Ed Miliband and Michael Rimmer: Life (poorly) imitates Art

Over the last few days many column inches and much airtime has been expended on Ed Miliband's latest big idea: public PMQs (Prime Minister's Questions). The idea is that, after MPs have had a chance to ask the Prime Minister questions during the weekly PMQs session, the opportunity should be opened up to the public to submit their own questions.

Rarely have I heard such a lame-brained idea, and this is even more concerning as it originates from the leader of the opposition. Is the executive really being held to account by someone who is transparently such a remote-controlled halfwit?

Do we not already elect and pay MPs to ask the executive questions on our behalf? It's called Representative Democracy! And even if our democracy is so dysfunctional that our MPs are no longer capable of representing our interests and reflecting our legitimate concerns in the business of parliament, I am confident the remedy is not some gameshow gimmick. And who chooses which public questions will be submitted? Can expect well-rehearsed responses to questions chosen in line with some pre-ordained and manipulative media agenda?

I am reminded of Peter Cook's character in the 1970 satire on the influence of public relations, The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer. In the film the eponymous anti-hero rises to prominence in British politics and eventually induces the electorate to acquiesce to his dictatorship by insisting, in the name of democracy, that they are involved directly in an incessant series of petty decisions.

Any similarity between Ed Miliband and Michael Rimmer ends pretty quickly though, since Michael Rimmer is stunningly competent and effective at implementing his Macchiavellian stratagems, while I think it is safe to say that is not something you could ever accuse Ed Miliband of. 

The evidence today points to a Labour Party so disconnected with reality that policy making has become an exercise in public relations. When Ed Miliband could focus his attention on:

• The TTIP currently being negociated with the USA, which introduces the affront to democracy that is unaccountable secret tribunals of corporate lawyers to resolve any disputes that should arise between big business and democratically elected governments; 
• The award of fracking licences in Scotland, hushed up and rushed through (a reserved matter); 
• The macabre juxtaposition of food banks and obscene wealth in our deeply divided society;
• The piecemeal privatisation of the NHS in the world's biggest coporate car boot sale;
• The inexcusable brutality of the Isreali regime towards the Palestinian people;
• And any number of other compelling and urgent issues

he chooses instead to listen to his post-pubescent advisers who have negligible appreciation of anything but the PPE and PR notes they cribbed and crammed at Uni barely yesterday. He is a puppet, a drone, a perfectly absent presence in the political debate, remotely controlled by children who have just graduated from CoD (Call of Duty) to HoC (House of Commons).  

It is no wonder then, that they find themselves abandoning all pretence of principle to wallow with any bedfellow in the No campaign in Scotland, and the ultimate irony is that the Labour Party in Scotland would prefer that Scotland is governed by Tories in London than the Labour Party in Scotland as a result.  

In Scotland we are blessed to have a referendum campaign that is provoking genuine democratic engagement, that is prompting people to educate and inform themselves and reflect critically on the evidence available to them, to consider and debate in a mature, respectful and responsible manner what is in their real interests and the interests of their children over the long as well as short term, and this is taking place irrespective of the outcome of the referendum.

The grassroots engagement underway in Scotland today is the model of real democracy that Ed Milliband should be looking to if he is seeking to revitalise our parliamentary institutions.