If only all decisions were made by jurors, right....? (Click image for credit)

Like a minority of people who have watched what will surely be 2009’s official leitmotif - the demand for full disclosure from MPs – play out,  I’ve wondered when similar demands will be applied to those who rival MPs for power.

This phrase of Larry Elliot’s – explaining the roots of the current economic crisis – underline the problem here:

“But there is a motley band of discontents for whom business as usual, in whatever form, means that another crisis will erupt before too long. They argue that the exiguous nature of current reform proposals is explained by the institutional capture of governments by the investment banks, the world’s most powerful lobbying groups.”

Certainly, politicians have been teed up so that they can be whacked squarely whenever they get ideas above their station. Right now, it would be hard to make the case that MPs are the right people to take on Tom Wolfe’s over-powerful Masters of the Universe.

In the same way that the Ross-Brand affair was used to tee the BBC up by politicians who don’t wish the corporation well, there’s an argument that demands for transparency rarely come from an organisation’s friends.

Much of this has been led squarely from the political right. The Taxpayers Alliance and a range of right-wing anti-BBC bloggers have worked in tandem with media owners that have been frustrated with what they see as the BBC’s anti-competitive influence on the media landscape. Certainly, at this moment, the libertarian right is the key mover behind the UK’s anti-politics campaigns on MPs expenses for reasons that have more to do with a pro-direct democracy position than more short term party political advantages. The current scandal has, after all, hurt the Conservative Party as well as Labour.

It’s hard to seperate this question from the differing political attitudes to the decline of newpapers. In no less a place than The Washington Post, we see this:

“For the first time in American history, we are nearing a point where we will no longer have more than minimal resources (relative to the nation’s size) dedicated to reporting the news. The prospect that this “information age” could be characterized by unchecked spin and propaganda, where the best-financed voice almost always wins, and cynicism, ignorance and demoralization reach pandemic levels, is real. So, too, is the threat to the American experiment.”

From the left, there appears to be an emerging response. The first is to harass the newspapers, those who use the libel laws to suppress inconvenient truths and other pedlars of perverted science. Jan Moir, Trafigura, and the British Chiropractic Association have all felt the sharp end of this kind of crowdsourced hostility in recent months.

Over on OpenDemocracy, Tom Griffin wants to see lobbyists put more firmly under the spotlight. Certainly, this idea has some traction with the liberal centre, and in the US, the Sunlight Foundation is at least as concerned with transparency on the question of lobbying as it is on the personal conduct of politicians.

It’s hard to see where this will end. There is a case to be made for…

• Significant reforms to media ownership rules to ensure that the media is sufficiently pluralistic
• Similar reforms that ensure that commercial lobbies can be uncoupled from self-serving media interests (I argued this point in a good deal more detail over on Left Foot Forward)

I would suggest that this argument has a long way to go. The left doesn’t appear yet to have recognised the importance of rescuing journalism in the way that the right has embraced it’s decline, otherwise the NUJ’s Jeremy Dear wouldn’t be struggling to raise his arguments for new forms of journalistic funding to a level where anyone would hear them.

And if you’ll forgive me further self-linking, there are a number of posts here that raise the question of what happens if we treat politicians as jurors. If MPs are only really allowed to meet advocates in a recorded way, that would surely be the consequence of Tom’s proposal?

Either way, I’d suggest that advocates of transparency from all sides need to spend more time outlining what they think is permissible and desirable in representation, campaigning and media behaviour. We all seem to know what we’re against, but the interesting question, for me, is what we are in favour of?

Kerry McCarthy MP tweeted last night that she will be going in to bat for tweeting MPs on Radio 5Live later today. Her adversary on the show will be John Pugh MP – and Torcuil Crichton explains the background:

Dr John Pugh, the analogue Lib Dem MP for Southport, has a motion down condemning the growing tendency of hon. members to text, e mail and twitter their way through parliamentary debates. According to his motion “greater interest is shown in e-mails and messages than in the contribution of parliamentary colleagues”, although he admits the practice is “at times quite understandable”.

I suspect that this is more of a topical debate than something Dr Pugh would die-in-the-ditch about, but it’s worth breaking down anyway. Does he have any valid arguments here?

Firstly, if MPs are sitting there gardening their inbox, then there is no question that he’d have a point. And if a bunch of MPs simply thumbing lengthy responses to emails into their Blackberrys during PMQs, it would soon take the life out of the whole spectacle. It would lead to the suspicion that they were in the chamber simply to be seen to be there.

Certainly, the body language around the chamber during PMQs doesn’t suggest this.

