By and large I am prepared to disagree with anything Jeremy Corbyn says without listening. JC, in case you have been living in political detox, has been re-crowned as leader of the Labour Party in the UK. However, I sort of agree with him about this –
The BBC says: “Mr Corbyn said the relationship between an MP and their constituency was “complex” but added: “Let’s have a democratic discussion and, I think, the vast majority of MPs will have no problem whatsoever.” I shudder at the grammar but the general drift is interesting.
A typical Member of Parliament in the UK has been elected by about 25% of his constituents, bearing in mind those who don’t vote. An MP gets a large number of complaints from all his constituents. Some of these are stupid or vexatious but many are a cry from the heart. A constituent who has fallen through a crack in the government system and is sent from department to department without getting any satisfaction. An MP who can deal with this is dubbed “a good constituency MP”. This MP may damage his/her political career by spending too much time helping constituents.
But that wasn’t what JC meant. He meant that the minority of constituents who got the MP into parliament can boot out their MP on a whim – especially if that MP does not conform to their left wing agenda. He is right that the relationship is complex but there is a way of simplifying it and one increasingly adopted by the Conservatives.
Simply have an open meeting – that means open to people of all political persuasions – where a short list of candidates can introduce themselves and answer questions. Then the meeting votes to decide which candidate will be adopted. This gives an MP a greater degree of legitimacy across the whole range of constituents. Incidentally the Party is not duly concerned about the outcome as they chose the short list and, presumably, everyone on that list is acceptable.
Then a problem arises when an MP’s constituency interests conflict with Party interests. There’s no better example that the debate over expanding capacity at Heathrow. MPs may also have conflicts of interests between companies they work for and government policy.
So the relationship between MP and constituency is complex It’s fair to say that an MP has to serve too many masters. Not my words, I borrowed them from Homer.