One of the really solid strengths of the British Parliamentary system is that each constituency, roughly equal in population of electors, is represented by a Member of Parliament who can voice the views and concerns of their constituents in the House of Commons. The British Parliamentary system does not have any of the inherent defects of systems that are based on party lists or systems that do not have a link between a geographical area and its population and the representative. Yes the British system has its faults, the hurdle that needs to be climbed for insurgent parties is huge because of the first past the post voting system, but it should, when it works well, represent in the Commons the views of the people in each area.
However, when an MP chooses to not represent their constituents and instead represent the interests of controversial lobby groups and parrot the talking points of these lobby groups then they are not representing the interests of their constituents. They are now the member for XYZ lobby group and not the people of the constituency that voted them into Parliament.
A really worrying example of an MP choosing to represent a controversial lobby group rather than their constituents, especially the roughly 50% that are women, can be found in the form of the Labour MP for Coventry South Zarah Sultana. On the 15th October, just as a BBC investigative journalist was uncovering all sorts of worrying behaviour by and connections with the Stonewall group, Ms Sultana popped up to defend Stonewall and accuse the BBC of using public money to ‘vilify’ Stonewall.
Here’s what Ms Sultana said:
This is disgraceful behaviour by Ms Sultana. What she has done is to run interference for Stonewall in order to discredit one of the best bits of investigative journalism that I’ve seen from the BBC in a long while. Stephen Nolan the BBC Ulster journalist has done a splendid job on uncovering just how much Stonewall has managed to worm its way into the corridors of power, not just at the BBC but in other areas of government and administration. Stonewall have engaged in tactics that put pressure on organisations to get them to accept all the precepts of the Cult of Trans and basically to throw women, especially women who might be worried about the future of single sex spaces, under the proverbial bus.
Stephen Nolan has, as Gareth Roberts writes over at Unherd, uncovered a whole nasty can of worms that has Stonewall’s fingerprints all over it. Stuff such as how the Scottish government paid Stonewall to lobby the Scottish government, how a supposedly impartial BBC LGBT correspondent was allegedly moonlighting with Stonewall itself, how Stonewall helped to freeze out medical professionals who questioned the Cult of Trans and how government departments and quangos were corrupted by a desire to rise up Stonewall’s ‘workplace equality index’.
Zarah Sultana MP should have examined just what Stephen Nolan had uncovered about Stonewall and what women’s campaigners have been saying about Stonewall’s promotion of the Cult of Trans to the exclusion of all other LGB issues, before gobbing off in support of this organisation. The problem is I don’t think she examined the Nolan reports or any other criticism of Stonewall, she just waded in to support Stonewall. Ms Sultana’s willingness to parrot Stonewall’s lines and eagerly support Stonewall without acknowledging the scandal that surrounds this organisation is to me pretty disgusting to see. It makes me want to ask the question: Just who is Ms Sultana representing in the House of Commons, is it the people of Coventry South, or is it the Stonewall organisation?
Such behavior by today’s MPs is common. When I contacted my MP as a party member to ask if he could help with the skyrocketing council tax he replied no. He went on to say any changes might impact the residents of Tower Hamlets which is over 100 miles from his constituency, London centric or what? He finished his reply to me, a paid up party member ” supporters who needs them”. Needless to say I will not be renewing my membership and he will never get another penny or vote from me. Small wonder MPs are no longer respected.
That MP sounds rude arrogant and unhelpful. The trouble is that description would apply to many other denizens of the House of Commons. The answer to the problem of the low calibre of political representatives that we have is for better politicians from replacement parties. The question is wht parties and what politicians would be better? This is an issue that I hope to go into in an article tht will hopefully go up next week.
Thank you for your reply, yes my MP is rude and arrogant and I will be making his comments known to as many voters as I can between now and the next election. I have seen much online talk about the Reform Party and would be interested in your view of them. Like many others I will soon be looking for a new political home but I intend to embarrass our sitting MP as much as possible while my membership of the party lasts.
Whilst there are some good MP’s out there rudeness and arrogance seems to be all too common among them. I’ll hopefully be doing an article o Reform later this week (childcare duties permitting) along with discussing other new and emerging parties. I don’t wholly agree with all the policies of Reform but they might be a way of making things better at a time when there is an overmighty Tory party and a Labour party that is in disarray.
I look forward to your article, as always I suppose it will come down to the lesser of evils.
Not necessarily. There have been other occasions, such as in the late 19th and early 20th centuries where specific issues, in that case Ireland, ended up with insurgent parties gaining quite a few seats. Also we need to remember that at one point the main two parties were the Tories and the Liberals and that Labour were the insurgents. Now the two parties are Labour and Tory and the Liberals are a rump party a shadow of their former selves. There’s been a whole lot of insurgent parties formed in recent years, some I’ve welcomed and ultimately been disappointed with, such as Reclaim, Heritage and For Britain (I’ll go into the reasons why in my article when I finish it) just as there are some activists on specific issues I’ve formerly supported but are now utterly disgusted with. Dominic Cummings said something interesting recently. He said that Labour need to dump Starmer and put Lisa Nandy in place. Personally I’d like to see a Labour party that represented something other than the concerns of the Metro-Left but I don’t think that Nandy is the route to that end.
Heads up for you. I’ve almost finished the article, just got the conclusion to do now. I’ve set out how we’ve got here and the prospects for alternative parties under the FPTP system and how creating a credible challenger party is a long term effort using the example of the Labour Party from 1895 to 1923. I’ve also put my views of some of the less extreme alt parties and assessed them and asking whether there is a ‘too many chiefs and not enough Indians’ situation going on. Fair warning, it’s a long article.