The other question is whether MPs are paying more attention to what their peers on Twitter are saying than what is said in the chamber. Leaving aside the fairly boring point that Dr Pugh is asking (we would surely expect MPs to be able to multi-task), the question of whether it is proper to tweet from the chamber rehashes some old questions raised elsewhere on this blog. For example…

• Would we allow a juror to tweet during a trial? And isn’t an MP supposed to be a bit open-minded in the way a juror is?
• Surely parliamentary debate is a closed system that relies upon a voter-mandate? You need to get elected to take part – not just qualify by thumbing 140 characters into a text message?
• Is tweeting really a recreational activity? And surely MPs should be sitting on very uncomfortable chairs plainly not enjoying themselves whenever we are looking at them
• Does it slightly damage the image of parliament by showing MPs engaged in a slightly trivial pastime?

… and there are plenty more similar questions whose answers would reveal what kind or representation we really want.

Then there is the question of how this improves the quality of thinking. On the one hand, Twittering – like getting involved in comments boxes on blogs – leads one into multilateral conversations of the kind illustrated on this old post of David’s – better than the very orderly (!) unilateral conversations that dominate parliamentary debate. Anyone who has used Twitter at a conference to conduct wider conversations will know the value that this can add. This must be a good thing, no?

On the other hand, there is the question of quality. Dr Pugh would have an open and shut case in arguing that conversations on Twitter involve snatches of commentary that are taken out of context. It would be impossible to offer much by way of context in 140 characters.

Critics of twitter characterise it (usually from a distance) as a confederacy of airheads. It would be hard to treat Twitter as a sober academic conversation. It is, however, a bubble of noise that one can tune into. It’s a way of keeping lots of people in your peripheral vision, and of being able to get an instant catalytic reaction out at the right moment.

I’d be interested to see if there are any examples of an MP either reacting to something in Parliament on twitter in a way that game-changed the debate (in the way that a good parliamentary heckle can). Or, failing that, has an MP picked something up from twitter that they then used as an effective heckle?

Another question: Has anyone had a Parliamentary question suggested to them on Twitter and then used during a debate? If an MP could illustrate that their performance as a questioner improved because of Twitter, then it would be a slam-dunk of an argument for Kerry.

Then there is the question of demagoguery. The pro-Twittering MPs argument is that it’s a good thing that people who make decisions are reacting to debate in a very candid way. This bespeaks a certain honesty and a willingness to justify oneself. But does it also leave the way open for demagogues to provide a populist running commentary on Parliamentary proceedings?

The allied question is the one about the use of reason. MPs are supposed to be open to debate. Does Twitter have the potential to reinforce popular mandates – particularly on totemic issues?

Leaving aside the rabble-rousing potential, this candid exchange is surely a good thing though? There have long been suspicions that elected representatives have been ‘captured’ by pressure groups. Moreso in the US, but it is still an issue here. MPs have sometimes had their offices staffed by willing ‘interns’ supplied by lobby groups, and this has stretched as far as having MPs using pressure groups to co-ordinate the conduct of a debate.

Twitter is much more candid than this, and any MP who is plainly dancing to a pre-determined tune would be less able to get away with it if s/he were twittering at the same time. Twittering is antithetical to opaque arrangements where the decision arising out of a debate has been pre-mandated either by a pressure group or party whips. It also allows MPs to illustrate the fact that most of these big arguments aren’t the binary questions that are presented by party spin-doctors. There’s often a much more granular discussion going on in the corridors and Twitter surely has the potential to reflect this? Especially at a time when the mainstream media are determined to conceal it as part of the process that Pierre Bourdieu described as ‘demagogic simplification‘?

But on the wider question, I’m finding it hard to be even-handed here. Surely Twitterers are being more interactive and conversational? How can this be anything but a good thing? And surely they are likely to be a bit more human and less narrowly dogmatic? They are plainly answering to a wider constituency by using social media tools. And surely they likely to be a bit more ironic in their detachment on big issues? Are they likely to be less prone to ‘the lust for certainty‘? Elsewhere on this blog, I’ve argued that these human traits in themselves provide important arguments in favour of representative democracy?

By Twittering, they are less unreachable and rare in their appearance. They may be more approachable as a result and enjoy a less adversarial relationship with local pressure groups?

And lastly, by using Twitter, MPs are staying in conversation with the people who elected them. They are showing their personal complexity to their constituents. If you would like the personal vote to become more important than party-voting (I do) then this will surely help in that direction.

On balance, I’m with Kerry on this one.

Update: Here’s Ton Watson on Twitter: @maggiephilbin As a minister, not a day went by where I didn’t glean insight from my Twitter community. As a backbencher it’s more fun too.

Supports Kerry’s point, doesn’t it?

Kevin Harris has forwarded this article about the role that councillors are obliged to adopt in relation to planning.

Nothing in it will come as a surprise to anyone familliar with the role of a modern councillor, but it’s a nice round up of an issue that will continue to perplex anyone with an interest in local representation. (Shorter version: that councillors have to adopt a jurist role on the question of planning. If it can be demonstrated that they have a predisposition on a particular planning matter, this can disqualify them from deliberating on it).

