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Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. Coming up.

Ruth Fox: There's a new sheriff in town. Kemi Badenoch takes on Keir Starmer at Prime Minister's Questions. We assess her debut as Leader of the Opposition.

Mark D'Arcy: How will the second coming of Donald Trump reverberate through the UK Parliament?

Ruth Fox: And we go to Belfast to hear from political expert David Phinnemore about the constitutional conundrum unfolding in Northern Ireland.

Mark D'Arcy: But first Ruth, Kemi Badenoch takes her first PMQs. [00:01:00] It's always an event when a new Leader of the Opposition steps up to the plate, or in this case, the despatch box, to question a Prime Minister, and it's always interesting and it's always dissected, and I don't think anybody should underestimate quite how difficult a gig it is.

Kemi Badenoch. Medium sized cabinet minister in the last government, always looked a bit like the front runner in the Conservative leadership election, once it was clear who the runners were, and once the electorate had eliminated other possible contenders. And there she was, standing in front of Sir Keir Starmer, trying to deliver a blow, establish herself, win the confidence of the troops behind her. Only a third of MPs had, more or less, had voted for her, in the election phase that took place amongst Conservative MPs before it went out to the members, so she had quite a lot at stake.

And I, I find myself remembering David Cameron's debut all those years ago against Tony Blair, where he immediately struck a blow by delivering quite an effective [00:02:00] line. He was the future once.

Ruth Fox: Yes, I mean, it must be nerve wracking. There's no way that, I don't care how established a politician you are, that you're not going to be nervous.

And she looked a bit nervous at the beginning, but she settled into it. Um, she said initially that, uh, she was going to lead a constructive opposition. Which, given her then line of attack, one might have said had a degree of sarcasm attached to it.

Mark D'Arcy: It lasted about two sentences.

Ruth Fox: Yes, because she then sort of went for, off the back of the news about Donald Trump's election in the US, she then went for the criticism of David Lammy as Foreign Secretary because he'd made some, shall we say, disobliging remarks about the President some while ago.

And she tried a line about would the prime minister agree to, uh, invite the new president to address parliament, which you can imagine will be, if that happens, that'd be quite a controversial move. Then she moved on to the question of defence and asserted that, uh, in the budget speech last week, the chancellor of the exchequer had not [00:03:00] referred to defences.

Mark D'Arcy: I think what she may have been attempting to do was say that there wasn't a government commitment to raise defence spending as a share of gross domestic product. But that wasn't what she said. And I think actually what you saw there in those exchanges was two weaknesses that may well become apparent if she doesn't tighten up the game a bit. First of all, you know, that was an incredibly avoidable error to say they didn't refer to defence in the budget. They obviously did refer to defence in the budget several times. So she needed to be much more precise in what she was saying there and get her line of attack absolutely right, otherwise you just get cut off at the knees. But her first line of attack also struck me as a little bit dangerous for her.

One, it was a little bit student politicky. In fact, it actually got the normally quite leaden footed Keir Starmer almost twinkle toed by his standards, saying that she's just given a master class in student politics. But also, I just think it's a dangerous business for Kemi [00:04:00] Badenoch, famously, you know, someone who shoots from the hip, to go rummaging around in somebody else's back catalogue of indiscreet statements. So, she needs to be a little bit careful about that, because plenty of the things that she said off the cuff in previous years will be used in evidence against her if she doesn't. So, I think it was wise to choose the subject of Donald Trump, given that he was in the news, because it got her into the news reporting of the re election of Donald Trump on a day where her debut at Prime Minister's Question Time might otherwise have been completely overshadowed by that event, might not have got a mention at all. So it was a wise choice of general subject, but I think not necessarily the greatest choice of precise line of attack.

Ruth Fox: One of the other things that struck me, she then moved on to a question in relation to the budget about farmers and about this whole business about inheritance tax and how it's going to affect family farmers and whether they're going to be able to pass their farms on to the next generation and so on.

One of the things that struck me about that was the wall of sound [00:05:00] that she faced. It's quite difficult to discern when you're just listening to it on Parliament Live or on the BBC Parliament channel, but some people in the press gallery were suggesting that when she started asking this question, there was an orchestrated attempt on the Labour benches, which shall we describe as, as were farm yard noises, to try and put her off.

