By proroguing Parliament, the government may be trying to teach the public that liberal democracy is a charade and that playing dirty is how politics must go, writes Jonathan White. He explains how prorogation is a performance of ideas about authority and politics.
What do political leaders hope to achieve by breaking with constitutional rules and conventions? Much of the coverage of Johnson’s moves to prorogue Parliament and of subsequent provocations has focused on the instrumental goals they may serve. Whether as part of a negotiating strategy intended to force the hands of EU partners by showing how little prevents a no-deal Brexit, or as a way to weaken domestic opposition and run down the clock, constitutional transgression can be read as a way to get things done.
But breaking with norms can also be an end in itself. Rather than about achieving specifics, it can be a performance of broader ideas – about the nature and authority of executive power, and about politics itself. In the name of getting a task done, leaders can seek a wider redefinition of themselves and the landscape around them.
Sometimes, political leaders play loose with the constitution as a way of cultivating their credentials as technocrats. Breaking with procedural norms can be a way of aligning with the demands of technical experts and showing willingness to adhere to their recommendations. Governments instituting austerity measures have been a familiar example in contemporary Europe. Picking a fight with parliaments can be a way for executives to show the depth of their commitment to a certain set of policy goals deemed responsible – a demonstration of fidelity, and thus a way to garner recognition from technocratic authorities like the ECB and IMF.
But the British situation is different. The kind of authority pursued by the Johnson government seems less technocratic than charismatic, based on a show of strength and resolve. Taking on Parliament becomes a way to show sovereign capacity, and ideally to show the impotence of one’s adversaries. The word ‘dictator’ has been used a lot in past days, and for good reason. Johnson’s invokes a democratic rationale – challenging parliamentary sovereignty to uphold popular sovereignty – but there is something more arbitrary and voluntarist here too: taking aim at parliamentary procedure not just to champion some notion of the people’s will but to foreground the leadership’s own volition. After all, a change in the opinion polls would probably do little to shift the government’s policy. Unconventional action here is about performing the independence of the executive and its willingness to act.
The response of others in Parliament can be conducive to the effect. Many have been understandably outraged, denouncing the subversion of democracy, but from the government’s perspective this is probably not wholly unwelcome. It has the benefit of making all voices of opposition resemble each other. Differences of principle between parties are set aside, as they find themselves articulating one and the same procedural critique. The transgressive act, by turning opponents into one chorus of unanimous condemnation, makes them look alike. Moreover, it casts them as those wedded to rules and procedures – preoccupations that may also mark them apart from sizeable sections of the wider public.
These potential dividends of rule-breaking and the threat of it go beyond whatever practical goals it can enable. Even if the government’s efforts to pull out all the stops to pursue a preferred form of Brexit are frustrated – even if moves to bypass parliament achieve little in negotiating terms, or indeed do not happen – they can benefit executive power nonetheless. (Indeed, such gestures may be all the more powerful if frustrated, since they are protected from a clash with reality.) One way or another, they can foster a form of charismatic authority useful in a General Election – one that may appeal to many would-be Brexit-Party voters in particular, for whom independence of action and will are arguably the very essence of authority.
Ultimately, these acts and threats of executive exceptionalism seem designed to convey a much wider point too, less about the government of the day than about how our political system functions. With each new affront to constitutional convention, the Tory leadership enacts a model of politics in which the struggle for power is all. It is as though Cummings and co. want to teach the public that liberal democracy is a charade: that notions of the separation of powers, checks on the executive, procedures and standards of conduct in public life are just so much fluff, that playing dirty is how it must go. Brexit becomes the opportunity to promote a disenchanted vision – a way of resetting the public’s expectations, establishing a new normal, resigning and inuring people to things yet to come. With each new transgression, a new lesson is imparted of ‘how things work’, a new set of precedents established. This performative aspect explains why so much that is done seems gratuitous – including the denials of each transgression before its announcing.
The government claims to be engaged in very specific task – Britain’s exit from the European Union. Everything it does has a kind of deniability – the suggestion it is just a temporary measure, a negotiating tactic, just an instrumental means to achieve a particular goal. But arguably Brexit is just the occasion, and the appeal of breaking with norms more intrinsic – a chance to reshape the identity of executive power, and with it our understanding of how politics works.
