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.

May's Brexit: An unnecessary conflict between Executive and Parliamentary authority in Britain

At every turn, Theresa May has antagonised Parliament and picked fights unnecessary fights.

Today Theresa May has her authority in the Commons put to the test. So far as Prime Minister she has drawn some very stark lines, creating some poorly considered battles and today's vote seems amongst the least necessary.

The PM made her Brexit Bill intentions pretty clear. She wanted a simple bill, passed quickly. No flourishes, just a straight forward rubber stamping from Parliament to authorise her to trigger the UK's biggest constitutional change in lifetimes.

Considering how May ignored and excluded Parliament rather than engaging from the beginning, the rubber stamp should never have seemed likely to come easily. In fact her determination to keep this to executive authority alone has been almost obsessive.

From the beginning, May has tried to portray the referendum as giving her a personal mandate to wield reserve powers - despite the referendum never being a legally binding vote, whether or not you accept its result as a guide for future policy. That is particularly astounding When you consider that May is trying to change the constitution by executive power alone.

When this position, of cutting Parliament out of the process, was challenged, May's Government went to court - ostensibly to legally exclude Parliament. When the judges faced harassment and media attacks, the response from May's Cabinet - which should have been standing up for judicial independence - was at first absent and then poor.

Then, the Lords sought, in the form of amendments to the court-ordered Brexit Bill, to guarantee the UK's commitment to protecting EU citizens currently resident in the UK and to ensure that the Commons plays a definite role in ratifying any Brexit deal. The PM's response was almost ludicrous.

First she took to the press to virtually order the Lords to comply with her narrow aims on the bill. May then took the unusual and aggressive step of making herself personally present in the Lords to watch over the debate.

To do so, she sat on the steps of throne, a privilege afforded to her as a member of the Privy Council - the Queen's council of advisors. That knowledge expresses a lot about the nature of the dispute over how Brexit is proceeding: the Prime Minister turning to executive authority and reserve powers and privileges to bully and exclude Parliament.

The most obvious question is: why? Why bother? In her quest to treat the referendum as a personal mandate, May seems determined to undermine every other branch of government. She is picking fights in every direction.

Look at her initial approach to negotiating with the EU. She ignored the EU's position - that negotiations would only start when Article 50 was officially triggered and that the EU member states would negotiate collectively - and set off to try and negotiate with each member directly.

Theresa May seems determined to antagonise everyone and everything around her, drawing lines and making fights out of what should be collaborations. And that speaks volumes about the way the Conservatives are governing Britain.

The State of the North: Conservative plans for devolution only make clear the need for truly accountable federalism

Sheffield, part of Conservative plans for a Northern Powerhouse. Photograph: Sheffield Town Hall by Matthew Black (License) (Cropped)

This week, IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research) held a meeting in Sheffield to look in depth at the Conservative government's ongoing efforts to forge ahead with its 'Northern Powerhouse' project (Sheffield Telegraph, 2015; Cox, Prescott & Jarvis, 2015). Its report, 'The State of the North', lay out four tests that Conservative plans for local devolution have to pass.

The four tests came under the heading of a question, "How will we know whether the ‘northern powerhouse’ is working?" - and set out what the Conservative project must achieve (Cox & Raikes, 2015):

According to the IPPR, it must "generate a better type of economic growth", that brings jobs and higher wages; it must support skill development, particularly for the "very youngest"; it must invest in innovation and infrastructure to support "future success"; and it must "rejuvenate local democracy".

So far however, Conservative plans have been criticised as more about devolving the blame than devolving power (Bailey, 2015). It has been remarked that Conservative proposals hold onto or concentrate further power of decision-making at the centre, while shifting blame for outcomes onto the scapegoats who have to implement plans, on scarce funds, at the local level.

The criticism facing Conservative plans and some of challenges facing the North - highlighted by the substantial divide between North and South in areas like education (Bounds & Tighe, 2015; Dearden, 2015; Allen, 2015) - only make clear the need to embrace true federalism. And that will only the case if the North, the Midlands and the South, along with the nations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, can stand on equal footing with London's Mayoralty.

