Legitimacy, Power and Consent: Governments have the power to make immense changes, but do they always have sufficient consent?

When the UK's Conservative government assumed office, it took upon itself the task of completely altering the country's approach to government. Massive budget cuts followed, with cutbacks to public services to match, including cuts to pensions, welfare and education.

But Tory attempts to change the UK's approach to government have had a profound effect upon more than just policy. It has changed the entire fabric of the debate when it comes to political economics. For every move the Tories have made in government, the Labour Party has been right there in opposition - not to argue against each move, but to argue that they have a better alternative for that same move (BBC, 2013).

These massive changes raise concerns rooted in power and consent. The changes, accomplished despite the fact that the changes in policy and governance have provoked massive protests (Bowcott, 2013), and despite the fact that the Tories only scraped into office as part of a coalition, call into question how the legitimate use of authority is determined by the UK's democratic process.

For any kind of major change to be made, power needs to be concentrated in some kind of executive, delegated to that authority from those over whom that power will be wielded. In a democracy this follows the principle of the consent of the governed. In Britain, the government of the day, the power it is wielding, and the massive changes it is forcing, seems to be in direct contrast to how that power is gained - achieved with just the barest plurality support, scraped from an election with a poor voter turnout.

With so much power available to those who are able to claim victory with such a low level of support, there do not seem to be enough safeguards to ensure that power is wielded with the full consent of the governed.

Part of the problem is the quality of consent received. When any kind of dissatisfaction arises with the way a government is proceeding, it creates a vacuum that the competing factions seek to use to advance their ideological approach. Following an inconclusive election in 2010, the current Conservative government has been accused of taking it as an opportunity for imposing their own ideologically driven changes (Eaton, 2010), rather than what is really necessary or for what they have a mandate.

In those conditions - in light of a crisis or shift in support - it can be hard to determine what exactly the electorate's new representatives have been nominated to achieve. This Conservative government has come to power in just such a situation, after thirteen years of Labour government.

And once a faction has succeeded in gathering sufficient support, that government then controls massive powers, with little restriction from a weak parliament, and with little requirement placed upon them to seek further consent. To an extent, coalition government arguably reigns in the worst excesses of a partisan governance, but that is a weak alternative to proper accountability before a chamber of representatives or the people themselves directly.

The political views of the people are, and have been for a long time, spread across a wide range of the political spectrum in Britain - even when support has coalesced around just two parties (Bogdanor, 1983). This, however, simply has not been reflected in the country's political system. Too much control is concentrated, unrestricted, with too little consent, into the hands of the victor; and with only the barest plurality support, drawn from elections with poor turnouts, considered a mandate for drastic change.

For a democracy, in particular, the principle of consent seems to be held in very low esteem. There is certainly an important issue to be settled in terms of the best course to be followed - something in which debate, scrutiny and evidence need to play a greater part. But all of that is for nothing without a better standard of consent - because without it, liberty will always be threatened by policies imposed seemingly without or against the will of the people.

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References:
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+ BBC's 'Ed Balls: Labour would axe wealthy pensioners' fuel cash'; 3 June 2013.

+ Owen Bowcott's 'Lawyers protest outside parliament against legal aid cuts'; in The Guardian; 22 May 2013.
- More reports following cuts protests:
BBC's 'Anti-cuts march: Tens of thousands at London protest'; 27 March 2011.
2010 UK student protests on Wikipedia.

+ George Eaton's 'Cameron is wrong: the spending cuts are ideological'; in New Statesman; 31 December 2010.

+ Vernon Bogdanor's 'Multi-Party Politics and the Constitution'; Cambridge University Press, 1983.

The Liberal Dilemma: Do moderate reformers need to play for better publicity?

The hype surrounding the 'success' of UKIP at the last UK local elections ignored an interesting fact: that the Green Party secured a similar number of seats. Despite this, and the fact that they hold a seat in parliament whereas UKIP don't, the Greens were largely ignored (Farage, 2013).

This isn't a new trend. Moderate groups have often struggle for visibility and support, caught between more aggressive and more vocal opponents. However, groups such as the old UK Liberal Party show that even when reduced to a political irrelevance, moderates still maintain persistent support. The question is whether it is possible to turn support into polling success, without playing the game of publicity grabbing, sensationalism, and emotive appeals to identity.

On the one hand, a strong assertion can be made for the argument that says moderates do not do enough to promote themselves. The media thrives by gaining the eyes and ears of their audience, and those who aren't doing the exciting or the odd are often simply ignored.

This is particularly relevant when you compare the two parties currently competing to become Britain's newest third party. UKIP has, on paper, little to match the Green Party. Whereas UKIP struggles to compose policies and select candidates (Hyde, 2013), the Greens are well organised, with a federal party co-ordinated right across Europe, with solid representation as broadly across the UK as UKIP. Despite these serious efforts they receive little acknowledgement for it.

The difference, the effective difference, between the two appears to be headlines. UKIP causes controversy, breeds conflict, gives rise to sensationalism, and brings headlines. History has a habit of being revised in much the same way.

The women's suffrage movement in Britain was a long drawn out process of negotiation and protest, in the later stages of which militant groups emerged - born from those who had grown frustrated with the lack of progress. The broader, peaceful, and better supported suffragists of Millicent Fawcett are often forgotten however, obscured by the fame of those militant suffragettes, like Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Davison.

