British General Election
December 12
Boris Johnson's Nonsense about Representing the People vs Parliament
- Workers' Weekly -
Large demonstration against the government in Parliament Square,
London,
September 9, 2019.
In calling this General Election, Boris Johnson
declared that
the problem facing the British people is that they are not
represented by the Parliament. This is in fact true. According to
the logic which underlies the British parliamentary tradition,
the election of members of Parliament makes them representatives
of the person of state, the Queen of England. The person of state
rules over the people. In other words, the democracy is divided
between those who govern and those who are governed. The role of
the citizen is merely to put an "X" on a ballot during an
election to indicate that they authorize someone else, over whom
they exercise no control, to speak in their name.
But, of course, this is not the problem Boris
Johnson is
addressing when he declares that this election is about "the
people versus
Parliament." Far from proposing how the people can
be vested with the decision-making power in such a manner that
they can speak for themselves, he claims that Theresa May's
coalition with the Democratic Unionist Party and then his own minority
government were
"firmly on the side of the people." The very suggestion that his
government's use of prerogative powers to get rid of dissenting
voices represents "the people" is too ridiculous to deserve
comment. Everyone knows that a Boris Johnson government is in the
service of the wealthy and that it is incapable of sorting out
the contradictions within the ranks of the wealthy to get their
cake and eat it too. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the
needs of a British economy that serves the British people.
But Boris Johnson's assertion that his government
represents
the people is not only untrue; it makes a mockery of what the
parliamentary relationships are supposed to be. The government is
understood to be in a relationship with the whole Parliament and
the whole Parliament is where the decisions are presumed to be
taken based on the claim that the House of Commons is its main
component. The Parliament is an ensemble -- all its parts taken
together in which each part is considered only in relation to the
whole. To pit one component of the relationship against another,
serves what purpose does Mr Johnson suppose?
 How is it that
the government claims to be separate from the Parliament, which is
said to represent "the Commons"? Is the government not supposed
to be an integral part of "the Commons"? Clearly, Mr Johnson is
speaking nonsense. He is not coherent, which is par for the
course. But his admission that the House of Commons does indeed
exclude the "common people" also reveals the truth of the matter
-- the government is not governing with the consent of the
governed. This is a serious problem which requires first-rate
attention. Imagine the current Parliament as a musical ensemble.
Far from being in harmony, most instruments are literally at war
with one another. The sounds coming out of it are so harsh,
dissonant and cacophonous that nobody wants to hear them.
Of course, the fact that the Parliament is an
ensemble and
must be considered as such does not mean we support the existing
ensemble. In no way does it address the serious problems facing
the polity at this time. Furthermore, despite the disharmony and
discord, the media pundits and cartel parties present it as
"normal," as something the people have to put up with. Far from
activating the people to take control of the situation,
everything is done to distract attention from the real problems
people face and providing them with viable solutions. The future
is made to look very bleak, which is what happens when the
political imagination is not directed at what is taking place in
the present.
So long as what are called the democratic
institutions are not
on a par with the requirements of the conditions today, the needs
of the people and the serious problems they and the society face
will increase. The fundamental question of whom this democracy
represents will continue to block any way out of the impasse
which exists today because the role of the people is reduced to
that of being spectators and authorizing others to speak in their
name. The call for change must be directed towards change in this
relationship between people and Parliament.
Workers' Weekly is a publication of the
Revolutionary
Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist).
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 30 - December 7, 2019
Article Link:
British General Election
December 12: Boris Johnson's Nonsense about Representing the People vs Parliament - Workers' Weekly
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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