Honourable behaviour not highly valued in today’s politics and that must change - William Wallace

Donald Trump and Republican politicians in control of the US Senate and state legislatures have bent the rules of constitutional government over the past four years. And since the presidential election, Trump has disputed his dismissal.

Here in the UK, Boris Johnson has also bent the rules and tried to change electoral regulations to give built-in advantages to the Conservatives in future elections.

In recent weeks several of the watchdogs for Britain’s constitutional conventions have spoken out. Jonathan Evans, the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life (and formerly director-general of the UK Security Service), warned that “some in our political leadership are choosing to disregard the norms of ethics and propriety that have explicitly governed public life for the last 25 years”.

Peter Riddell, the Commissioner for Public Appointments, told a Commons committee that he was concerned at ministerial office “tilting the balance of public appointments” in favour of friends.

The National Audit Office has just published a highly critical report on the way contracts for PPE have been awarded.

And the long-delayed report on accusations that Priti Patel bullied officials has led on publication to the resignation of the Prime Minister’s Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards, while the minister stays in office.

Challenged on these developments, Boris Johnson dismissed them as “trivia”. Melanie Phillips, a stolidly right-wing commentator, responded by accusing him of “showing contempt for the process of government and the public that it serves”.

In the 2016 referendum, Johnson campaigned to restore parliamentary sovereignty from the EU. In last December’s election he campaigned as a representative of the People against Parliament, having suspended Parliament only weeks after being appointed Prime Minister and then been forced to back down by the Supreme Court.

Since then Ministers have repeatedly claimed that they represent “the people” and are therefore not accountable to Parliament for their day-to-day actions – a revolutionary claim in constitutional terms. Donald Trump at least gained 48 per cent of the popular vote to support his contesting the outcome; Boris Johnson’s party won its Commons majority on less than 44 per cent.

American commentators have labelled the phenomenon of rich men pretending to be the “voice of the people” as plutocratic populism. Johnson and his closest supporters fit that description.

The Conservative Party now receives large donations from property developers, hedge funds and London-based Russians. Retiring Conservative ministers move on to lucrative consultancies and directorships – living among the financial elite even as they proclaim their close bonds with the people.

And this “chumocracy” of the past nine months has seen worrying evidence of favours being granted at public expense. The Conservative Party’s co-chairman has attacked the Electoral Commission, which limits party spending in campaigns, suggesting it should be abolished.

The Government is pushing through Parliament a bill to redraw constituency boundaries that they are confident will entrench advantages for the Conservatives in the next election.

Somewhere between six and nine million UK citizens are missing from the electoral register, so not taken into account in drawing these boundaries. The proportion of 18-year-olds on the register has sunk in the past five years, with even lower figures among young people from ethnic minorities.

Yet the Government has resisted proposals to encourage more young people to register – since they are less likely to support the Conservatives if they do so. We are not far from the voter suppression that Republicans have pursued in the United States.

We used to be proud of our unwritten constitution, which rested on the honourable behaviour of our elected representatives. Honourable behaviour is not highly valued in today’s politics, in Britain or the United States.

We will need tighter constitutional rules, and better political leaders, to re-establish honest government and public trust.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire is a Lib Dem peer, and served as a minister in the 2010-15 coalition government.

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