Parliamentary Cretinism

According to Engels, parliamentary cretinism "is an incurable disease, an ailment whose unfortunate victims are permeated by the lofty conviction that the whole world, its history and its future are directed and determined by a majority of votes of just that very representative institution that has the honour of having them in the capacity of its members". In his writings on fascism in Austria, old Trotters adds "“parliamentary cretinism” is not an insult but the characteristic of a political system which substitutes for social reality, juridical and moral constructions, a ritual of decorative phrases." Accurate observations that remain the case, but I think it's perhaps time it was deployed as an insult, because nothing else describes the behaviour of a score or so MPs who cringed beneath Elizabeth Tower at the Palace of Westminster to hear the bongs for the final time ... for four years.

Stephen Pound shed a tear as what he dubbed the chimes of freedom fell silent. There has been talk of the scandal of switching off the "democracy lamp", and even the Prime Minister broke her August silence to say it wasn't right the bell should remain silent for a lengthy period. Chill your beans Theresa, it will still ring in the New Year.

Thankfully most MPs had the sense to stay away from the small crowd, but that some turned out says a great deal about the awfulness of Parliament as an institution. Laura Pidcock had it right in her maiden speech when she attacked the pomp and archaic rituals as a means of impressing on working class representatives that high office is no place for them. For people on the outside looking in, for the great many of them, they see something profoundly stuffy, weird, and alienating. Perhaps only Britain could make its sovereign democratic body so inaccessible and off putting. It is anti-democratic.

What is worse than Parliamentary procedure and its petty ritual are those parliamentarians who lap it up. They don't so much as accept it so they can get on with the jobs they were elected to do but embrace it. Jacob Rees-Mogg typifies this. Somehow, this vicious atavist has largely swarthed his cruel politics of toffee nosed class war in the ha ha of Commons buffoonery. An intervention liberally dribbled in Latin here, an obscure point of order there, in many ways Mogg personifies Westminster more than any politician. He is ineffably polite and condescending, clueless and ill at ease with the 21st century, bumbling and cold in a way that invites warmth and affection, he is the archaic and arcane epitome of parliamentary cretinism. The Commons is his natural environment. Its traditions speak to gentlemen of a certain era and a certain class to remind them, and provide a safe space for the reliving of their childhoods as private boarders. As such, you would be hard pressed to find a MP from similar backgrounds who hasn't taken to the House. Yet you can understand it, almost emphathise with it. They're creatures of their class, Parliament is an institution that upholds their class rule, and so they're going to find something special, something to treasure in what is their Westminster.

Less so those like blubbering Stephen Pound, who come from less vaulted backgrounds but are more vociferous in their love of Parliamentary culture. It's like they have internalised the inferiority Laura called out, and try and compensate for it by grabbing and championing convention and procedure. Sometimes this is for self-serving reasons, but more often than not it is to convince themselves they are welcome and they feel at home among the bourgeois pageantry and tradition. In this imagination, somehow the bowing and the scraping, the snuff box, and the chamber deliberately (and hilariously!) built too small to seat all MPs represents the pinnacle of democratic functioning. It's these kind of people who will be most active in defending tradition, and clinging to constitutional politics as the only way change can be achieved. Their ease with the way of doing things are status markers - they have made it and they've passed beyond the mortal realm into exalted company. This in mind as soon as I'd heard tell of MPs gathering to hear the bongs out, I knew it was going to be fronted up by a Labour back bencher.

None of this is fit for the very limited form of democracy of representative institutions, let alone anything else. Democratic politics should be welcoming and encouraging and its operations straightforward and transparent. Monday's little spectacle on the lawn reminds us that Westminster still has a very long way to go.