The airlock into Spaceship Westminster
I suspect that if you used the phrase ‘Westminster Village’ five years ago or more it would have neither sounded as familiar nor as pejorative as it seems now. But the longer I have been a citizen of this exclusive yet ‘all-inclusive’ village – for not far off four years – the more apt the label somehow feels.
Perhaps it’s the product of a long 5-year Parliament, which has created an unfortunate clubbable cosiness amongst its inhabitants. Or more likely, over the last 12 months, a community united by its need to fend off attacks to its battered reputation from hostile tribes with their slings and arrows beyond its village walls.
In the Lords it could almost be excusable. After all, we are accountable to no one except our personal consciences, and a set of rather vague and outdated rules of behaviour. But in the elected half of the village it should be different. MPs are not only accountable to voters, they meet them in surgeries, and have countless letters and emails asking for help with the everyday problems of people from those real villages and cities outside.
But somehow when we all congregate here, that 3-D real world seems to dissolve. We become a tribal community, inwardly focused. At the democratic end of the building the priorities are political survival or future ministerial careers. At our end the perspective is rather more eternal.
Yet on reflection, I want to reject the idea of ‘the Village’.
Why? Well every day I attend the Lords I exit this Parliamentary community through the revolving doors that take me into the less than inspiring precinct of Westminster tube station. From high Victorian Gothic into neo-modernism in a single step. Those doors in particular remind me of many a 1960s sci-fi movie. That entrance is the air lock through which we are ejected from our extraterrestrial parliamentary ship and re-enter life on Earth. So for me it’s not so much the Village – but a rather more unworldly ‘Spaceship Westminster’.
I have to say that I find your thoughts on this contrast very interesting. Sadly, my MP does not seem to remember that she’s accountable to her voters. You very eloquently put the reason why, “At the democratic end of the building the priorities are political survival or future ministerial careers.” She comes across as being more concerned about her political surival and career than the people who voted for her to have the privilege or repsonsibility of being there.
“Yet on reflection, I want to reject the idea of ‘the Village’.”
This ain’t going to happen. The meeja is now almost exclusively congregated in the capital, since the Guardian is longer in Manchester.
Eventually the BBC will move some of its base to Salford and possibly other provinces. But exactly the same ‘cheek-by-jowl’ nexus of politicians and the media exists in Cardiff, and they are just as ‘shut-off’ from the rest of the people outside the capital.
The BBC are belatedly realising that 88% of their viewers and listeners DO NOT live in the capital, but it is a slow process.
And people like me are getting increasingly disenchanted at paying A POUND A DAY for newspapers which focus exclusively on LONDON ISSUES when the good old Evening Standard does much the same job but is GIVEN AWAY FREE.
Until you change the media’s total obsession with the middle-aged, middle-class London life of metropolitan people there will never be a perception that life outside the Westminster Village is important.
In the Village where I live there are said to be 250 people but in reality there are about 70. It IS a village.
In the palace of Westminster and Portcullis house there are rather more than 2000 people working and very nearly living there (1 family does in theory, bless ’em).
I fail to see how you can possibly say that it is not a fair sized town!
If you want to be involved with British politics and democracy, that is where you have to be.
I wonder how many Buck House, houses? 50-100 at most?
What’s the name of that Secret/Hidden City in Peking? The palace of Westminster is getting just like that!
Don’t forget also that there are all the political offices on the edge of Whitehall
too. Not a village?
Every bit as much a village as Hampstead village or Richmond village, but not so many shops and residents!
The Westminster village is due for a BIG turnover in the next couple of months, with retirements and one thing and another, but not quite as many as 1997!
Gareth Howell: The number of people working on the parliamentary estate is closer to 10,000. That really is a small town.
I think the crucial point here is that while there may be 10, 000 people working there, the vast majority of these have very little in the way of influence.
If you count only cabinet ministers and the main media protagonists who shape 80% of the opinion pumped out by telly and the main 4 broadsheet papers, the number is very small.
Certainly fewer than a thousand – which is why the ‘lobbying industry’ is so successful.
As Derek Draper once said “There are 17 people in this country who really count..”
Power and influence really are concentrated in a very small group of people which is why the media is so sadly uninterested in what happens not just outside the M25, or outside London, but outside Westminster itself.
The excellent EyeSpyMP doesn’t focus on 9000 of the ten thousand – it reports on these ‘people who matter’.
http://lordsoftheblog.net/2010/03/24/welcome-to-spaceship-westminster/#comments
“Lord Cotter Christian Lister (lobbyist) HRH Prince Michael of Kent having a chin wag in Dining Room A”
I gave up paying for newspapers long ago. Too much opinion, bias and inaccurate reporting to be worth the money.
Perhaps Parliament could take a leaf out of the EU Parliament’s book and spend a week elsewhere every so often, regardless of convenience and expense. On second thoughts…
I bet it`s bigger on the inside than the outside !
Yep it`s definitely a TARDIS.