But it can't just be a case of setting up assemblies. It has to involve a comprehensive reorganisation of regional, city, local, borough, county and unitary council boundaries, as well as the administrative boundaries of essential public services like the NHS or Policing, so power over decision making and funding can be properly devolved to the appropriate level - where it must be transparent and accountable to its constituents.

Such a reorganisation, clearly done, would still leave room for the highest federal level to remain the place for the broadest strategic decision making. A central government could still set the broad scope and aims, direct investment and redirect distribution of resources to where they are needed. Yet clear separation of powers between levels of government could make work at the centre a share in a partnership, rather than dictation from an ivory tower.

Democracy functions best when the decisions made at the ballot box are transparent: when voters know clearly for what it is they are voting, what powers they are handing over, what its limits are and how they can get rid of those power-holders when the need arises.

Corbyn and the Labour Party pass their first big challenge - showing solidarity against the government's trade union bill

Trade Unions led this summer's London Tube Strike over the safety concerns tied up in the extension of services to running 24 hours. Photograph: Tube Strike by Barney Moss (License) (Cropped)

Today saw the second reading of the Conservative government's trade union bill. This was the first debate on the controversial measures, aimed by the government at stopping what they have called 'endless' strike threats. Following a morning on which Jeremy Corbyn's new shadow cabinet had been announced (May, 2015), Labour was in need of an issue on which they could present a united front.

If an opposition, particularly a progressive opposition, has any role at all it is to challenge power and the way it is used. The trade union bill presented the first, very early, opportunity for the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn to do just that. The measures to be debated included an extension - up to two weeks - of the notice required before strikes can be held, allowing employers the use of agency workers to cover striker shifts, and mandatory identification to be worn by picketers with their details to be provided to police (BBC, 2015).

The reading of the bill by minister Sajid Javid met a hostile reception from the beginning, with Caroline Lucas and Dennis Skinner setting the tone. The Conservative position was that their proposed regulations were aimed at stopping a malign minority of trade unionists forcing strike action - damaging to the livelihoods of other workers -  upon the broader general public (BBC, 2015{2}).

Elements of the bill were criticised by influential Conservative backbencher David Davis (Mason, 2015; Casalicchio, 2015). Davis described measures requiring strikers to identity themselves and provide details to police as more suited to Franco's Spain than "Queen Elizabeth II's Britain". Yet during the debate itself, Davis argued that the bill, stripped of its illiberal elements, would tackle one of the side effects of public sector monopoly, that withdrawal of public sector labour means withdrawal of the service - deeply inconveniencing the lives of the wider public.

However, human rights groups have described the bill as a dangerous restriction upon the human and democratic rights of workers that, in particular, makes it 'easier for the Government to be a bad employer' (Ogilvie, 2015). The bill has also been described as a vindictive attack on civil liberties, by Liberal Democrat former business secretary Vince Cable and the General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress Frances O'Grady (Taylor, 2015; Cable & O'Grady, 2015).

Through first the Liberal Party and later the Labour Party, trade unions in the UK have sought better rights and protections for people in the workplace. In the early years that meant a mix of support of parliamentary candidates and organisation of large strikes. Yet over the years - though with some periods of resurgence - time lost to industrial action has dwindled to give way to negotiation and under the restraints of increases in trade union legislation (Bienkov, 2015).

The ability of public sector workers to strike, with an impact on the wider public, is part of the right to strike. As private sector strikes challenge the interests of their employers, in the form of their accumulation of profits from labour, public sector strikes challenge the interests of their employer, the government, in the form of their votes dependent upon public satisfaction. With employers holding an unequal power in being able to withhold employment upon which the lives of workers depend, it is not unfair that workers to also be able to withhold benefits from their employer - in fact it is recognised as a human right (Ewing, 2015).

