If the duty of the Government is to govern, as Mr Wilson has once again proclaimed, what’s left for backbench MPs? Are they doomed to be no more than lobby fodder, dutifully voting for the Government’s measures? The question is not a new one. The House of Commons lost the power to initiate legislation or to control Government policy a long time ago. It appears we are in the middle of a constitutional revolution the meaning of which we can as yet hardly grasp.
The revolution, to over-simplify, involves a move from parliamentary towards presidential government. At general elections the electorate votes not for the local MP but for his party – and, increasingly, for the man they want to head the next Government. Once elected, the real check on a Government is fear of losing the next election, not of losing a House of Commons vote.
Consequently, the real check on a Prime Minister is his personal standing with voters, rather than the pressure exerted on him by his Cabinet colleagues and parliamentary supporters (though this matters). If his public support remains high, then his authority is virtually unchallengeable.
Key quote
“It is up to newspapers to disregard anything that I may say. They often do.”
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Talking point
Liverpool 8 is a once-fashionable Georgian district now scrawled all over with graffiti, scarred with unhealed bomb sites, dominated by the stranded Neo-Gothic whale of an Anglican cathedral: a multi-racial slum waiting in raddled beauty for the planners’ bulldozers. It houses, amongst other ethnic communities, a substantial number of native Bohemians and is a famous refuge for the Beat circuit during the winter months.
George Melly on The Liverpool Scene poetry collection