Which is, petty, not very pleasant, puerile, not even student politics, it's sort of nursery politics, but from her perspective, you know, 400 MPs across, across the chamber, she is going to face that week in, week out. And from Keir Starmer's perspective, you're saying about him being twinkle toed, there was a sense, I think, that he'd actually raised his game.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, yeah, I think something different has happened here. In his early PMQs before this, there Keir Starmer's been facing someone who he knows is in the departure lounge. Rishi Sunak was always going to go. And that kind of drained the energy a bit out of their exchanges. And you saw that not just with Sir Keir Starmer, who, you know, even for his [00:06:00] first few question times, occasionally referred to Rishi Sunak as the Prime Minister, in a sort of piece of muscle memory operating.

But it also, I think, affected Labour backbenchers. It also drained a bit of the atmosphere from that.

Ruth Fox: Well, it's a bit, it's a bit difficult. It must feel quite uncomfortable if you're sort of, you're, it's almost like attacking an injured animal, isn't it?

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, I think there's something in that, kicking a man when he's down, etc.

But you did start to see the kind of levels of political partisanship you can get when the Commons is so unbalanced as between government MPs and opposition MPs. In the budget, when Rachel Reeves got up and Rishi Sunak was making a critique there, there was this kind of wall of sound. And I think it, it was also there at this PMQs.

So we've got a new factor in the debate, which is the sheer weight of numbers of Labour MPs in the chamber will make it very difficult sometimes for Conservative spokespersons to make headway at the despatch box. They will find themselves drowned out by this wave of sound. Unless Mr Speaker is very strong in quieting them down, and he will need to be, because otherwise that advantage could, um, [00:07:00] drown out the opposition.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. You also saw the select committees meeting this week for the first time. You also saw the balance of numbers there in terms of the number of questions obviously coming from Labour members as opposed to other parties, but particularly seeing it also in legislative committees. These public bill committees, you know, in one of the sort of the back corridors of the House of Commons, not really attended much by the media.

You're no longer there, so nobody turns up. Yeah. They're not a focus of journalistic attention, but if you actually watch them, you know, a bit like the chamber, the parties sit on opposite sides, whereas the select committee is less

Mark D'Arcy: It's more of a horseshoe. There's a continuum between the parties.

Ruth Fox: That political parties sit next to each other is not problematic, but in legislative committees it mirrors more of the Commons style seating arrangements, and you see there the actual political imbalance now between the parties.

It really drives it home.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, it's got a couple of implications. One is that any opposition grouping is going to feel totally outgunned. But secondly, you know, a lot of the Labour MPs there may feel a bit like they're just pure voting fodder. [00:08:00] Well, they are just pure voting fodder. There's nothing particularly new in that in committees.

They're just expected to put their arm up and build committees at a given moment and do as they're told. But it's much harder to have a role. It's much harder, I think, for them to get in talking about a particular hobby horse of theirs on a particular bill.

Ruth Fox: Mm.

Mark D'Arcy: And you, you'd have to work a lot harder to make any kind of mark in, in that process.

Ruth Fox: And I think some of them have, have, the new MPs in particular, have found it quite hard with the budget debate, which concluded this week. And then on the final day of debate, there were so many MPs who wanted to take part. They were reduced to three minutes each. You could see the frustration on some of the new members that they hadn't got much time to say what they wanted to say, the frustrations on the part of the deputy speakers. Don't keep coming to me asking when, you know, you're going to be able to speak. Talk to the whips and you can see those frustrations.

Mark D'Arcy: Welcome to the House of Commons, guys.

Ruth Fox: Indeed. With that, Mark, shall we turn to the implications of the second coming of Donald Trump?

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, [00:09:00] the Donald is back and this time apparently it's going to be personal, or so we were assured during the election campaign. It's going to be fascinating. As we were reminded at Prime Minister's Question Time, quite a large number of Labour figures, indeed some Liberal Democrats and others, were over in America taking part in the campaign in one capacity or another.

And one thing they always do is bring back lessons. And I can think of a couple of examples. Political lessons.

Ruth Fox: Go on then.

Mark D'Arcy: That, uh, really ought to be taken on board by the government. The first of them is that the electorate seems to have very little tolerance these days for governments that don't manage to make their lives better.

And an increased willingness to change horses where that's the case. No incumbent party in all these recent elections seems to have survived. The wrath of the electorate and you can talk all you like about, Oh, it's the backwash of the pandemic. It's not our fault. The voters don't seem to be having any of it.

