, Theresa May has managed to so far exclude the Commons from any substantive details regarding what kind of deal the Government will seek in its negotiations with the European Union.

Labour highlighted the paucity of information about what an exit will entail by listing one hundred and seventy questions that the Government needs to answer. A challenge is even being taken to the High Court to prevent May's Government from excluding Parliament from the process.

It is hard to see how anyone could argue that any kind of 'control' had been 'restored' without the return of decisive Parliamentary scrutiny. Swapping one, fairly or unfairly much criticised, continental executive for a national one with no greater accountability represents no step forward whatsoever.

If Britain's socially disastrous withdrawal from internationalism is to serve any useful purpose, the least it could do is highlight the inadequacy of scrutiny provided by Britain's electoral system and its deeply centralised Government.

Without Brussels to blame, there will be no excuse. Too many voices are already excluded from representation by the electoral system, without Parliament itself also being excluded. Responsible government has to become the reality - and it is best to start as you mean to go on.

Around the World: Corruption, Operation Car Wash and the Rousseff Impeachment

National Congress of Brazil, in Brasilia, where now former President Dilma Rousseff was impeached in two majority votes. Photograph: National Congress of Brazil from Pixabay (License) (Cropped).

Dilma Rousseff has lost her battle against impeachment in Brazil, with the Senate confirming the decision of the Chamber of Deputies to expel her from the office of President (Watts & Bowater, 2016). Three-quarters of Senators voted to impeach her on charges of corruption and mismanagement of the budget.

That is unlikely to be the end of the controversy. But for now, it marks the end of a chain of events set against a backdrop of general unrest, with protests against money being spent on huge international events like the World Cup and the Olympics, instead of on practical measures to support the people - like housing and welfare - and an economy deeply affected by the global crisis.

A lot of the present crisis surrounds Brazilian oil. Accusations of bribery surrounding the state oil company Petrobras surrounding the awarding of contracts and its deep connections in Brazilian politics, was uncovered by the corruption investigation known as Operation Car Wash (Watts, 2016).

The result has been a political crisis that has seen Rousseff's predecessor Lula da Silva set to face a corruption trial and the larger part of the political class implicated in the corruption. Rousseff's adversaries have also manoeuvred to have her thrown out of office, though as she is so far avoided direct connection to the scandal, they have pursued her through accusations of fiscal malpractice (Prengaman, 2016).

The impeachment leaves Rousseff's former ally, and now leading figure amongst her opponents, Acting-President Michel Temer in the office of President. While he has the support of the political Right and business that wants austerity measures imposed, he isn't popular - having been booed during the Olympic opening ceremony.

Like Italy's Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) investigation that wiped away the country's established political system and all of its political parties in the early 1990s, Operation Car Wash has thrown open the doors to show how Brazil's system operates behind closed doors - and no one working within that system is likely to come out clean.

That situation is what has toppled Rousseff. The worry is for the political vacuum that might follow the toppling of the rest of the establishment - in Italy it was occupied by the arch-populist Silvio Berlusconi for twenty years.

Yet despite her defeat in what has been denounced as a parliamentary coup, Rousseff insists upon appealing her impeachment by who she describes as usurpers and coup-mongers (Watts & Bowater, 2016). But against a backdrop of massive political-corporate corruption, it is unclear what more can be done at the federal level until it is all swept away.

Clearly, Brazil needs a path out of this dense tangle of overlapping problems. The clear implication is that a new approach is needed.

One option that has been proposed is to embrace the municipal movement, most notably at work in Barcelona, at the local government elections in October and November (Wyllys, 2016). What municipalism offers is a chance to do things a bit differently.

Movements in Brazil are already organising around municipal principles - Muitxos: Cidade que Queremos (Many: the City We Want) in Belo Horizonte, for example (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016) - as a way move power away from political-corporate cliques.

With Brazil's federal politics - where pro-market corporate forces face off with populist social democrats over tax and spend projects like social welfare - mired in corruption and accusations, shifting the focus to local government instead could provide a route for citizens to get into politics in a more direct way and perhaps even start to dismantle the corruption from the ground up.

As elsewhere in the world, national politics has been choked by political-corporate cartels, whether de facto or de jure, that restrict political action and assume the driving seat in decision-making.

That path has lead to failures of leadership, where vigilant oversight is lacking - of which, if anything, Rousseff might be legitimately accused, due to being in a senior position during the height of the corruption and yet claiming no knowledge of what was going on.

Devolving power to citizens in their communities and encouraging open city government could help renew the system. And for the municipal movement itself, success in the cities of Brazil would be a major breakthrough.

It is one thing to argue for open source cities, using the twin means of free online resources and open participatory public spaces, that make the municipality a place where people can express their real political power (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016{2}).

It is another entirely to see municipal ideas applied to cities on different continents, with different contexts, and see them challenge massive corruption from below by engaging with people in their own communities and returning hope and power to them.

PMQs isn't fit for purpose. But it is the symptom not the disease

Week after week, the noise at Prime Minister's Questions has gotten louder. The half hour sessions have been drowned in noise growing more inconsiderate, more deliberately vindictive, with each passing week. Having to listen to the Conservative benches braying, on live television, to drown out the questions of the opposition, can be an exercise in masochism.