Whatever the differences between the factions within the Labour Party that Jeremy Corbyn has been elected to lead, opposition to anti-union tactics likened to those of dictators - a poignant example of a disturbing conservative trend of attacking human rights, suspending liberties supported by legal aid or social security, and even naming opposition parties as a risk to national security (Dearden, 2015) - provides an easy point of agreement.

If the role of opposition - and the roots of what it means to be on the Left - is to challenge power, attempts to restrict liberty of peaceful protest and civic dissent should be able to unite the Labour Party. Especially since opposition to the bill has been supported across progressive parties, by Labour, Green and also Liberal Democrat MPs - whose leader Tim Farron said that the bill attacked trade unions who stood up "for workers' rights" and protected "against workplace abuse and bullying" (Farron, 2015).

There is no rule against being constructive in opposition. But a majority government has little need of aid in pursuing its agenda. Corbyn's first day has seen Labour taking a stand, showing some solidarity with the trade union movement - which alone is admittedly a small victory. And yet, it is the small victories and acts of solidarity out of which a larger labour movement is built.

Second jobs for MPs, conflicts of interest and separation of powers

In response to the recent lobbying scandal, Labour took the opportunity on Wednesday, 25th February, to test the government by making a motion in the Commons to ban all Members of Parliament from holding second jobs (BBC, 2015). However, squabbling between the two main parties as to what payments or sources of income are considered a conflict of interest - Labour focussing on consultancies and directorships, the Conservatives on the trade unions - killed the chances of the Labour motion passing.

Under the present rules MPs are allowed to have second jobs, with the majority of those taking advantage being Conservatives - although two of the three highest earners are former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Respect MP, and former Labour MP, George Galloway (Moseley, 2015). Yet, support is low for MPs juggling their time between public and private commitments (Shakespeare, 2015). There are understandable fears of corruption and conflicts of interest.

These problems are exacerbated by the fact that conflicts of interest are virtually built into the Westminster system of government used in the UK. The Prime Minister is also an MP, the Ministers in the Government are MPs, the Speaker is an MP, the members of the committees are also MPs.

In the Westminster system the executive branch - the government, that carries out the business of state - is formed by members of the legislative branch - the parliament where laws are subject to debate and vote. Theoretically this ties the everyday business of governing to the will of the people as embodied by the parliament, in what is known as responsible government.

In the UK, however, this creates a situation where MPs, elected by constituents to represent their interests in debates regarding lawmaking, are caught between various allegiances, ambitions and duties. They are conflicted between the interests of their constituency and their office, whether just an MP or a Minister in the government; the interests of their constituents, their office and their political party, from which stems the opportunity to take office; and between the conflicting duties of the parliament, to make laws, and the government, to administer and enforce them.

Furthermore, the system creates a conflict of interest between Parliament and the Government. The Government cannot govern effectively without the majority support of the Parliament, and yet if majority support is given the role of the Parliament is significantly reduced. These pressures have, over time, changed the Parliament into more of a factional power-base for Government action, than a body of representatives, itself carrying responsibilities on behalf of electors.

With the private and financial interests of MPs placed on top of these conflicts, inherent to the system, Parliament becomes mired in competing interests. The Labour Party's attempt to ban certain additional roles for MPs is just the latest, with previous attempts at restricting various outside political interests including a government-sponsored lobbying law drawing heavy criticism (Mason, 2014).

In other countries, and other systems of government, there have been attempts to avoid the inherent conflict. The separation of powers has been used, by dividing the functions of government into separate branches - typically known as executive, legislative and judicial - to, at once, ensure that the different branches might hold each other to account, and keep separate the different functions that might result in conflicted allegiances.

That idea of separation, used to address the inherent conflict, might also be applicable to our thinking regarding the public and private interests of MPs.

While serving as Members of Parliament, these elected individuals are representatives with functions, responsibilities and duties, which they carry on the electorate's behalf, in the public service. For the carrying out of their role they are compensated, to the amount of £67,000, plus expenses (White, 2015). The aim of paying these elected representatives is to ensure that they were able to devote their full time attentions to the role, and to ensure their independence.