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Jonathan White (@jonathanpjwhite) is Professor of Politics at the LSE. His latest book, Politics of Last Resort: Governing by Emergency in the European Union, is out with Oxford University Press in December 2019.
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Featured image credit: Pixabay (Public Domain).
Nick, what you are apparently missing is that the vote itself was corrupt, and advisory, and yet, after the vote was in, all those people who promised (in law, as well as in word) it was merely an opinion poll suddenly decided that the result, despite being wafer thin, was absolutely binding, and despite not being the supermajority required for (massive) constitutional change and the removal of rights that have been in place for decades.
There’s also the well trodden path of the lies, cheating, disenfranchisement, overspend, dark money, etc.
The latest thing though? No-one voted for *this* Brexit. Indeed, the facts that have come out were decried as “Project Fear” – and still are! – despite being actual reality, and having happened, in some cases, months ago. The loss of the European Medicines Agency, for example.
Even if you could find that 50% of Leave voters were after a No Deal “chaos Brexit”, burn it all down event? That’s only 26% of the vote. Nothing like what you need to carry a country through what will likely be the most tumultuous event since the last World War. Only, you know, completely self-inflicted.
I don’t think he misses this point at all. If anything he suggests that by proroguing Parliament Johnson (or rather Cummings) was indicating what was to come with an intention to undermine all institutional norms.
With hindsight now following the tragedy of so many unnecessary deaths and impossible expense of Covid, his point is further validated.
That happened on the back of lies which could not be prevented by a Parliament in absentia. The new Government of Cummings is armed with a majority to undermine Parliament. And is attacking and defeating another control on power – the Covil Service. It also has an undisclosed (by a supportive media) manifesto to undermine the Salisbury Convention of the Lords to enable removal of the final control of executive power – The Courts.
We started this Parliamebt with 4 safeguards against Tyranny. We’ll end it with none. If we end it.
Brexit, and its mild fraudulent transgressions, is increasingly just the staging post for a tyrannical assault on British Democracy. The danger is that assault clearly isn’t led by a witless and incapable Prime minister. But by an advisor with a history of Arson.
@atatimelikethis
Totally agree with your comments Nick. When it becomes the norm to ignore a majority decision and seek actively to overturn it, using any means possible, losers consent no longer applies and democracy is dead. Many people who voted Leave in the Referendum had never voted before and after seeing the attempts (in whatever guise) to overturn their decision are unlikely to vote again. Or alternatively, as you suggest, the losers may no longer be willing to accept the result of a General Election, withdraw their losers consent, and use any means possible to thwart it. It works both ways.
Calm down, the article is not really about Brexit. If you re-read the introduction and paragraph 1 they nicely summarise the main thrust of the article. Brexit is simply the current topic that lends itself to the government of the day as a tool for their dirty plans. Whether you voted leave or remain should have nothing to do with whether or not you accept the validity of this article.
And, by the way, a referendum (thankfully a rare event) is generally accepted as an indication of opinion. They are not generally binding on Parliament. With a little bit of thought I am sure that we could all imagine events that would be far more severe assaults on our type of democracy.
I do genuinely find this bizarre. I know this will come probably come across as snide or aggressive, particularly as I’d hazard a guess that we disagree over Brexit, but remainers’ outrage at their opponents attacking democracy is something I honestly find it difficult to get my head around.
You’re literally trying to ignore the result of a referendum. How can you argue that it’s your opponents who want to teach the public that liberal democracy is a charade? There are all sorts of arguments I can imagine making if I wanted to ignore a referendum: about liberal democracy actually being a charade and that being OK, or about the damage caused by enacting the referendum result being so great that the damage to liberal democracy caused by ignoring it is worth it, or about a commitment to peace in Europe being more important than democracy. But I can’t imagine arguing that I want to ignore the result of the referendum, and also that those who want to implement the result, and are prepared to break constitutional conventions to do so, are dangerous anti-democrats. Short of ignoring the result of a general election, and refusing to allow the elected MPs to take their seats, I can’t think of a clearer assault on democracy than ignoring the result of a referendum.
I find myself reaching for pop psychology concepts like projection or cognitive dissonance, but I’m not convinced they’re useful. What am I missing?