And it's happened to the Democrats in the shape of Kamala Harris. It may happen [00:10:00] to the German government, which is just about in a state of collapse. Now it may happen to the government in the Republic of Ireland, but there's a very serious lesson there that if this lot don't knuckle down and deliver, they could go the way of Kamala Harris quite soon.

A second lesson, uh, it might not quite apply in the same direct way, but if Donald Trump can come back from all the shenanigans of his presidency

Ruth Fox: Oh no, no, no, no.

Mark D'Arcy: January the 6th.

Ruth Fox: I know where you're going with this.

Mark D'Arcy: If he can come back from that, maybe we can see a second coming of Boris Johnson. Maybe even disgrace can be overcome.

Because in Donald Trump's case, it certainly was, and Boris and the Donald are, to some extent, mates, insofar as such a thing can happen at all. That's a lesson that will be taken, perhaps by him, but certainly by his supporters. And so, watch out British politics, because if Kemi Badenoch falters and the Conservatives are looking round for a saviour in the run up to the next election.

Well, uh, a certain blonde haired gentleman might decide to come down from Mount Olympus and [00:11:00] rejoin again. Make the supreme sacrifice of offering himself up to become our next Prime Minister.

Ruth Fox: Yes. Well, I, I mean, I suspect I suspect from Boris's perspective, well, first of all, he's got to obviously get back into Parliament, which the Donald didn't have to do.

He can run from outside the legislature. And I suspect Boris at least probably wouldn't want to take a seat for probably 12 to 18 months before a likely election because that would curtail his financial interests on what I suspect.

Mark D'Arcy: And also you've got to give the current incumbent leader a bit of a go to see what will happen.

Ruth Fox: I can't see him wanting to staff delegated legislation committees and the like. I mean, we're joking, but with a degree of seriousness attached, but there's, there's also a sort of a broader point to draw from this election is what happens to political accountability if you can be a convicted felon, if you can be, for all intents and purposes, an insurrectionist, somebody who attempted to overturn your nation's constitution, supported, albeit indirectly, the invasion of your own national legislature, and yet can be [00:12:00] returned to office with the not just the Electoral College in his case, but the popular vote.

He surpassed the position he had won in 2016. He's performed better. Working for an organization supporting parliamentary democracy, you do have to ask the question whither political accountability.

Mark D'Arcy: Depends how you spell wither, I suppose, in this context. But there is that. I mean, in the case of Boris Johnson, he left Parliament after it had been found that he had deliberately misled MPs, which is supposed to be the unforgivable sin.

For a minister, let alone a prime minister, and sanctions might in theory be outstanding against him. But on the other hand, if he's returned from a constituency by the voters, I think that washes clean all sins, essentially. The parliamentary authorities would take the view, well, the voters know that and they voted for him anyway, were he to get in, therefore he can come in and do whatever he wants.

Ruth Fox: But I think there's also a sort of a broader point [00:13:00] that this idea of a strong man in politics, we shouldn't sit here in the UK thinking that it wouldn't happen here. As you say, if this government doesn't deliver, the previous government, the Conservatives, I think, four or five years on, are still going to be remembered for what happened during the pandemic.

They're still going to be remembered for the lack of trust. They're still going to be remembered for the economic failings. It is going to take a lot to wipe away that record. That will linger. If Labour fails as well, you're in the position where, in two successive parliaments, the two major parties have not, in the electorate's eyes, risen to the occasion.

Mark D'Arcy: They've been tried and found wanting.

Ruth Fox: Tried and found wanting.

What then? What then? And back in, was it 2018, the Hansard Society, we had our annual audit of political engagement, a survey of, we had a survey of, what the public think about politics, politicians, parliament. We've been doing it for sort of 16, 17 years at that point.

So we had a lot of data to look back at. And we asked the question, would the public support, did they believe that Britain needed a strong leader willing to break the rules? Now [00:14:00] that was a question at the height of Britain's Brexit, and we asked it because it had been asked in Australia and got surprising results, I thought, and thought it'd be interesting to ask.

And we found in, back in 2018, 54 percent of the British public, aged 18 and above, said Britain needs a strong leader willing to break the rules. Now, It might have dropped back a bit from that, but I think we would be kidding ourselves if we thought that there wasn't an appetite in some quarters of the electorate for that.