There are understandable and reasonable arguments for a public representative to be grounded in the working realities of the world outside, or to be able to keep themselves in practice in technically complicated professional fields, such medicine or law (Wintour, 2015). Whatever the fears of the emergence of a class of career politicians, it becomes problematic for those representatives to continue to pursue - beyond some limited practices - their own financial interests while in office.

There must be a middle ground, with some room for compromise and compensation for individual service, that maintains the independence of public bodies. However, while there are no straight forward answers, it is clear we need to keep competing interests separate. As we need to remain wary of letting the powers and functions of government merge, to ensure oversight and avoid corruption, we also need to keep the private interests of individual representatives separate from the public interest which they serve.

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References:
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+ Frances Perraudin's 'Straw and Rifkind deny wrongdoing amid 'cash for access' claims'; in The Guardian; 23 February 2015.

+ 'MPs reject Labour's call for a ban on second jobs'; on the BBC; 25 February 2015.

+ Tom Moseley's 'What MPs do as second jobs'; on the BBC; 25 February 2015.

+ Stephan Shakespeare's 'Voters support ban on second jobs for MPs'; from YouGov; 25 February 2015.

+ 'MPs' second jobs: What are the rules?'; on the BBC;

+ Rowena Mason's 'Lobbying bill passes through House of Lords'; in The Guardian; 28 January 2014.

+ 'Lobbying Bill to become law after Lords rebellion falters'; on the BBC; 28 January 2014.

+ Michael White's 'Straw and Rifkind were loose lipped but MP salaries are part of the problem'; in The Guardian; 23 February 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Straw and Rifkind scandal renews questions about MPs' outside interests'; in The Guardian; 23 February 2015.

Labour warns against splitting the Left, but there could a greater danger in not taking a risk for a better future

With the 2015 UK general election looming, the Labour Party has begun its attempt to shore up support amongst its fringe voters. With polls suggesting that it will be a close run thing, the fragmentation of support across the Left is a threat to the Labour methodology.

Labour's approach has long been about claiming control of the establishment and propping up it up, in order to use its power in support of their goals. Those electoral aims, of propping-up and shielding, are fundamentally contradictory. They leave no room for external compromise or co-operation that might challenge the establishment they hope to use and so requires, and demands, comprehensive majority support. As David Marquand (Bogdanor, 1983) put it about Labour theorist Anthony Crosland:

"Crosland took the traditional structure of the British state for granted, and failed to see that the centralist, elitist logic underlying it was incompatible with his own libertarian and egalitarian values."

Yet, even as it demands monolithic solidarity from voters, the party continues to be blatant in its hypocrisy by remaining as twisted by internal intrigue as ever. Former Brownites, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, struggle amongst themselves, with former Blairites, and also with the more socially conservative voices in the party (McElvoy, 2015). They argue as to which populist policy to throw out next, in an attempt to shore up its wavering support (Ratcliffe, 2015), and they argue over what socialist economics really ought to look like:

"In truth, Balls and Miliband do have different visions of what a progressive economy should look like. Miliband has a fundamentally less approving view of the way markets work than many in the Labour centre ground (a whiff of the idealism of an American east coast seminar room is never far off). Balls takes a more pragmatic view that the best way to advance progressive goals is to allow the markets free reign and cream off revenues to use for social gain." (McElvoy, 2015)

In 2010, Labour warned of the risks of a split vote, caused by those who thought of leaving the party to look for brighter alternatives elsewhere. In the run-up to that election, the Liberal Democrats had appeared like a fresh voice, which spoke of an active and hopeful step forward. Labour, in turn, offered only a stable conservation, centred on the establishment - and they lost a lot of voters, though fear succeeded, at least temporarily, in quelling the tide before it became a flood.

Those warnings from the party and from commentators, in the face of a fragmenting political order, have now turned against the Greens. Former Labour minister Peter Hain has called for the party to come up with policy proposals that will allow the party to cover any potential threat to the solidarity of its support that the more radical Green Party might pose (Wintour, 2015).

