On the afternoon of November 19 1863 Lincoln gave a speech. Apparently it was only 271 words long, short and pithy. One quote from it has always stood out to me “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. People will often use this as a description of democracy, but I think it is much more powerful. It is an aspiration, an ideal, and an ideal that we are unlikely to ever achieve. It is a guide along the path to good government. And it is a good tool to measure how we are governed.
Some time ago I visited China as a guest of the government. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I had a friendly face discuss my political views. I remember discussing Chairman Mau. I think I surprised my host when I compared him to Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell (back in the days when Britain was a republic). Both were dictators, and both (in my view) moved their countries along the path toward good government.
I have often said that a major error in Iraq and Afghanistan was the attempt to install a touchy feely Westernised version of democracy. That was not where they were on the path to good government.
Sometimes government FOR the people competes with government BY the people.
I hear many people talk about how we can improve electoral systems by ideas like proportional representation. I view many of them with suspicion, since they all tend to empower political parties – and we risk ending with government for the political party rather than for the people.
So where are we today in the UK? What does partygate tell us. Well if you measure it against the Lincoln criteria pretty much nothing. It is certainly an issue about personal behaviour, but if I can accept Cromwell as a dictator as a way forward I can certainly ignore internal rule breaking. What I use as my judge is whether the government are working for the benefit of the people – all the people.
To me a lot more telling is the energy “crisis” which sees poor people struggling to pay bills while rich energy companies are forced to make massive profits (that was the essence of a recent news report – those poor energy companies had no choice but to make the profits because of the market structure).
I have a lot of problems with the House of Lords. I think when Jamie Lee Curtiss (the actor) attended the House it really brought home how dumb the system was that allowed people living all over the world to decide our laws simply based on their parentage. Even after the reform there are major issues. There are 92 heredity peers, of which 75 are allocated to political parties – 42 conservative, 2 labour, 3 lib-dem, 28 others. In other words the political heredity peers are permanently heavily skewed by political party. At the same time I get the impression that the House of Lords currently does a good job of government for the people, certainly better than the house of commons. So yes, I want reform to see more government BY the people, but not at the expense of government FOR the people.
And that brings me on to today. The jubilee. The principle of somebody being a leader of a country because God ordained them through birth does not sit right with me. If we look back less than 100 years we can see examples of where the monarch in the UK exerted power. They ruled the country and instructed government, possibly not always in the best interest FOR the people (to put it mildly). Our current queen has been different. The more I see of her actions the more I get convinced that she governs FOR the people more than our elected representatives. And there I am conflicted. But I choose to place government FOR the people above government BY the people. And that means as somebody that would prefer a republic can easily say today “God save this Queen”, because I really really don’t want to have a republic led by ANY of our current politicians.