Parliament’s Failure
Amidst all the “shock horror” of recent days, the convolutions of law and constitution, and the parliamentary confusion and wrangling, there is one undeniable fact arising from the Brexit saga that should really cause concern.
A full three years after the British people voted to leave the EU, a Parliament stuffed full of MPs elected on the promise that they would “respect the result” of the referendum has still failed to deliver on that promise.
Instead, those MPs have contrived to frustrate the will of the people. They have, by implicitly working with EU leaders, made sure that an acceptable exit “deal” is not available, and have then gone further by placing obstacles in the way of departing without a deal – and all this, presumably, in the hope that Brexit can be forestalled and ultimately negated.
These manoeuvrings may have “succeeded” in stymieing Brexit so far, and those responsible may hope to avoid any recriminations on the part of that majority who looked to Parliament to act according to their wishes and now feel betrayed. But they will be disappointed; the long-term damage to the principle of representative democracy is incalculable.
Even in terms of the immediate objectives of those who have conjured up these delaying tactics, the desired outcome looks likely to prove elusive. Those whose response to defeat for their viewpoint in the referendum has been a rearguard action using these guerrilla tactics do not seem to realise that the difficulties they have helped to engineer in the way of the UK leaving the EU make the eventual departure even more certain.
The ordinary British voter is unlikely to conclude, in the light of the parliamentary difficulties, that Brexit should be abandoned. They are far more likely to see those difficulties as further evidence that EU membership is a burden and constraint that must be removed.
Having decided, after 40 years of membership, that it was a bad idea that had turned out badly, they will see continued EU intransigence over the process of departure as further evidence that – if even leaving cannot be achieved without seeking permission – the sooner we remove the shackles the better.
And it will not have escaped their notice that those who are responsible for delaying Brexit today are the very same people who took us into the whole sorry shambles in the first place. All those bien pensants, those who “know best”, are precisely those who assured us in the 1960s and 1970s that joining the Common Market would usher in a new era of prosperity and national success.
Those of us who warned at the time that the consequences of membership would be anything but beneficial have, sadly, been proved right. There has been no economic revival – only perennial trade deficits and a decimated British manufacturing industry. Despite the promise that there was no intention to create a European super-state, we found ourselves subject to European laws, economic policies and jurisdiction, with no ability to decide our own destiny or even to control our own borders.
When we have to go cap in hand just for the privilege of leaving, the British people are not likely to change their minds about the acceptability of government from Brussels. They are not likely to look kindly on those who misled them in the first place about the nature of the arrangement, and who are now compounding that misjudgment by colluding with the EU in order to stop us from leaving.
Even if the people were to be required, on the ground that they got it wrong the first time, to go through the process again, the machinations which have been resorted to in order to keep us in the EU are unlikely to induce them to change their minds – quite the reverse.
What many voters now want most is to be shot of the whole sorry business, and as quickly as possible. We will then, they feel, be free for the first time in decades to seek our own salvation. They will realise that the dire warnings about our future outside the EU look very unconvincing when one grasps that that is exactly where the whole of the rest of the world has always been and continues to be, and that it doesn’t seem to have done them much harm.
The guerrilla warfare faced by Brexiteers may have some success as a diversionary and delaying tactic, but it is, in other words, most unlikely to change the eventual outcome.
Bryan Gould
26 September 2019
The Value of Balance in News Treatment by Our Media
I was born in Hawera, and grew up and went to primary school in the small Taranaki town. Hawera was a miracle; it had a small population and a short history, but it sported many of the facilities and attributes of a much larger and longer-established town.
Among those was an excellent daily newspaper which provided regular coverage of International, as well as local, news. I grew up, like many Kiwis, relying on my daily paper for what I thought was an impartial account of what was happening in the world. It simply did not occur to me that what I read in the paper was anything other than the plain and unadorned fact.
It was only when, in my early 20s, I arrived in the UK that I discovered that newspapers did not all tell the same story but, rather, could be defined by the particular stance they took on politics and everything else.
The saving grace in the UK for this state of affairs is that the great national newspapers, London-based on the whole but with nation-wide circulations, did not hide their political affiliations. As a result, readers knew what they were getting when they purchased their newspapers. If you had your own well-defined politics, you would buy a paper that reflected your preferences.
The situation in New Zealand is a little different. We do not have the equivalent of the British national papers; instead, each major city has its own paper to which readers turn for their daily news.
Those readers do not generally have a choice of paper and therefore have no ability to choose a paper that suits their own views. They must therefore take what they are given, and they are implicitly invited to accept that what they read is the unvarnished and impartial truth.
This imposes on each of those papers a responsibility to present a balanced view of what is happening. If they do not, they fail to meet one of the most important duties of a free press.
