Parliament has now risen for the summer recess and the resultant vacuum of parliamentary news allows space for the traditional silly season of wider political news to dominate the headlines. To be honest, I’ve been rather disappointed by the silly season over the last few years. Journalists have been struggling to get behind one story or another so nothing has happened. But this year looks set to be a vintage year. The travails of the Labour Party leadership contest looks set to keep journalists and commentators busy until early September, when we have the results.
It would be wrong of me use this column to analyse the details of the Labour
Party’s problems, or use it to gloat at their very serious in-fighting. But it is right to use this opportunity to point out why it matters.
For a government to be good and effective, it needs its policies to be properly tested and debated. Challenge to every point, be it the broad principles or the minute details, is vital to ensure that those deciding the direction the country is taking are fully aware of alternative ideas, fully aware of pitfalls, and takes proper advantage of the experiences of all 650 MPs. Indeed so important is effective opposition that our constitution takes special note of its place in Parliament, giving the Leader of the Opposition proper status, with various trappings associated with government ministers. Opposition political parties are given extra money, used to pay for staff to support shadow misters to be effective.
So without effective opposition, governments can do pretty much what they want. If the Labour Party moves more to the left, would Conservatives fill the centre ground (my natural habitat) or would they move to the right?
The total lack of leadership and direction from Labour has resulted in a strange phenomenon. Without an effective opposition, the Scottish Nationalist Party has filled the void. We had the somewhat surreal stunt last week when the SNP hijacked Labour’s front benches in the chamber, filling the front and second rows behind the opposition despatch box with SNP MPs. But whilst it was amusing, it did highlight a serious point. The only effective opposition party at the moment is one committed to breaking up the Union. The sooner Labour sort themselves out, find an effective leader and then get behind him or her, the better for all of us.