It seems pretty obvious at first look that PMQs is broken. And yet, it fits so perfectly within the Westminster system. That in itself is a sign of a much deeper problem in the British political system.

The essential trouble with PMQs is that it fits in a little too perfectly with the adversarial political culture in the UK. The two sides, the government and opposition, line up opposite to one another to, supposedly, hold the government to account.

The trouble is that this polemic is bias refined, a subjective contest where the government holds one view and thinks it is right and the opposition holds another and thinks it is right. What follows is a sparring match between the unstoppable and the immovable.

That contest is perfectly fitted to the UK's us-versus-them, first-past-the-post and winner-takes-all politics. Two implacable foes, coming from fixed positions having arguments that by their nature cannot be resolved. The government will do what it will and the rest is theatre.

There is certainly am uncontestable need for the public to see, in the flesh, what it is that each side stands for, argued for, hopefully, eloquently - maybe even persuasively. Yet PMQs is one the very few public moments in which there is an opportunity to enforce upon the government - handed extraordinary power in the UK - some kind of accountability.

However, when you cross the two purposes, the party publicity exercise and holding the government to account, only one of them is ever going to win. Accountability is sunk beneath bravado, noise and petty point-scoring.

In Scotland there has been attempt to début a revised First Minister's questions, changing up the system to provide more time for a calmer session with more interrogation. But even that is limited in what it can achieve.

It cannot escape a political culture of fixed adversarial positions and that is expressed, at its worst, in an exercise that is not supposed to be 'political' being consumed by politics.

Ideally, the process of holding the government to account would be something akin to a committee hearing. The Prime Minister would be brought before them and have to give acceptable answers to fundamental questions: What is your government doing? From where does it derive the mandate for that action?

The government's reluctance to put PM David Cameron into the election debates suggests an immediate weakness to this particular alternative: Would the party political machine ever submit to the Prime Minister and the government being put so clearly on trial? Probably not.

Right now the European Union's democracy is under scrutiny. But Westminster's shortcoming shouldn't be swept under the rug. Winner-takes-all makes a mockery of political representation and the adversary system simply reinforces the alienation of citizens from their government - keeping the real business far from the vigilant eyes of those who would want answers to the difficult questions that could hold it to account.

Leak of the Panama Papers is our regular reminder of the huge credibility problem politics in the UK still faces

New revelations, about new scandals, do little to reassure a public jaded with the political process when they aren't followed up with definitive, fair and progressive action. Photograph: Protesters outside the 2015 Conservative Party Conference in Manchester .

Politics in the UK has a credibility problem. It has existed for some time. Back in 2010, before the Liberal Democrats ran into their own credibility problems, their election campaign sparked interest by drawing critical attention to a political era of empty rhetoric, deceptive spin and broken promises (Clegg, 2010).

Long locked out of power by Labour and the Conservatives, the Lib Dems were well placed to capitalise on public discontent with a political system that had also locked out the public. The 2008 crash was recent history and the deception of the Iraq War was still fresh in people's minds.

The announcement of yet another leak filled with scandal, showing billions being hidden systematically in offshore accounts (Harding, 2016) - made possible through endless technicalities and loopholes - should cause outrage. Yet the story feels like it is falling somewhat flat (Sherriff, 2016).

After standing down as Liberal Democrat leader in 2006, the late Charles Kennedy wrote that:

"The danger in all of this is that if sufficient people conclude that there is nothing in the conventional political process for them then they may opt for more simplistic and extreme options on offer. I remain an optimist. But across the mainstream political spectrum there is a candid recognition of the danger."

The era of austerity has not repaired public trust. Scandals keep being unveiled - like the HSBC scandal or the Google Tax Deal - and they never seem to be resolved. Like the banks after the crash, there is some awkward shuffling before business as usual quietly resumes.

All the while, our political and economic systems are toppling out of balance (Garside, 2016). With rising inequality, even homelessness, everyday life has begun to feel precarious for those outside of the highest echelons, as the Conservative government strips back basic social security.

And yet, even though the Conservative Party overseeing all of this seems to be riven with insurmountable contradictions that should pull it apart (D'Ancona, 2016), there doesn't seem to be a definitive alternative ready to step up. Labour, the most obvious opponent, finds itself in much the same situation.

Revelations of hidden billions and loopholes, by journalists, really aught to make the viewing public hopeful. In its own way, it shows civic institutions holding the powerful to account. The trouble is that with each subsequent scandal, and each subsequent failure to follow through and reform on the part of the accused institutions, the public instead becomes more jaded - not least when the scandals are of the media's own making or they are implicated.

Transparency isn't about invasions of privacy. It is about a system with clear rules, without loopholes, based on fair principles. Officials with clear and accountable powers. Public and private bodies with clear and accountable responsibilities. Without these things, without transparency, the credibility of any system will quickly be lost.

Without credibility, people are driven away disaffected - believing that fairness will not be observed or that change is not possible. It calls into question why one individual should fulfil their responsibilities when others do not and remain unaccountable. Social participation, at that point, is reduced to little more than the result of fear and coercion - people coerced into participating in an unfair system to which there is no alternative, for fear of losing what little security they have.

Rebuilding trust, and credibility, begins with transparency. But revelations alone are not enough. They're just a moment in time. These moments must be turned into momentum. Progress is turning these moments into a permanent ongoing process. A process structured around vigilance, fairness and reform.