BRITISH parliamentary democracy is in such a poor state that Dr Hannah White — a very mainstream figure, a former Commons clerk, one-time secretary to the committee on standards in public life, and current head of super-respectable think tank the Institute for Government — thinks Parliament burning to the ground is probably the best hope for reform.

White’s recent book, Held in Contempt: What’s Wrong with the House of Commons, published this year, looks at what’s wrong with the processes of government. 

Her think tank takes what you might think of as a technocratic rather than a “political” approach — although of course technocracy is itself a kind of “sensible centrist” politics. It’s not the political approach I favour, but she and it are on the ball, even if I don’t always agree with the game they play.

Given that this is a sort of “sensible” and “insider” approach to British parliamentary politics, it’s striking how ugly a picture she paints.

It is one where MPs of all parties’ revel in the obscure, fusty rituals of Parliament as a way of making themselves feel important, preferring the ossified procedures to trying to represent their constituents or deliver real reform. 

White describes how: “When they first arrive in Westminster, many new MPs are acutely conscious of the anachronism and oddities of Parliament. But this is also the moment when they are most inexperienced and least equipped to challenge how things are done,” so “the desire to challenge tends to dissipate quickly as they are indoctrinated” by more established MPs. 

MPs end up relying in the “rituals, traditions, language and heritage of Parliament” to “lend gravitas and importance” to debates instead of pushing effective transformation.

Arcane language, weird debates — like referring to each other as a constituency, not a name — are a substitute for delivering social change as “for some members procedure is part of the game of politics, a tool to score points from your opponent in the Oxford union.”

While the obscure Harry Potter-style incantations, dressing up, and ceremonies exclude the public, they do create an opportunity for influence-peddling.

“The complexity of the rules governing law-making are one reason for the existence of a thriving industry of lobbyists who advise their clients on how to influence those laws.” 

Obscure rules also give advantage to the party leaderships, as “most MPs are incurious about the procedures they are expected to follow and rely on the party whips to advise them.”

Parliamentary obscurantism is “not inevitable. It is the result of the accretion off centuries of decisions.” But MPs cling to it because it makes them part of an exclusive priesthood — which also feeds into a belief they are above the rules.

White notes: “As well as privileging tradition over innovation, some MPs have a dangerous tendency towards exceptionalism,” which “leads some MPs to treat themselves as a class apart from the country they represent,” leading to the kind of self-serving messing-with-the-rules, like we saw in the expenses scandal. 

White notes that between 1981 and 2010 “confidence in British Parliament dropped by 17 from 41 per cent to just 24 per cent” and since then trust has fallen further — and she makes a case for this not being irrational.

White tries to look at wider processes outside of Parliament that are making this happen, and here I think she is very wide of the mark.

She writes: “The historian Anne Applebaum situates the decline in trust in institutions across the US and Europe as one aspect of the polarisation of politics in the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, which she argues has led ‘from the fragmentation of the public sphere, to the absence of the centre ground, from the rise of partisanship, to the waning influence of respected institutions.’” 

However, the opposite is true. “Polarised” parliaments attracted a great deal of public support and enthusiasm and delivered real reform. The great liberal reforms of Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George’s government came because they wanted to change society, did not respect institutions like the House of Lords, and had “partisanship” for causes like welfare. 

Clement Attlee’s 1945 Labour government took place against a “polarised” debate, with Winston Churchill accusing Labour of wanting to establish a gestapo. Churchill, despite being wartime leader, was met by angry crowds who threw fireworks at him. The 1945 reforms did not come from an unpolarised “centre ground.”

The real reason MPs have retreated into obscure, self-serving rituals is because politics is too “centre ground” — it isn’t delivering material changes for people, who lose faith in MPs, who seek solace in ritual.

White vividly describes the physical decay of parliament. “The palace of Westminster is falling down. Literally.” It is “miraculous that nobody has been killed or injured” by the frequently falling stonework. But attempts to fix Parliament are “a litany of dithering, buck-passing and delay.” 

The endless messing about on restoration of the 19th-century buildings has a cost — with estimates rising from about £4 billion in 2014 to £12bn now. The obvious, best-cost answer is a “full decant,” with MPs moving to a new temporary building while Parliament is fixed. But this keeps getting rejected. 

I personally suspect many MPs think that they only get legitimacy from the rituals, because they have failed to deliver the material benefits that would build a more popular legitimacy — so they are scared to leave the old building in case any power or relevance they have doesn’t follow them to a newer chamber.

White argues that Westminster needs a “crisis” to spark wider reform, suggesting that MPs final failure to fix the walls of the Palace of Westminster itself might end up being the trigger for comprehensive reforms: “If the unmodernised palace finally goes up in flames,” MPs will be forced out and forced to try reverse the “cycle of decline.” If even the technocrats want Westminster to burn down, things are bad.