In the light of the pressures being placed on the Greens, it is unsurprising that a lot has been made of the apparent announcement that its support for a Citizen's Income will not be in its 2015 election manifesto (Riley-Smith, 2015). In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Green MP Caroline Lucas said that:

"The Citizen's Income is not going to be in the 2015 general election manifesto as something to be introduced on May 8th. It is a longer term aspiration; we are still working on it... The Citizen's Income, as I've explained, is not going to be a red line."

Its apparent absence from the Green Party's campaign was revealed over a series of interviews where the policy was heavily criticised with regards to its cost (Findlay, 2015). While Lucas attempted to play down the party's intentions regarding Citizen's Income, other senior Green Party members have reaffirmed their commitment to putting the policy into the 2015 manifesto (Cowburn, 2015).

However, some of those among the Greens, such as MP Caroline Lucas, seem to be responding to the party's election possibilities with pragmatism. They are looking for the party to gain enough seats to take part in a left-wing coalition, and are setting out, ahead of time, where they draw the line for coalition talks (BBC, 2015).

"What we are going to do is to put forward some radical and visionary ideas which this political system needs so badly. What we are also going to do, with a handful of MPs, is to push Labour in particular to be far more progressive."

That means leading with their more modest aims, to give them the best chance of achieving an agreement. It also means learning from Liberal Democrat mistakes and not committing to things ahead of time, which they may not be able to achieve come May.

However, while the Green Party are making compromises to be a progressive force alongside, and not necessarily instead of or opposed to, the Labour Party, Labour continue to be pushed towards their standard, monolithic, pragmatic response: give us your vote unswervingly and we will save people from cuts and inequality.

The SNP too is now on the receiving end of whispered warnings (Rawnsley, 2015). The rise of Scottish separatism, and of the SNP as a left-of-centre alternative, has Labour scrambling to find a response that allows them to protect the establishment they deem so precious to their goals, while wooing back their disaffected supporters.

Labour remain clinging to their hopes of power in a dead system. They hang on to their two-party, us and them, polarised dynamics, and try to squeeze out the rest of the Left, with negative tactics on the one hand, and populist appeals on the other, and warnings of a need to act practically in response to the system's iniquities, even as they fail to press for reform of those same iniquities.

They encourage a resistance to radicalism within the Left, feeding the fear of loss; the fear of losing the ground claimed inch-by-clawed-inch, year-by-painful-year. Those tactics have motivated continued support for Labour, even as they have failed to secure those hard fought victories with constitutional or economic reforms.

Voters continue to point to the dangers of stepping outside of the safe routine for fear that the selfish other might sneak in and conquer. But there is a longer term danger of failing to reach, than in reaching and falling short. While the Left has hidden away in its Labour bastion, it has been suffering a slow creeping loss. The Left allowed the momentum, the initiative, to be taken by conservative and reactionary forces. The Left, in their fear, have succumbed to a slow shifting, slipping, seeping surrender to an agenda set by the Right.

The question is, after 2010 brought a fresh voice against Labour's stable conservatism, will people fall back into Labour's drudging march, or will they keep looking for new hope with the Liberal Democrats, or with the Greens, or the SNP? Or, can Labour finally turn over a new leaf after one hundred years where each radical step has been accompanied by a conservative one: civil liberties with authoritarian policing, public health with privatisation, devolution with centralised control, popular power turned into an obsession with establishment power?

If Labour is truly committed to the best interests of the Left, it has to learn to co-operate. The support for the Greens, SNP and Lib Dems, as left-wing alternatives, represents various kinds of idealist hopes for the future, all of which have been strangled within a political system that the Labour Party has persistently used against these left-wing oppositions to its own agenda.

Labour need to overcome that bad habit and get behind political reform, to reshape politics so that the Left, in all of its wonderful and diversely fragmented forms, can work side by side.

