"…a symbol of how we see ourselves"

The public wanted hanging restored. But did they want to be represented by hangers? (click image for attribution).

This is a really good post about a perceived restructuring of the UK cabinet to reflect three key themes. I won’t spoil the wider article for you except to say that one of the issues that (according to the author) is a priority is that of constitutional and democratic reform.

This is very perceptive:

“….the task is partly about representation, equity and justice, and partly about public perception of politics.

For politicians to take the bold steps that are demanded by a fast-evolving society, they must have legitimacy. The public delegate their authority to representatives in a temporary compact which notionally reads like this: act in our interests and we’ll trust you to hold power for a while. But an underlying, perhaps more fundamental, message is: be a symbol of how we see ourselves, and we will ask you to make us better people.

This is the nature of the insult that many people feel they’ve received from MPs recently: they have betrayed us by acting like normal people instead of the idealised figures we wish they – and we – could be. And so the moral authority to help the rest of us be better than ourselves has been diminished. I don’t personally think this attitude is particularly fair to MPs, but perception is more than reality in this area.

So the constitutional council has a mission to restore faith in the character of politicians. And one way it can do this – although perhaps too radical for a first step – is through self-sacrifice. If a Labour government were to create a political system not structured around its own political objectives but those of democracy and of a fair representation of our diverse population, it would win huge credibility from the many people who are disillusioned with politics and with the government, but who are not impressed by the alternatives on offer.”

It adds another bit of shorthand to the list of ‘what kind of representation do we want’? We want people to represent us who have the values that we aspire to.

There is one illustration that I’ve never been able to stand up, but I’d still use it. Until very recently, opinion polls showed a clear majority of the population in favour of hanging – yet Parliament has consistantly rejected capital punishment and even sympathetic politicians with a feel for the popular never pressed the case. Mrs Thatcher was a ‘hanger’, after all.

Perhaps she knew that people may be hangers themselves, but don’t want to be represented by other hangers?

(Via Stumbling & Mumbling).