How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't

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the HOC is a talking shop, a theatre, and an utter waste of time that serves no purpose except to distract people and act as a safe cul de sac for their energies and efforts. But it's not all doom and gloom because Ian Dunt offers us some solutions - they're not, as he readily admits, panaceas but they're not bad places to start. I received an ARC from the publishers in exchange for an honest review. It has not affected my opinions.

The book advances from there to talk about government institutions from ministries, the civil service and through those that deal with the journey of a bill which eventually becomes legislation. I was particularly impressed with the choice by the author to choose the latter route, since it seemed to be an ideal way to highlight the main problems with the system.

But crucially it looks at what is going wrong, what actually happens instead of what should in theory happen, and lastly what can be done about it. But what Ian Dunt does is break it down into chunks (electoral system, how MPs work, how ministers work, how law is created, etc), highlighting just how f**ked up each element of our 'democracy' truly is!!

Not all is bad in Westminster - the standing committee system works well and encourages cooperation across parties, with chairs being elected by the committees themselves and thus serving more as moderators and consensus builders with genuine interests in the subject matter. House of Lords helps to improve legislation but can be too easily overridden. It is all supported by a lot of research. Pretty much every point is underscored by at least one quote from someone within the political system (from all levels, parties, and departments.) This not only gives confidence that what's being said is correct, but also underscores the need for change.Statutory instruments (basically a different way of making law that doesn't involve reading a bill in parliament / with the amount of crutiny a normal piece of legislation has) has now become so overused by modern successive governments that a huge amount of our laws are simply being produced by dictat, with zero element of democracy weighing them down. One of the books I read earlier this year was George Sander's 'It's Okay To Be Angry About Capitalism' and I have to admit I read it with a certain amount of smugness regarding how relatively good things are politically in the UK in comparison to the utter chaos of American politics. I follow Ian Dunt on social media and now he has strong opinions but if anyone is worried that his personal feelings on the subject will be pushed in this book or make the book partisan, they need not worry. The book is presented in a straight forward, very evidence-led way with input from inside political figures from across the political spectrum. It does not laud one party and denigrate another, instead it points out the flaws that exist in the system, no matter who is in Government, and suggest some ways in which things could be improved for the benefit of all of us voters who, ate the moment, increasingly feel powerless, unrepresented and frustrated. The book is extremely approachable for everyone, you do not have to be especially politically savvy to understand what he is saying. Nor is it dry and dull, but lively and entertaining, whilst being absolutely rage-inducing at the same time (or maybe that last part is just me!)

Second, there is the evacuation of Kabul in 2021. You need to read the whole story yourselves, but for now here is the potted version. Boris Johnson told Parliament there was no military path to victory for the Taliban about a month after the French had started evacuating their people. The French were right. This was the domain of the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, the man who didn’t realise Dover was important for trade with Europe. He was on holiday when Kabul fell and was largely invisible the rest of the time. Britain owed a moral duty to the 75,000-150,000 Afghans who worked for the UK government or who supported UK objectives, such as judges, journalists and women’s rights activists. They were obvious targets for the Taliban and yet, through inaction and incompetence at the Foreign Office, we evacuated only 483. We have no idea how many of those we failed to help were murdered. I wonder if Raab's conscience is troubled by that. This book bravely charges into some complex procedures and rules and, in the circumstances, does an admirable job of explaining how they all link into the wider problems of the system of governance. Put simply, and addiction to traditionalism for the sake of it and complacency has bred a system that is Executive dominated with the pretence of genuine parliamentary democracy attached. Fabulously eye-opening, insightful and interesting. I feel like I've learnt tons from this. I've talked about this with family, friends, colleagues...it's one of those books. (And also there is something very oddly attractive about people who can spin all the political and legalistic detail and somehow create solutions no one else can see. I just eat that shit up.)Anyone sitting down to watch the news will get the sense that something has gone terribly wrong. We have prime ministers who detonate the economy, secretaries of state who are intellectually incapable of doing the job and MPs who seem temperamentally unsuited to the role. Expertise is denigrated. Lies are rewarded. And deep-seated, long-lasting national problems go permanently unresolved. Most of us have a sense that the system doesn’t work, but we struggle to articulate exactly why. Our political and financial system is cloaked in secrecy, archaic terminology, ancient custom and impenetrable technical jargon. This is an interesting and well put together account of how the UK's parliamentary system works and an eye-opening account of its many flaws. First, there is Chris Grayling’s 2013 privatisation of the parole service purely in the interests of his own political advancement. Experts queued up to explain that his reforms wouldn’t work but Grayling just didn’t care. From his perspective, he needed to implement a policy change swiftly, showing his own right-wing credentials, to position himself for a promotion in the next reshuffle. The consequence of Grayling’s privatisation was a breakdown in the capacity of the probation service to keep tab on probationers, resulting in a spike in reoffending. Human misery on an epic scale for the sake of one unimpressive man’s ambition.