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References:
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+ David Marquand, in Vernon Bogdanor's 'Multi-party politics and the Constitution'; Cambridge University Press, 1983. [Buy Now]

+ Anne McElvoy's 'The clash of two Eds raises the ghost of Labour past'; in The Guardian; 22 February 2015.
+ Rebecca Ratcliffe's 'Would £6,000 tuition fees be a vote winner for Labour?'; in The Guardian; 16 February 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Labour needs to be more radical to counter Green threat, says Peter Hain'; in The Guardian; 22 January 2015.

+ Ben Riley-Smith's 'Greens ditch citizens' income from election manifesto'; in The Telegraph; 2 February 2015.

+ Joseph Finlay's 'What Natalie Should Have Said - How to Fund the Green Party's Citizen's Income Policy'; in The Huffington Post UK; 1 February 2015.

+ Ashley Cowburn's 'Green deputy leaders contradict Caroline Lucas: Citizens’ Income will be in the manifesto'; in The New Statesman; 9 February 2015.

+ 'Green leader Natalie Bennett backtracks on terror groups'; on the BBC; 3 February 2015.

+ Andrew Rawnsley's 'Voting SNP is more likely to hand power to Cameron than to Miliband'; in The Guardian; 22 February 2015.

HSBC scandal shows the disturbing connection between wealth and political influence in the UK

Over the last week there have emerged allegations of massive tax evasion amongst wealthy individuals, facilitated by the international banking concern HSBC (Tran, 2015). The most disturbing elements of the story have been the connections drawn between the bank, those evading tax, and the UK government.

There has been an alleged failure on the part of the treasury to pursue and prosecute, while authorities elsewhere across Europe have co-operated to secure prosecutions and recovery of moneys (Syal & Garside, 2015). There have been extravagant donations from those dodging tax to political parties here in the UK - £5m to the Conservatives, and as much as £2.5m has been connected to Labour (Leigh et al, 2015). The former chair of HSBC, Stephen Green, is even a government minister (Garside et al, 2015).

Prime Minister Cameron has thus far issued the same kinds of denial that he made in relation to the scandal surrounding his former director of communications Andy Coulson, even as Labour have tried to press home the connections between the Conservative Party and the perpetrators of this latest scandal (Watt & Wintour, 2015). Other political figures have even been quick to suggest that light avoidance, though not necessarily outright evasion, is normal in British society (Wintour, 2015).

As with the hacking scandal that brought Rupert Murdoch before a parliamentary inquiry, the extensive connections between wealth and political influence are disturbing. Money-making capitalist enterprises have been allegedly helping the wealthy break the law for a profit, all while both groups are closely connected to UK government ministers and political parties.

We are reminded once again of the need for vigilance. But sometimes even that isn't enough. When powerful institutions are shrouded in secrecy, hidden by their wealth and influence, we need something more. We need greater transparency, in both the public and private sectors, along with comprehensive political reform to ensure that justice and democracy can't undermined for a price.

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References:
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+ Mark Tran's 'The HSBC files: what we know so far'; in The Guardian; 11 February 2015.

+ Rajeev Syal & Juliette Garside's 'HSBC files: tax chief 'confident' civil servants told ministers about data'; in The Guardian; 11 February 2015.

+  David Leigh, James Ball, Juliette Garside & David Pegg's 'HSBC files show Tories raised over £5m from HSBC Swiss account holders'; in The Guardian; 11 February 2015.

+ Juliette Garside, David Leigh, James Ball & David Pegg's 'Ex-HSBC boss Stephen Green: the ethical banker with questions to answer'; in The Guardian; 9 February 2015.

+ Nicholas Watt & Patrick Wintour's 'Ed Miliband attacks 'dodgy' PM for failure to answer HSBC tax questions'; in The Guardian; 11 February 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Lord Fink: tax avoidance is normal in British society'; in The Guardian; 12 February 2015.

Australia's leadership challenge is just the latest embarrassment for the two-party majoritarian system

Last week Australian politics found itself thrown into crisis, as once again the position of Prime Minister was turned into the subject of an internal party squabble. Tony Abbot, PM and Liberal Party leader, has had his leadership challenged following collapsing ratings in the polls (Jabour & Hurst, 2015).

