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.

To be 'progressive' is to be hopeful, but progress won't happen by itself: first, the Left has to reach out and connect

Politics returns to Westminster from recess today to a social atmosphere, in Britain and elsewhere, that has become toxic with the noxious fumes spewed by bitterly divided sectarian factions.

Westminster returns from its latest recess today, to a political mood that has rarely been more toxic. Last night's American Presidential debate captured well the noxious fumes, unconstrained by borders or languages, that have poisoned the political atmosphere (Krugman, 2016).

Ignorance and anger abound, and, what's worse, they're being exploited. In the UK, the Conservative Party Conference set official policy at a new low over the weekend when it proposed forcing companies to make open lists of foreign born workers (BBC, 2016; Syal, 2016).

Instead of abolishing ignorance with education and facts - instead of diffusing anger and bringing calm - instead of reasonableness - anger is being inflamed and ignorance reinforced. Politics has lost a sense of reasonableness.

Harsh rhetoric has driven out decency and moderation. Compromise and consensus seem further away than ever. From France to the United States, the political arena has been reduced to a vague political class circling the wagons to see off opponents stoking ignorance and anger to advance their agendas.

All the while, important matters are rendered impossible to address by the partisan impasse created by opposing outrages flung across wide gulfs of understanding between deeply entrenched factions. Whether Europe or America, people need access to affordable healthcare, affordable housing and affordable energy - and all of it stable and sustainable.

For progressives - whether radical or moderate - decency, reasonableness and respect for a plurality of voices aught to be at the heart of any method that pursues those objectives. So for those who cherish these things, the rise of narrow aggressive sectarianism has made politics in 2016 difficult to navigate and hard to bear.

But the only way is forward, and the only way forward is to reach out. At the Compass Progressive Alliance event, journalist John Harris spoke with passion about the people in the abandoned North who voted for Brexit. He said that:

"These are places characterised by fear. Yes, a fear of immigration and the idea that it might make opportunities even more scarce and wages even lower and put more pressure on already way overstretched services. But underlying this all is a very, very cold, frightening really, fear of the future. A fear, when you talk to people, even of tomorrow and next week.

Please, let's not think about the vast majority of the people I've talked about, who voted Leave, as stupid or deluded or bigoted and hateful... If you haven't got a progressive politics which speaks to places which embody the inequality we all fight against, its not worthy of the name."

Before progressives can reach out, they need to understand what it is that they themselves want, and why - and they need to understand what that will mean for the lives and livelihoods of the least well off. And if these two understandings cannot be completely reconciled, work has to begin on a meaningful compromise, on an inclusive next step.

To be progressive is to be hopeful - to believe in human progress, to believe that all people are capable of self-improvement. But it won't occur on its own. It requires defeating neglect with care & listening, ignorance with education & encouragement, despair with hope & opportunity. The norm is adversarial politics that divides to rule. The progressive alternative has to reach for something better.

Theresa May in Birmingham to set out her Conservative & Unionist agenda

Theresa May is setting out her agenda at the Conservative Party Conference at The ICC in Birmingham, city where her Unionist hero Joseph Chamberlain made his name. Image: ICC Birmingham by Bob Hall (License) (Cropped)

This weekend's Conservative Party conference in Birmingham became Theresa May's first attempt to set out a distinct policy platform. A chance to define her own approach to being head of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, separate from that of the Cameron Government that she inherited.

At the conference some major policies positions were announcement, including setting of a date for the triggering of Article 50, that begins the two-year long process of the UK exiting the EU - for which the government's negotiating position was leaked - and the prioritising, by the Chancellor Phillip Hammond, of spending on housing over the budget deficit.

These policies together produce an image of Britain as the new Prime Minister wishes to see it. But before the larger picture can be assembled, let's look at the pieces themselves.

First, there is the Government's position on Article 50 negotiations. The main thrust of the official announcement was only to establish that the two-year Brexit process will be triggered by the end of March 2017 and that the government was set upon the course to make the UK no longer be part of a supranational institution (BBC, 2016).

From the Prime Minister's own statements, it was clear that she intended to pursue particular priorities, getting UK out of European Court of Justice jurisdiction and establishing new migration controls, that made Britain's continued membership of the Single Market no longer a red line in negotiations (Kuenssberg, 2016) - a huge deviation from the position of the Cameron Ministry and the Conservative Manifesto.

Second, but by no means of less importance, is the decision by the Chancellor to give priority to infrastructure spending over paying down the deficit (BBC, 2016{2}). Few shifts could more dramatically demonstrate that the Cameron-Osborne era is over than to decrease the priority of tackling the deficit, which has been held over all government spending decisions for six years.

Compared to the leanness of Chancellor Osborne's approach, the dropping of the 2019-2020 target for eliminating the deficit and now a plan to invest in the UK's housing and transport, and even new borrowing to do so, is a big leap. Chancellor Hammond has called the shift a pragmatic response to new circumstances (BBC, 2016{3}) - part of the more mundane, pragmatic attitude that has replaced the 'flash' of the Cameron-Osborne era (Kuenssberg, 2016).

Yet despite what the Chancellor says, expert opinion has for years now (Elliott, 2016) called on Osborne to change tack and reject austerity as damaging to economic prospects in the UK. For Labour, who have spent six years being crucified for its pro-spending attitude its hard to say whether they will feel vindicated or bitter at the change of direction in the Conservative Party.

So what kind of picture do these pieces make when assembled? What do these key policies add up to?

Earlier speeches from Theresa May's leadership mentioned her admiration for Joseph Chamberlain and expressed an intention to restore the place of Unionism in the Conservative & Unionist Party. Chamberlain's two most famous projects were to lead, as Mayor, the rebuilding and reordering of Birmingham and, as an MP, to lead the opposition to free trade and champion trade tariffs between the British Empire and the rest of the world.

Chamberlain's attitude made an us and them of the English-speaking British Empire and the rest of the world, putting 'British' priorities first. While the barriers he put up around Britain served to subsidise and protect domestic business, they did so mainly by hurting the poorest - as the Liberals of the day pointed out with cold facts (Marr, 2009). In its day Chamberlain's aggressively nationalist & imperial vision was ultimately defeated by the Liberal Party of Asquith, Lloyd George and Churchill.

That sense of national unity, in distinction between a British way and everyone else, seems present in May's vision - less individual and competitive than Cameron's, more social and corporate. So inspired by Chamberlain does Theresa May's own platform seem, that announcing her positions at a party conference in Birmingham seems not to be a coincidence but rather a purposeful statement. A symbol of the increased prominence of Unionism within the Conservative brand.

In her pursuing her independently British path, some sort of Chamberlain-esque increase in the will to use the proceeds to fund pragmatic interventions that improve the state in which workers live would be appreciated - especially compared to the austere whittling of front line services and civic spaces of her predecessors.

Yet May's own scepticism of 'supranational' institutions risks putting Britain behind a new set of barriers, with many of the same problems as those erected by her hero. Whatever her Government's slogan proclaims - "A Country That Works For Everyone" - Unionism, by its very nature, buys into the idea of exclusivity. The new Prime Minister will have to go a long way to convince progressives that those outside of the highest echelons will ultimately benefit from, and share in, the spoils of this British corporation.