Mark D'Arcy: I think enthusiasm for a strongman leadership is only possible for those who haven't experienced it. I think that the idea that someone can come in and sweep away all this footling parliamentary opposition and do what needs to be done depends on your definition of what needs to be done. And whether or not you're in the way of it.

Whether or not what needs to be done involves expropriating your property rather than somebody else's property, perhaps. Or conscripting your children into a war somewhere because it needs to be done. Very careful to go down that road.

Ruth Fox: Absolutely, but if you look at the sort of the [00:15:00] views of younger people and the surveys that have come out in recent years, they are not as attached to the democratic principles and democratic norms as older voters.

They don't have the experience of the post war world, they don't have the experience of the Cold War, they don't have the experience of having to fight for democracy and seeing some of these great fights for democracy around the world unfold. Therefore, you know, the bonds of attachment to the concept of democracy are weaker.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah That makes me quite scared sometimes because I think it is genuinely the case And equally we've no experience of how this works until it's wreaked upon us And when it is it's too late The strong person leader is in charge and will send their goons in to beat you up if you disagree

Ruth Fox: Yeah, well, stopping short of the sort of the violence, but you could also make a case that the electorate looking on would say, well, actually the state has not shone in recent years.

If the state can wreak the havoc of the post office horizon scandal and affect people's [00:16:00] lives to that degree, and there'll be people apparently no justice for so many years and they'll still be dragging on and on, you can have the Infected Blood Compensation Scandal and the state covers it up, as it did over things like Hillsborough.

The state itself can perform injustices against citizens and if you don't then get accountability for it, that leads people to lose faith in the state and government and democracy.

Mark D'Arcy: Well maybe the thing to do is watch. Donald Trump, perhaps, attempts to perform a kind of live experiment in trying to be a strong person leader in a state that still has democratic institutions around it.

Will he find the U. S. Senate, the U. S. House of Representatives, the U. S. Supreme Court occasionally say no to him, or are they now so in his thrall that none of those things will occur? It'll be well worth watching events across the Atlantic, because that might be interesting. Perhaps start to put a few people off the glories of strong person leadership.

But let's look at a few more Donald Trump implications, because he does of course come with a policy [00:17:00] program attached to him. It's not a particularly detailed one, but he has talked about increasing tariffs on imported goods, including Presumably imported goods from this country. So that would be the clobber British export industries He has talked about being far less committed to defending nato allies So there may be a much more isolationist tone to his foreign policy Which may mean that europe basically finds itself on its own So there are all sorts of really major policy implications The government and indeed parliament may have to start grappling with I think in the first instance It'll be the Select committee system in Parliament that starts looking at what ifs.

What if NATO is seriously weakened or even abandoned by a Trump administration? What if a Trump administration starts slapping 10 20 percent tariffs on British goods exported to America and British industry starts to wilt? Should we retaliate? Should we be forming new defence alliances? What do we do?

Ruth Fox: Yeah. [00:18:00] I mean, I thought it was interesting that, um, on the day of his election, the government was presenting for first reading a bill for financial assistance to Ukraine, which is actually a package that they need legislative authority for, for Britain's share of the sum of money that's been committed by the G7 nations.

So I think it's about 50 billion, and we're providing just under 3 billion of that. And it's all apparently going to be recovered from profits on assets that that we've effectively sequestered, at a European level, from the Russian government. But I did wonder to myself, of all the days they could have presented this bill, was this a, was this, you know, pure happenchance, or was this actually a signal?

But I think that's probably one of the big immediate questions that's gonna be asked, is what's gonna happen to defence spending, which of course is what Kemi Badenoch raised at PMQs. But then the wider question of what's going to happen in terms of supporting Ukraine, and therefore the broader questions about security in Europe, and that will then reopen questions about our relationship with our European allies, and how this is all, defence and security is all mixed up with the wider economic questions of our relationship [00:19:00] with the EU now that we are a third country.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, all that is well worth a lot of scrutiny, but the context has changed a bit I think. Back in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected, remember without an actual majority of the popular vote, Hillary Clinton actually got more votes than he did. It was all to do with the Electoral College that he became the president.

But then it was possible to dismiss that as an aberration, an accident. And four years later, Joe Biden comes along and European leaders decide that rhyme and reason reigns once more. But now four years on from that, we've got Donald Trump again. So maybe it was Joe Biden who was the aberration, and maybe America has decisively taken a much more isolationist turn both in trade policy and in defence policy and the nations of Europe

Ruth Fox: and presumably will in climate policy as well.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, yeah, absolutely climate policy. I have a theory that as the polar ice melts and the waters rise to waist level in the Oval Office, Donald Trump will find a way to blame liberals for it.