Talk And Relative Dementia In Space
LN,
“parliamentary estate is closer to 10,000. That really is a small town.”
Quite a big one by some countries’ standards!
I wonder quite exactly what “estate” means, in the context?
Used by? Owned by? Would that include the Centrally located govt offices? That is government, not parliament, surely?
Ah Well!
It makes democracy seem as though it only occurs in that particular village, to which everybody else has to pay lip service, once every four or five years, by voting, whereas to monarchy, it is done once a year at winter solstice prayers and the queen’s speech!!
The way to change this is to get ordinary people into Westminster on a permanent basis. Randomly select 100 people from the electoral register, and pay them for a year to scrutinise legislation, write blogs, and talk to MPs and Lords.
As well as reminding politicians that the outside world exists, they could also act as a balance to the more sensationalist elements of the media – because they would be there for more than five minutes, politicians would have time to actually *earn* their trust, and since they (collectively) would have no agenda, they would have the moral authority to say ‘this story is ridiculous’.
That’s actually close to a form of government – randomly select one person from each constituency and that’s the government for the next five years. To keep things smooth, select 20% per year so there isn’t an abrupt change.
Keep the Lords as a revising chamber to buffer the mistakes.
The best way to remind politicians about the outside world is to make them subject to recall petitions, where the signatures of 10% of the electoral roll for the constituency can force a by-election.
I’m not keen on the idea of randomly select the actual government. Random selection only ensures that the groups as a whole is representative; but for positions of individual power, we need some scrutiny of the individual.
Recall is also problematic, I think. It too easily becomes the instrument of those who can shout the loudest. We want a boring, everyday mechanism.
Alex: I wasn’t seriously suggesting random selection, but you have to admit that we probably wouldn’t be any worse off on average. It would end up a bit like jury service, except lasting for five years. Douglas Adams had it right in his Hitchhikers’ books where he said that the best person to be the leader would be one who was dragged kicking and screaming into the job but once there resolved to do his best. Those that wanted the job should under no circumstances be allowed anywhere near it.
You could probably make recall work, the trick would be in a minimum time betweel challenges and an appropriate threshold.
It isn`t so much a village but a town, one that does appear at times representative of the outside World. We have the Council estate of the commons where gangs rule and the posh part of town containing the intellectuals, some of whom get pulled into supporting a particular gangs interests.
The Council estate is frequently being moved in and out of by various people and their ideology changes as they try to influence the World around them.At times they are popular but popularism isn`t alway`s right and right isn`t alway`s popular so the posh end of town is a requirement to keep the balance.
Of course the Council estate gangs don`t like this interference in their popular ideas so they frequently try to extend the Council estate into the posh end of town. Fortunately very old laws have forbidden much of this so far but the gangs are adamant this must change. They charge that because they are the popular part they should have more say but this belies the fact that they aren`t alway`s popular for long and infact without the posh end would possibly be less so.
The posh end although not popular, especially as they don`t seem to contribute to the World around in any material sense, are infact a needed balance of fairness and justice. They may seem unpopular at all times to some who do not realise their wisdom is all that holds back the gangs of the estate but they are necessary. The gangs often giving the people want they feel they need for a while until they have enough power to do as they choose. It is often at this point that the posh end is vital for the sake of the town and the World around.
The gangs at present are calling for intrusion into the posh end saying it is an unpopular end of town, that they are the popular. Of course we all know that in reality once a gang has power they tend to say the people that gave them it don`t matter, that because the people gave them power they must be right in all things.
I hope they don`t extend that Council estate, because the gangs do not represent me at all times and I have to rely on the posh end stopping them running amok.
Some extremely wise people put this town together hundreds of years ago with a lot of intellectual thought and balance. I hope the balance doesn`t change, both ends of the town are needed and are the best contrast I can think of to keep the town and the World intact and working together.
Our town isn`t perfect but I don`t know one that is.
BM in her recent post talks admiringly of the Parliament Choir performing in Westminster Hall but fails to tell us that the public’s favourite ditty at this time is ‘Three Blind Mice’ see how they run.
Ref: Mice plague London’s Westminster Palace
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120036§ionid=3510212
This post neatly illustrates the reason it is referred to as the Westminster Village..
http://order-order.com/2010/03/24/loose-lips-sink-ships-2/
It shares the feature of ‘village life’ that one cannot do anything without someone else finding out, as Byers, Hoon and Patsy are finding out to their cost..
“fewer than a thousand – which is why the ‘lobbying industry’ is so successful.”
The Palace of Westminster is used by more than 2000 people every day.
The curious thing about the Lobby is that you rarely meet professional lobbyists there.
They have got remote cameras and TVs if they want to know what is going on, and very secretive stringer agencies who find out the low down, to influence the individual member.
Que ?
It occurred to me today that if that’s a recent photo of the door, it’s a good job you weren’t spotted by a policeman, otherwise you might have found yourself forced to delete the image in case it was helpful to terrorists.