This is just the latest embarrassment for the old two-party system. That system - which revolves around two monolithic groups, with machine politician leaders, using cheap popular appeals and sound bites to build workable majorities, or to struggle over control of them - in the end merely demonstrates its own weakness.

By centralising power around individual figures, the focus is put on the squabbles for control over the establishment. Those squabbles, over often marginal differences, only leads to an increasing detachment from reality that alienates voters and shuts down open political discussions. The disaffection of voters and the narrowing of choice reduces politics to little more than a stagnant and unstable popularity contest.

This is not the first time that Australia has faced this particular kind of crisis (Howden, 2015). Both major parties, Liberal and Labor, have had a number of so called leadership 'spills', where the party leadership is challenged, over the last half decade. The Labor Party suffered through four contests in just four years, as Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd repeatedly clashed between 2010 and 2013 (Phillips, 2012; Pearlman, 2013).

Coming into power on the back of that Labor Party squabbling, the Liberal leader Tony Abbott was elected offering stability (BBC, 2015). And yet, even if Abbott survives this challenge, his time as leader is limited. His rivals are circling and his authority, or popularity, has been undermined (Massola & Kenny; 2015).

In his desperate attempts to ward off those challengers, Abbot has been telling the same old story, warning Australians, and his own party, to be wary of turning leadership into a Game of Thrones (Pearlman, 2015). But it's a tired tale, used to justify centralised and unchallenged leadership. Justifying centrality and authority, not on their own merits, but as a ward and bastion against chaos.

It is the same story in the UK, where a free political choice is suppressed by the two major parties, Conservative and Labour, who cling to power by scaremongering against third parties, warning against split votes, hung parliaments and coalitions (BBC, 2010). These methods are justified as a practical and necessary response to the iniquities of the electoral system, and yet they persist in their refusal to pursue the meaningful electoral reform needed to make politics more representative - all to protect the fragile balance of their system. And so far those methods have worked.

However, the two-party system is fracturing all over the world. The squabbles over power and the suppression of alternatives should, by now, simply act as a reminder that the majoritarian two-party system simply does not offer enough accountability or representation.

These leadership squabbles simply emphasise the detachment from reality suffered at the highest levels of power. In Australia, both Liberals (who in Australia are conservatives in everything but name) and Labor, and in the UK, both Conservatives and Labour, all of the mainstream parties are guilty.

These parties support a system that hands power to one person, who is surrounded by a small group that represents just a fraction of the population, and has been tightly whipped into an ideological line. People are alienated from control over political decisions. Even parliaments and assemblies are regularly cut out of the process.

There is a great danger in structuring the stability of our institutions around any one individual and the power they can muster in support. It has frequently become the means by which an isolated elite make serious and impactful decisions - affecting real people's lives - in ivory towers detached from reality.

We need to find new ways to govern. We need more choice, more representation, and governments that reflect the whole electorate not just the loudest minority.

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References:
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+ Bridie Jabour & Daniel Hurst's 'Australian prime minister Tony Abbott may be deposed after party revolt'; in The Guardian; 6 February 2015.

+ Saffron Howden's 'Australian politics: Why is it so tumultuous?'; on The BBC; 8 February 2015.

+ Liam Phillips' 'Labor leadership challenge - Gillard vs Rudd'; in The Sydney Morning Herald; 27 February 2012.

+ Jonathan Pearlman's 'Julia Gillard defeated by Kevin Rudd in leadership challenge'; in The Telegraph; 26 June 2013.

+ 'Australian PM Tony Abbott 'will fight leadership challenge'; on The BBC; 6 February 2015.

+ James Massola & Mark Kenny's 'Supporters say Malcolm Turnbull will run against Tony Abbott for Liberal Party leader if spill motion succeeds'; The Sydney Morning Herald; 7 February 2015.

+ Jonathan Pearlman's 'Tony Abbott faces 'Games of Thrones' showdown'; in The Telegraph; 8 February 2015.

+ 'Election 2010: Cameron warns over hung parliament'; on The BBC; 17 April 2010.