Historian on Partygate: current system ‘not enough to constrain the ego in No.10’
Peter (Lord) Hennessy is a journalist, historian of post-1945 Britain, and an expert in the labyrinthine conventions of the British Constitution, such as it is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hennessy
The point can be made that Britain’s Constitutional Monarchy is not particularly democratic but even within that there are rules and conventions which are meant to be observed. In recent times observation of them has been at best hit and miss (the convention that Ministers should resign when something has gone wrong is not much observed in recent times) and the current PM is by far the most significant example.
Lord Hennessy spoke out about the matter on Radio 4’s Broadcasting House on 17th April. He argued that Johnson had broken the Ministerial Code and should resign. The problem is he is the custodian of the Code and when it was introduced by Attlee after 1945 it was not envisaged that the PM would be the point at issue.
Indeed the Code was not in the public domain until John Major put it there in May 1992 partly as a result of campaigning by Hennessy. His point on Sunday was that Johnson had not only broken the law but lied about it and the Code demanded his resignation but also offered no way of enforcing this. His suggestion was that the PM should swear an oath to Parliament that he would stick to the Code. One might wonder how this would help since if a PM could still command a majority in a no confidence vote they could carry on anyway. That said the British system has an interesting historic obsession with oaths (think Tolpuddle Martyrs) so perhaps Hennessy has a point.
Hennessy concluded that Britain faced the most serious Constitutional Crisis in its modern history. Many might feel that the key issue is that Britain has the most serious cost of living crisis for the best part of 50 years but there is a connection. A PM who is not accountable to Parliament and ignores the framework he is meant to operate in can ignore a social crisis as much as he can a political one.
Perhaps however, not forever…..Hennessy is a fine historian of post-45 Britain, his books on the matter are far more authoritative to my mind than more popular accounts by Dominic Sandbrook et al (even if Sandbrook is more entertaining). But it is history from above and from within the Parliamentary system. There is also pressure from without and from below, as Johnson may yet find out.
Leave a Reply