That balance is not achieved merely through allowing occasional access to contributors whose views are at variance with those of the paper. The balance that matters is in the selection of the stories that are reported and in the prominence and frequency with which they are treated.
Any disturbance of that desirable degree of balance can be easily recognised. A newspaper that constantly rehearses stories that disadvantage one side of an argument – or of the political divide – rather than another, or that treats what is plainly partisan comment as headline news, is manifestly failing its readers and leaves them with no other option than to find their news from a different source – which usually means the broadcast media.
But the damage done to the proper functioning of democracy by such behaviour is not so easily undone. In a small country like New Zealand, the broadcast media are often in the same ownership as the newspaper and – even when that is not the case – will all too often take their lead as to what is news from the headlines in the major newspapers. And those city-based newspapers will themselves often have a common ownership and will therefore reflect a similar view as to what is newsworthy, thereby again limiting the possibilities of a balanced approach to news stories.
As we can see in various countries around the world, the threats to impartial and reliable news reporting grow day by day. The issue in many countries is not just whether the press is free or not, but, rather, how well and responsibly it uses that freedom.
So, what is the interested reader and seeker of news to do? If the news they seek is constantly presented by their usual paper in a partisan manner, the only remedy is to stop buying and reading that paper. But that is no remedy, since it would mean, for the individual concerned, further restricting the available sources of news and the range of views to be found in them.
In the end, the price of deliberately partisan news reporting is paid by us, the readers, and by our democratic system. Responsible newspaper owners and editors should take note.
Bryan Gould
23 September 2019
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What the All Blacks Mean to Us
The All Blacks have been, for more than a century, arguably the most successful International sports team in the world. But they are more than that; even for those Kiwis who are immune to the charms of rugby (and there are more than a few), the All Blacks are ambassadors for New Zealand and a symbol of how a small country can hold its own on the world stage.
I have grown up, like most Kiwis of my age or younger, with an intense interest in how the All Blacks fare, especially against their main rivals. The All Blacks’ opening match against South Africa in the World Cup will take place before this article appears in print; as I write, I can only hope that they will win or at the very least acquit themselves well.
When I was a boy, it was the Welsh who were the main challengers for the All Blacks’ crown. When the two teams met in 1953, as part of what was one of the then regular major tours of the UK by visiting teams, the Welsh enjoyed a winning record over the All Blacks, and they enhanced that record by winning again on this occasion. I had been allowed to get up in the middle of the night to listen to Winston McCarthy’s commentary on the match. I was distraught at the result.
It was the last time Wales tasted victory over the All Blacks. Only Welsh octogenarians are old enough to have been alive at that moment and to have understood what had happened on that day. For most Welshmen, victory over the All Blacks is the stuff of fable.
By the time a Rhodes Scholarship took me to the UK, the All Black legend had grown apace. It is my proud claim that throughout the 32 years I spent in the UK, pursuing – for most of the time – a political career, I never wavered in my support for the All Blacks. I remember being grilled by David Frost on one occasion; the famous interviewer insisted, on the eve of a rugby test between England and the All Blacks, on knowing which team I would support.
I evaded the question for a while but was eventually compelled to admit on British national television that, having grown up in New Zealand, I had no choice but to support the All Blacks, even when they were playing the national team of the country of which I had aspirations to be Prime Minister.
The All Blacks deserve that kind of loyalty and have done more than enough to repay it. They embody so much of what it means to be a New Zealander. They play hard and they play fair. They respect their opponents but they play with an indomitable will to win, and their levels of skill and commitment mean that they usually do.
An All Black team is both an exemplar and a beneficiary of the bicultural and multicultural texture of our national life. It demonstrates many of the qualities that are essential to success in the wider aspects of life more generally – determination, effort, teamwork, camaraderie and courage. The All Blacks’ success has played a huge part in developing, in the early days especially, our sense of nationhood and the image we have enjoyed internationally.
It would be easy to conclude this rehearsal of what the All Blacks have meant to so many New Zealanders without mentioning one of the most important of the gifts they have brought us. That gift is the pleasure of watching them play – and, most of the time, watching them win. It is the pleasure of seeing something inherently difficult being done very well – and of seeing, in a competitive environment, the side one supports and identifies with doing well and prevailing.
As for the South African match, and the ones to follow, fingers crossed! My money is on the All Blacks.
Bryan Gould
17 September 2019
Parliament and the Executive
The Brexit issue has certainly brought with it a series of apparently difficult constitutional issues, many of them concerning the respective roles of the executive and parliament. Most of them arise because of the unwillingness of MPs, despite their professions to the contrary, to be bound by a constitutional rarity – a referendum – and as a consequence their determination to use parliament to stand in the way of the executive’s commitment to give effect to the outcome of that referendum.