But leaving that [00:20:00] aside, if this is not an aberration, if this is what America is now going to be like, How does the rest of the world accommodate itself to the, effectively, the withdrawal from so many international systems of what was once the indispensable nation?

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and um, I guess, I wouldn't say a winner necessarily, but an MP whose position is advantaged by all of this, of course, is Nigel Farage as, shall we say, the Trump whisperer in the UK Parliament.

The person who's got the personal ties to Donald Trump, the person who's got the relationships and the links in the UK, into that sort of inner circle and, uh, interestingly there's a story in the press this week that, uh, he might be trying to persuade Donald Trump to nix the Chagos Islands deal, which of course he's opposed to, um, giving up, as he sees it, sovereignty of the Chagos Islands and this military strategic base in relation to Diego Garcia, which the Biden administration had sanctioned and, uh, suggested that, that Nigel Farage, who's opposed to it, may try and intervene. So we, we will [00:21:00] see, but I, I think, I think it's interesting whether Keir Starmer is willing to, uh, or wants to even contemplate utilising that linkage or, or not.

Mark D'Arcy: Diligent listeners to this podcast may recall a few months ago, when we interviewed the former Foreign Secretary, Dr David Owen, one of the things that he suggested was that it might be possible to employ Nigel Farage as a Trump whisperer, but that was, of course, before Nigel Farage was returned to Parliament.

Indeed, while Nigel Farage was still saying he didn't want to come in as an MP, at that point it would have been quite easy to make him a British ambassador had anybody wanted to. If he was to become Britain's ambassador to America, that's an office of profit under the crown. He'd have to retire as an MP.

Ruth Fox: I don't think they'll go that far.

Mark D'Arcy: Don't think it's on the cards, exactly. And it's very difficult for a government to employ a political rival.

Ruth Fox: Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: As some kind of official back channel.

Ruth Fox: I think it's more likely a back channel though than an official post, I suspect.

Mark D'Arcy: That suggestion is mostly an opportunity for Labour ministers to make cracks about, well, maybe you should be spending more time in Clacton.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. But this question [00:22:00] about, that we've seen in the US, about how the politicians on the, the, the the left engage with their particular voters and how they treat working class voters, essentially, and how they treat this populism reverberates here in terms of how our politicians engage with voters and the kinds of discussions that they have.

The, you know, the way that, the language that she used, the attitude, the tone. They are going to have to think, I think, quite carefully, but this idea of being quite dismissive and a sense of superiority, you know, a little bit like sometimes missionaries beating the natives.

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, well, there is definitely, um, that kind of subtext to a lot of the ways in which some of the traditional parties address working class voters.

And it doesn't sound great. And it doesn't really work. So there are lots of good reasons to be very careful about how engagement is done. And also to make sure that you're actually continuing to make sure that working class people get into Parliament, it doesn't become entirely the preserve of middle class PPE [00:23:00] graduates.

But I do think that the scenario we were talking about a little while ago, that if the Conservative government is seen to have failed, and the subsequent Labour government is seen to have failed, people shouldn't underrate the possibility of Reform becoming at least a major factor in the next government after that, a nation turning its lonely eyes to Nigel.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, well with that Mark, shall we take a short break? But um, listeners as we've, we've been talking about Kemi Badenoch and her new role as leader of the opposition, just a heads up that in just a few days time you'll be able to listen to a special bonus episode that we've recorded with Nigel Fletcher of the Centre for Opposition Studies about this whole question of the role of the leader of the opposition and what Kemi Badenoch may do next.

But for the moment we'll take a short break and be back in a minute.

Mark D'Arcy: See you then.

And Ruth, we're back. And diligent listeners to this pod will know that from time to time we've banged on about the non appearance of one of the critical documents about the way politics operates. And that is the [00:24:00] Ministerial Code. The rules drawn up by the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer in this instance, about how his ministers should behave, the do's and don'ts of ministerial ethics, and the mechanism for enforcing them. Well, kaboom, that document has now emerged before a waiting world and it's full of exciting details and full of crucial changes that may tighten up, at least a bit, the system for keeping ministers under control.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I think the exciting and tighten up a bit stand in an interesting juxtaposition.

