Views on Parliament

Each morning I get up and eat toast off of the white-and-gold embossed side plate that, after enough complimentary wine from a work event at the House of Commons terrace bar, I smuggled from the building.

Being reminded of this daft micro-rebellion always jolts my thoughts to the silliness of the Houses of Parliament as an institution and how my own childish act stands in some way symbolic, for me at least, of the way the prolonged existence of the place keeps us all ensorcelled by a state of retrogressive juvenilia.

By no means is this limited to its outward-facing influence, for it seems that Parliament acts as a fermenting crucible of immaturity and pomposity, a petri dish of rank egotism, an abattoir of political careers that, to paraphrase Enoch Powell, can only ever end with a bolt-gun to the head. Just consider the blustery rigmarole that defines the place, the archaic traditions that keep it mummified in a sarcophagus like the long-dead kings of Ancient Egypt.

Consider the ‘ceremonial’ role of the Remembrancer that dates back to 1571, who serves as a channel of communications between the City of London Corporation and Parliament. (In the words of journalist George Monbiot this is ‘an official lobbyist who sits behind the Speaker’s chair and ensures that, whatever our elected representatives might think, the City’s rights and privileges are protected.’)

One need only watch Michael Cockerell’s BBC documentary series ‘Inside the Commons’ to be inflated to bursting point with the outraged conviction that the place should be burnt to the ground, its inhabitants chased into the Thames like vermin and the whole thing built again to redefined plans. Whether it’s the cloakroom holders for swords, the whiskery Clerk of the Commons taking the odd pinch of snuff (taxpayer-funded snuff no doubt!), or reports of the Tory backbench ‘bully boys’ trying to sabotage the camera crew; the whole charade positively reeks of unedifying bullshit, ill-befitting a 21st century state trying to maintain a serious holding in the world.

Now I may be cynical, but not to the extent that I don’t believe a sizeable proportion of those who become elected to the Commons are compelled to do so out of a certain degree of altruism, with some principles that guide them, however broken the compass might be. However, it would seem that as soon as one enters the Palace as an elected MP it is all but impossible, regardless of ideology or conviction, to resist becoming enfugged by the heady smoke of ceremony and tradition; the asbestos dust of history slowly settling on your lungs to leave you hacking up the same conceited mooing we all recognise and despise.

One can imagine Osborne, Cameron et al treating the place like an extension of their billiard room; whilst the left (or what remains of it) is little better. Dennis ‘Beast of Bolsover’ Skinner, one of the few remaining in the Commons who might purport to be a socialist, is wheeled out like a museum piece to lob some safely predictable javelin of ire on Queen’s Speech Day.

The notion that cartoon characters like (above) Michael Fabricant (looking like a Boris Johnson clone-gone-horribly-wrong), or (below) Jacob Rees-Mogg (who in Cockerell’s documentary is seen trying to filibuster a private member’s bill on affordable housing by droning out poetry), or Baroness Anne Jenkin (who presides over the allocation of the House of Lord’s £260,000 champagne budget whilst deriding those relying on food banks) are deemed fit to represent the majority seems like a colossal condemnation both of them and, since it said that you get the politics you deserve, of us as well.

It would though be rather churlish to dwell on the personal since politicians of all stripe have affected a bland, indistinct, almost androgynous persona; characterized chiefly by their paddling around in the shallow waters of character, background and ideology. Any feasibly attempt at satire can only be absorbed into the black hole of self-parody that has been cleverly constructed around themselves. It seems to be almost the case that the public are kept emollient by a colossal confidence trick and a collective feeling of ‘how long can we get away with this?’, given that for all the populace might gripe and moan they never quite have the collective imagination or wherewithal to un-tether the guy-ropes and bring the whole canvas crashing down.

Indeed I believe that ever since the early-90s (the triumph of economic globalisation over political ideology), politics has been undergoing a discreet, largely unconscious yet to perhaps telepathic, neuterization process, whereby it seeks to become as drained of any interest or intrigue as possible. In short, politics has sought to become ever more boring.

The reason being that only by diverting attention away, by lulling us into a sense of sheer apathetic disengagement, can the whole charade be sustained, whilst they may decry the falling turnouts or the plunging membership numbers; really their undisturbed existence is prolonged by the solidifying fact that for more and more people, politics and the establishment process means less and less.

This has been a necessary illusion to manufacture given that over the last 2 or 3 decades, as the efficacy of the markets became the leading Western faith, and ever more tracts of power were surrendered to the financial institutions of the City, the EU and the private sector, Parliament became increasingly desiccated to the point at which now it is a mere prosthesis of democracy.

It is little more than a decomposing husk, a ruin in statis, symbolic of the parlous level of representation and hegemonic influence that presides there, like an echo chamber of transparent phantoms wearing rictus grins and coloured ties. It is now little different from Battersea Power Station just a little way downriver, once a bastion of hydraulic power, generating the executive energy that would symbolise the direction and compulsion of our lives, now hollowed out by finance capital, corrupted by foreign investment to become little more than a simulation of itself, a mausoleum of ideas.

Politicians have been calibrated to their new forms by the rampant ethos of the political economy and consumerism as has society-at-large. Accordingly, they are now economic units, subject to the endless replication of the same limited brand identities, the mundane monopolies, an assembly line production defined by its efficiency and homogenisation rather than individual worth or distinction. Politicians, like electronic gadgets, the seasons of fashion or new cars, are programmed with an almost planned obsolescence for ever-faster consumption - ever-decreasing tenures, diminishing influence, easily discarded once their use-value has been expended.

There is an increasing spectre of global concerns that can be said to be largely divorced from the political arena; whilst posturing efforts may be made to convince us of the contrary, deep down we all know that politics - in the traditional form that Parliament as an institution so symbolises - is ever more hollow and toothless.

The future viability of the NHS, climate change, the oil markets, the financial sector, technological development and cyber terrorism; these are all issues that define the 'post-political era'. (Even the sturdy legs of military influence have been irreparably hobbled post-Iraq.)

Instead, politics has to occupy itself and us with the staple concerns with which it is most comfortable; the same class-based domestic affairs, thriving off of the traditional prejudices and discontents through the steadily more oblique and meaningless parameters of left and right. Only in a post-political landscape, where parody is a stock-in-trade and predictable stigmas are stoked and enflamed, could a party like UKIP gain such traction.

Instead of Parliament, we need some kind of system whereby regional assemblies with genuine local power can be established by and for the community they deem to serve. The Palace of Westminster should be replaced by a gigantic translucent structure, a '2001'-esque monolith upon which day and night could be projected various economic models such as the Gini Coefficient or FTSE 100 Price Index, or perhaps even just scrolling Twitter feeds.

Affection for the building itself should be considered in view of what it is - a monument to political spin. For, belying its golden brown turrets, spires and vanes, it was designed in the 19th century by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin as part of a conservative 'Gothic Revival' to instil in the minds of the masses a sense of heritage and gravitas that could thus justify and exude executive power, and that would be reenforced with the artificial anchor-weights of history into place.

And so we must do the only thing we can do to become a truly sophisticated and civilized nation led by those 'of the people, for the people', and that is to tear it down and start anew, if only one side plate at a time...