No one can be surprised, therefore, that the issue is increasingly seen by the general public as a battle between the popular will, as manifested in the referendum result, and their elected representatives in parliament. That perception has been greatly helped by the Speaker, who seems determined to go out in a blaze of glory, and by his efforts to portray himself as the defender of parliament’s rights and therefore of democracy.
The prorogation of parliament has of course been the issue that has attracted most attention and is most easily characterised as an assault on constitutional convention, despite the fact that parliament is, as a matter of course, always prorogued at this time of year. But of equal, if not greater, novelty and significance is another, and related, development.
If there has been one step above all others that has “stymied” the government, it has been the passage of legislation that “instructs” the Prime Minister to seek an extension of the Brexit departure date from the EU. If there is any measure in the Brexit saga that breaks new constitutional ground it is this Act of Parliament.
Parliament is of course able to pass any legislation it likes, but to use legislation to instruct a particular member of the executive to take a particular step is to see the legislature straying well and truly beyond its usual remit and into the realm of the executive. An Act of Parliament is a measure that almost always has a general application to at least a group, if not all, of the population as a whole, and its effect is usually to change the law for those affected.
To assume the role of an executive body and to prescribe a particular executive act is at the very least a departure from the norm. It represents the interjection of parliament into the usual relationship between the executive and the electorate – one in which the elected government seeks to act on its undertakings to those who voted it into office.
Speaker Bercow may use his best and long-practised persona as the defender of democracy to try to persuade people that parliament has behaved properly in this matter but there is no concealing the relative novelty and far-reaching extent of what it has tried to do in this instance.
If we are to have a workable system of parliamentary government, it is of course essential that parliament should be able hold the executive to account at every turn – but that is very different from claiming the right and power to dictate to the executive that it must take a particular step – and nor should the fact that the step required is of great significance be taken as providing a shred of justification for this power grab by parliament.
For those who are quick to condemn the executive’s attempts to deliver on its promises, and to complain about constitutional impropriety when it does so, a period of reflection on these issues may be in order.
Bryan Gould
13 September 2019
Corbyn and Brexit
As the Brexit saga staggers on, the focus is naturally enough on the Prime Minister and his attempts to achieve Brexit “do or die”. But the role played by the Leader of the Opposition is of almost equal interest and complexity.
The first problem for Jeremy Corbyn is that he seems unable, under the pressure of varying advice from different quarters, to decide on the stance he should take on Brexit. This is surprising, given that all the evidence suggests that he is a euro-sceptic from a long way back.
My own impression of him in the days when we were both backbench Labour MPs was that he was, like most on the left of the party, suspicious of an arrangement that was manifestly dominated by bankers and bureaucrats and designed to serve the interests of big business and multinational corporations.
And in more recent (and especially post-referendum) times, he can hardly have been unaware that it has been his own voters who were most grievously disadvantaged by the high food prices, and the threats to jobs, wage levels, housing, schools and health services, that came with EU membership.
Even his much-touted internationalism surely does not preclude some recognition of the undoubted desire of ordinary citizens to live in a country in which they are masters of their own destiny.
Be all this as it may, there is an even more impenetrable mystery at the heart of his current Brexit stance. How is it that he does not take the chance to press for resolving the Brexit impasse by going to the people? What Leader of the Opposition worth his salt would not leap at the chance of a general election, so as to submit the government’s record – on Brexit and everything else – to the judgment of the people?
It beggars belief that Jeremy Corbyn would lead his troops into the division lobbies in order to negate the possibility of a general election that would offer a means not only of resolving the Brexit issue but also of replacing a government of which he has been so bitterly critical.
The answer to these questions is surely, after a mere moment’s reflection, painfully clear. Jeremy Corbyn does not want an election at this juncture, because he fears that it would be primarily about Brexit, and that Labour, in the light of his own prevarications on the issue, would be soundly defeated.
So much for the constant message from Remainers (including those who currently seem to have Corbyn’s ear) that Brexit must not come to pass before the people have a further opportunity to express an opinion.
There is, however, an obvious escape route for Corbyn from this dilemma. He could re-affirm his earlier assurance that Labour will accept the referendum decision and deliver Brexit, thereby removing Brexit as the dividing line between the two major parties and as the potentially election-winning issue for Boris Johnson.
Taking this step would not only make political sense. It would allow Corbyn to stay true to what I believe are his own instincts (and politicians are always more effective if they are seen to be sincere and not merely posturing) and to campaign successfully, with a clear mind and conscience, on holding a Tory government to account in respect of its whole record and not just Brexit.
Bryan Gould
10 September 2019