But you've got to be quite nerdy to be excited by this. But nonetheless, it's only come out in the, as we're recording on a Thursday, it's only come out in the last 24 hours. I've not had a chance to read it cover to cover yet. I thought it was interesting timing, launching it on the day where the news is so taken up by other issues, because this is quite a big deal in terms of addressing the ethical standards, both of the last government and the challenges that this new government has faced.

But nonetheless, there we are. They chose to do it on an otherwise busy news day. I think. Just to [00:25:00] flag some of the important changes that, interestingly, the seven principles of public life that we've talked about on the podcast before.

Mark D'Arcy: And you can of course tell us what they are.

Ruth Fox: I can because I remembered to write them down this time, unlike previous podcasts where I hadn't got the note in front of me.

The seven principles of public life, selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership. These have been moved, in effect, from the back of the document to the front. So they used to be in, in, in the ministerial code, and they were taken out by the Johnson government and essentially put in like an appendix, which you might say was, uh,

Mark D'Arcy: Interesting piece of symbolism.

Ruth Fox: Yes, quite. They're now sort of front and center. So as you read the document, that is the framing of the approach, the, the, the, I think the big change that stands out is that the Independent Advisor on Ministerial Interests is going to be able to do his own inquiries, which is something that campaign groups have called for.

In the past, it's required the Prime Minister [00:26:00] to ask him to undertake an inquiry. Kind of push the red button.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, this is a problem, you should look into it. They can't just say, hang on, there's something fishy going on over there, I want to investigate and go and do it.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, so I think that is an important change.

But the downside is it's not clear what the sanctions are. Um, you know, the Prime Minister can still effectively ignore the reports of the advisor if, if he wants. And of course you'll recall in the last um, Parliament there was the case, I think it was Priti Patel, who'd had a bullying report against her, and the Prime Minister didn't act on it.

And the independent advisor at that time resigned as a consequence. So there are political consequences that flow if the Prime Minister obviously doesn't follow through.

Mark D'Arcy: But, but I don't think any Prime Minister is going to want to be tied to a, a, a specific table. No, it's actually a, a minister who does the following evil sins shall suffer death by being thrown into, you know, none of, none of that is there.

I mean, the key point is the Prime Minister retains discretion.

None: Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: So a future minister caught bullying or whatever could basically be told, go forth and sin no more.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. [00:27:00] Yeah, yeah. There's also a duty of candour in relation to ministers relationships with Parliament in terms of their obligations to select committees and being transparent and open and so on, answering parliamentary questions in a timely way.

Another important change, the declaration of ministerial interest will now be quarterly rather than every six months, so that will make sure that things come to light more quickly, and the hospitality and gifts that are that have to be recorded by ministers if they receive them has to be now monthly.

That is going to require some commitment of time on the part of ministers to make sure they keep those registers up to date and do it properly.

Mark D'Arcy: Always a goldmine for journalists to discover who's been in the director's box at a football match, who's gone to see the La Traviata at Glyndebourne or whatever it is.

Ruth Fox: So I think there are some important developments. We're still no wiser about what the government's medium to long term intentions are in terms of this idea of having a, an ethics and integrity body, which was promised. There's [00:28:00] no sort of word yet as to what might happen there.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, I mean, one change that I would like to see, actually, is to beef up the Prime Minister's advisor on the Ministerial Code, so there's someone who has to be appointed with the consent of the relevant Parliamentary Committee.

In this case, it would presumably be the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. There are one or two figures now, who parliamentary select committees can veto. I think there was a big kerfuffle a while ago when the Office for Budget Responsibility was created in the George Osborne era and uh Andrew Tyrie then the chair of the Treasury Select Committee secured for his committee a veto over that appointment. So this person who's supposed to sort of safeguard the honesty of financial figures could be vetoed if the Treasury Committee didn't think he was tough enough.

I think a parallel chain of logic for the advisor on ministerial standards would be a very good thing. Make sure this person is speaking not just as the prime minister's creature, but as the creature of parliament.

Ruth Fox: Hmm. I mean, that would be a big step. But I think there's actually a wider question that this parliament is going to have to deal with.

And possibly [00:29:00] it's a role for the liaison committee, the committee of chairs of select committees, that the government is establishing a number of, of new bodies, new, new organizations, new offices. This new Office for Value for Money, I think it's called, that the Treasury is proposing to set up. It was announced at the time of the budget, for example.