It reprises a few old posts here asking about whether councils are advocates or jurors. I’m not going to comment on this one in any great detail apart from to observe that councillors now have a potential to convene and conduct conversations quickly and spontaneously in a way that they never used to be. This is what social media can do best: It can allow anyone to invite everyone to dump their evidence in one place.

This ability (when the bulk of councillors become accustomed to having it) hints at yet another role for the councillor to adopt. Not juror or advocate, but as the curator of evidence and opinion on local matters. In offline terms, think of the way that detectives setup an evidence board in the incident room that we’ve all become familliar with in police procedural TV programmes.

Either way, it points to a role where councillors are expected to be more inclusive and conversational and less adversarial.

To illustrate this, I’ve been racking my memory for examples of where someone has used lots of different social media and bookmarking tools to simply gather all of the information on a particular subject in a neutral and even-handed way so that visitors can get a good overview prior to making a decision. I know there are lots of examples, but I just can’t think of one now (help me out, willya?)

Chewing over Parliamentary reforms, here’s Jenni Russell from the Guardian last week:

“One experienced Commons civil servant is blisteringly critical of the way in which most MPs have accepted the culture in which they now operate. While some committees and chairs are excellent, many MPs can’t be bothered. “They’re just not interested in the core tasks of parliament, scrutinising legislation or working in committee. It’s too much hard work – they’d rather be social workers for constituents. …… They don’t spend three hours in the House of Commons library reading bills or papers themselves; they wait for Greenpeace or Liberty or a lobby group to tell them what to think. That whole culture of thinking, challenging, debating – that’s what’s been discouraged. Because, for them personally, what’s the point?”"

There are a number of conclusions one can draw from this, some of which could be justifiably homicidal. Other trades have a set of professional ethics that would, for instance, preclude them from relying upon lobbyists for information, or coming up with a transparent means by which they conduct their research.

Once you have a coherent view of what representatives are for, and how they should work, surely this would be very straightforward?

But the interesting line for me is this one:

“…they’d rather be social workers for constituents”

MPs expend a substantial amount of their resources on casework. They do it because the public expect them to do so – and they do it because they beleive it will make a difference for them at election times. But the question is, should they do it at all?

An MP, and to a lesser extent, a councillor has a job to frame legislation in such a way that we can all expect fairness before the law. If an MP offers legal advice, or tries to extract favours of one kind or another for individual constituents, surely this will lead to more sloppy legislation – and less of a willingness to represent the interests of the nation as a whole?

On the other hand, doing casework keeps MPs alert to the failings in the law as it stands. It’s hard to think of a better way for MPs to stay in touch with the failings of their own legislation than for them.

I’d suggest that – if we were defining the role of an elected representative from scratch – based upon an understanding of representative government should work, that some protocol would have been established confirming that MPs don’t meet lobbyists except in open hearings, and that they should never do casework for constituents.

Instead, they would make a point of meeting local lawyers – especially the local Citizens Advice Bureau – to discuss failings in the law.

The BBC website has a nice post up about how the question of politicians being ‘in touch’ isn’t a straightforward one. It sort-of reprises a few points that I made in this post here a while ago – that no-body really agrees with anyone else about very much, and that – under such circumstances, politicians are in a bit of a cleft stick. On of my ongoing questions here is to ask what kind of politicians do we actually want? A few weeks ago, I asked if we really want paragons of virtue? And does a private personal wealth allow people the luxury of looking virtuous that their poorer rivals can’t benefit from?

My next question is this:

Do we want politicians to behave like jurors?

We may actually have an answer to this question within the next year or so. I say this because ‘The Jury Team‘ are hoping to field candidates at the next election and they have a rather nice website up here. They are plainly enjoying the way that MPs are being exposed for their venality, or – let’s face it – their downright dishonesty in recent weeks.

The Guardian’s Marina Hyde gives a flavour of the case for independents who are there to exercise their good judgement in our interests, and it comes quite close to the mission outlined by Edmund Burke’s great Speech to the Electors of Bristol – for me, the definitive statement of what representation should be:

“…it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living”

  Apologies for quoting that again – I know it’s not the first time, but it is good, isn’t it? A juror has the added virtue of not ever being tempted to play to a sectional or class interest – their motivation is simply to be seen as scrupulous legislators. So what’s wrong with this approach then? My questions are as follows:

• The UK is in competition with rivals: Will these guys collectively marshal the nation to out-trade, out-manoeuvre (or out-fight!) our global rivals?
• Surely this will just provide us with people who judge the ideas of others? Where does the enterprise come from?
• How does one change the direction of government at an election if our candidates are jurors? Surely they can’t arrive in office on day one of government with anything as sleazy as plans?
• Would such a bunch of representatives actually further enervate politics? Would people give up all interest in how they are run? Would we just be resigned to some rationalist paradise?

I have plenty more questions where they came from, but I’d be interested to hear yours. A few answers would be good as well?