And the time of revolutionary terror in France is for what the Jacobins are remembered. Yet a closer look reveals the Jacobin Club to have been home to several strains of republicanism, of which the Montagnards of Maximilien Robespierre - the proponents of the terror - were but one loose faction. They themselves formed in opposition to the Girondins, whose number included Madame Roland and Thomas Paine, who supported a more moderate revolution, to establish a constitutional republic. Their opposition to the terror is now obscure as well, reduced to a bit part in the sensationalised story of the murder of the Montagnard Marat, stabbed in his bath by the Girondin Charlotte Corday.

It seems that the most controversial problem facing moderates is that there is an apparent connection between a lack of publicity and the lack of aggressive or emotive campaigning. By taking a higher road you face the peril that comes with not playing those games - of becoming an irrelevance. Those perils are weighed against the effectiveness of fighting power with power, using violent or aggressive tactics, or using the politics of identity. While those kinds of tactics have rarely helped movements achieve their social goals, they have usually succeeded in raising awareness of them.

When you trust people to do their own research and come to their own opinions and conclusions, you risk being bitten by those who don't, or who adopt the views popularised in the media. It is also a much longer road. But the old Liberal Party showed that there will always be demand for moderate groups, and the Liberal Democrats managed to unite small liberal and social democratic parties into a governing party. But that journey took a long time, and required the building of trust on the personal, and local level, and a good reputation, something that can be shattered all too easily.

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references:
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+ Zoe Williams' 'Nigel Farage gives good telly, so Ukip trumps the Greens'; in The Guardian; 9 May 2013.

+ Marina Hyde's '"Which curry house is open late?": Nigel Farage and Marina Hyde go for a pint'; in The Guardian; 20 July 2013.

Disobedience: Refusal is the strongest defence against corrupt authority and its control

When allegations of corruption are made against people in positions of power, such as those levelled against Spanish Prime Minister Mr Mariano Rajoy earlier this year (Tremlett, 2013), it can generate enough fear and anger to get people out onto the streets in protest. However outright corruption, such as that which Mr Rajoy was accused, is not all that can cause that kind of anger or fear.

Lobbying, in particular by wealthy interests seeking the support of those in power - and often through declared and legal financial contributions - can also have an unseemly edge. At the UK's Prime Minister's Questions, opposition leader Mr Ed Miliband accused the Prime Minister Mr Cameron of being in the pocket of just such a lobbying interest. Mr Miliband pointed out that hedge funds that had received £145m in tax cuts from the Conservative Government, had also made £25m worth of contributions to that party (Wintour, 2013).

When powerful organisations with vested interests are able to work in concert, even if such collaboration is done legally, and above board, there still remains a stench of impropriety, of exploitation. And even the perception of corruption is enough to cause fear, since powerful interests with power concentrated in their hands pose a real threat to even the most basic of rights. The might and influence of such a confederation allows them to deflect questions, suppress debate and prevent change. In the face of such a torrent of might, how can people, and their rights, prevail?

In Agrarian Justice, Thomas Paine stressed that:

'Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before.'

Paine argued that those who took advantage of the system of private property still owed something back to the community, who were exploited and dispossessed by the existence of the institution. While his comments here were aimed at the general construction of modern western society, which from its root and beginning was built around a foundation of property, the point extends beyond its roots to many other forms of corruption, impropriety and exploitation. People oppose the collusion and corruption of the powerful, because it is an abdication of civil responsibility - by purpose or neglect, it threatens people's rights.

Throughout history vested interests have gathered power about themselves, using their wealth and influence to form powerful confederations that allow them to strip away the encumbrances upon them that are the rights of others, and to rule in their own favour. Each time it has sparked not just protests but revolutions (The Economist, 2013). But those mass movements take a big risk when they decide to oppose them by pitting power against power.

In order to oppose them, the people put together their own powerful movements. Yet, when they do, they only build more power structures, new potentially unchecked leaders and new vested interests. The risk is that, by relying on popular might to defeat institutional might, you tear down one power structure just to replace it with another.

This is where civil disobedience offers guidance to mass protest. It opposes power, not with a power of its own, but with refusal. The true power of concerted action by vested interests is in its monopoly on the use of force - the ability to compel, control or coerce others through might of arms or fear. Rather than meet fear or force head-to-head with the might of a popular movement, civil disobedience argues that the fundamental answer to attempts at control and tyranny must be the refusal to co-operate.

The difficulty comes in facing the fear wrought by those who wish to impose their views, their systems, their control, by way of punishments - like fines or imprisonment - or through denial of rights and services. Facing those kinds of threats calmly, without anger or using violence, takes phenomenal courage. But in such action is the most basic defence against despotism. Tyrannous attempts to control others depend upon tyrants successfully getting people to play their game by their rules - but without the compliance of the people, tyranny is for naught.

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References:
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+ Giles Tremlett's 'Spanish prime minister Rajoy accused of hiding secret income'; in The Guardian; 31 January 2013.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Ed Miliband challenges David Cameron on pay rise and party funding'; in The Guardian; 10 July 2013.

+ Thomas Paine's 'Agrarian Justice'; 1795.

+ The Economist's 'The march of protest'; 29th June 2013.