And the question about democratic accountability of who's running these bodies There is a list that has been agreed with the government of people like the head of the OBR and, um, you know, various other regulatory type bodies.

Mark D'Arcy: Key quangocrats..

Ruth Fox: For pre appointment hearings by select committees.

Government can still go ahead and appoint people if they want, even if they get a negative report from the select committee, but there are political consequences that flow from that. And if you were the appointee and the select committee said you weren't fit, you'd be a pretty brave person to carry on.

So I think given that the, there are these new bodies being created, I think the select committee system through the, the liaison committee really needs to sort of take a landscape, [00:30:00] look at what's happening and suggest to government that they need to review that list. And, and refresh it.

Mark D'Arcy: Of course, it's the stuff of American political dramas that there are confirmation hearings in the US Senate for big officials appointed by presidents and they can actually block. Uh, we have the slightly feeble pre appointment hearing, where the sanctions are, if you like, kind of moral, rather than being able to directly block an appointment. There are pros and cons, I suppose, to having it either way, but I'd like to see the select committee system get a bit more of a grip on the quangocracy than we have at the moment.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Well, Mark, with that, shall we take a break? And when we come back, we're going to talk about the democratic consent vote in Northern Ireland, which we've talked about a little, mentioned on previous podcasts, but, uh, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn, has initiated the process. So we thought we ought to, uh, have a bit of an explainer on it and find out what's happening.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, a slow moving, Not exactly constitutional crisis, but certainly constitutional conundrum that's [00:31:00] just about to start in Northern Ireland and could in the long term have quite big implications. So, uh, watch this space.

Ruth Fox: See you then.

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Mark D'Arcy: [00:32:00] Well Ruth, we're back. Now remember all those rows about the status of Northern Ireland that followed the Brexit referendum? How to simultaneously keep an open border with the Republic of Ireland, which of course remained an EU country, and with the newly separate internal market of Great Britain. The eventual solution, after much to ing and fro ing, was the Windsor Framework, formerly the Northern Ireland Protocol.

It formed a very contentious part of the Brexit divorce agreement between the UK and the EU. and came into effect in January 2021.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and as part of that deal, members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, or MLAs, members of the Legislative Assembly, as they're known, were given an opportunity to decide whether a core part of the Windsor Framework should continue, and that democratic consent vote is now coming home to roost.

The Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, has just invited the Assembly to vote on whether key parts of the Framework should continue to be applied. Is there any danger they'll throw it out? [00:33:00] And what happens if there isn't cross community consent from Unionists under what Northern Ireland's delicate devolution arrangements?

Well, for answers to these questions, we've turned to David Phinnemore, Professor of European Politics at Queen's University Belfast, to help us understand what's happening. And we began by asking him why this issue was so sensitive in Northern Ireland.

David Phinnemore: It's not just about the issues on the ground in terms of what goods may be available or what difficulties you might actually encounter in trying to secure some of them.

For many people it's an identity issue. Okay, if you're a unionist, then what we're seeing with the Protocol, Windsor Framework, is differentiated treatment of Northern Ireland. It's being treated differently to the rest of the UK. And this then leads people to think, okay, this is undermining Northern Ireland's position within the United Kingdom.

This is on the back the implementation of Belfast Good Friday Agreement, which for some people within unionism see this as something which is benefiting far more nationalists, and for some people, they'd even see it as this sort of stepping [00:34:00] stone to a united Ireland, and any sort of further differentiated treatment of Northern Ireland is just reinforcing that process.

For many nationalists, the Protocol Windsor Framework is important because it keeps the border open, and what they're interested in long term is a united Ireland and therefore what they would not want brexit to actually have resulted in is any sort of reversal of that process by putting a border on the island so you have different perspectives. Clearly for many unionists the lack of support for the Protocol Windsor Framework is reinforced by the fact that the nature of the wider UK EU relationship means to say that you have to have customs controls, checks on quality of goods coming into Northern Ireland because the UK as a whole is outside of the single market with the EU.

It's outside of a customs union. And that means you get this Irish Sea border and that has psychological impacts because what state imposes a customs border within its boundaries. But also it does mean to say you do [00:35:00] have some difficulties arising in the movement of goods. And so we do see examples where it's more difficult to get certain goods coming into Northern Ireland from Great Britain.

So traditional supply routes in some cases are disrupted. We see new arrangements being introduced on the movement of pets from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. And while this may not actually impact on a lot of people, it does rankle with many unionists who just see this as an unnecessary requirement to restrict movement within the United Kingdom.

Mark D'Arcy: David, take it slow for me, but what exactly is this forthcoming vote in the Assembly? And what might be the consequences that flow from it?

David Phinnemore: The vote arises out of the Protocol Windsor Framework itself. Because when it was agreed, the UK government wanted to give, uh, the Northern Ireland Assembly an opportunity to decide whether it wanted to continue with the arrangements.

And basically what was agreed was that potentially every four years, they would vote. And they would vote [00:36:00] in particular on whether they wanted the arrangements governing the free movement of goods into the EU market, so the open Irish border, to continue. And as part of that, were they were willing to keep Northern Ireland subject to the range of EU laws that apply under the protocol.

So we're getting to the end of the first four years of the Protocol Windsor framework being in force. And this then triggers the opportunity for the Northern Ireland Assembly to vote on the protocol. whether they want to continue with these key arrangements. It's important to say this isn't on the entirety of the Protocol Windsor Framework, it's only on those provisions, central as they are, that govern the movement of goods essentially across the Irish border, and also what we refer to as the single electricity market on the island of Ireland.

Mark D'Arcy: So the vote that's coming up is almost of ratification, or um, should we continue?

David Phinnemore: The Windsor Protocol, as it was known then, was essentially agreed as part of the Withdrawal Agreement which went through with the vote of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. It [00:37:00] was not something which was explicitly endorsed by the Northern Ireland Assembly, essentially because the agreement is between the UK and the EU and therefore it is to the Parliament in the UK to sign off on the agreement.

But what, as I said earlier, what was agreed as part of this was this opportunity to give Northern Ireland members of the Legislative Assembly, Stormont, the opportunity to vote. on the arrangements for their continuation. It's an interesting piece of legislation because obviously what you're giving here is a devolved legislature, not an assembly, the power to decide whether an aspect of the UK's international obligations continues to apply or not.

Ruth Fox: David, can we just talk through sort of the mechanics of how this is going to work? So at the end of last month, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn, formally notified the First and Deputy First Ministers and the Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly that the time for this consent vote was upon us.

As I understand it, the First and Deputy First Ministers have got to jointly table a motion at the Assembly for [00:38:00] democratic consent to continue to apply to the articles of the Windsor Framework that are at the heart of this. And then the Assembly is going to have to vote on that. But it's not quite as simple as, you know, a yes or no, because if there's a majority for it or not.

There's also, in the context of Northern Ireland politics, this concept of cross community support for it. Can you just unpack that for us?

David Phinnemore: Okay, the first thing to say is the provisions of Article 18 of the Protocol Windsor Framework allow for an opportunity for the Northern Ireland Assembly to vote on the continuation of Articles 5 to 10.

So basically what the Secretary of State did was launch the process and say in the first instance to the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, do you want to lay a motion? And they have until the end of November to decide whether they do want to lay a motion and that would then trigger a vote. If they don't lay a motion, it can be up to a single MLA, member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, to table the motion instead, in which case you then have to have the vote.[00:39:00]

I think it's by the 16th or 16th, 17th of December. So the bottom line here is someone's going to do it. Someone will probably do it. Certainly the leader of the Social Democratic Labour Party, Matthew Atul, has indicated that he would lay the motion if there isn't one that's forthcoming from the First Minister and Deputy First Minister.

Now, let's assume that a motion is laid, which is by the way, likely to be the case, then MLAs get to vote, and there's two ways in which you can create a majority. One is if there's just a simple majority of those attending and voting, then we basically have the democratic consent. But MLAs will then be given an opportunity after four years to revisit the question if they wish to.

If, however, we get cross community consent, which is a majority of those present, plus normally a majority of those who identify as unionist, those who identify as nationalist, both support the motion. Then we have what we refer to as cross community consent, and that would then mean that the next available opportunity to vote on the continuation of these arrangements would [00:40:00] be after eight years.

But in all likelihood, assuming there is a vote, we would see a simple majority. This reflects the fact that most unionists are opposed to the continuation of these core provisions of the Protocol Windsor Framework. Indeed, those who identify as strongly unionist, many of them would actually prefer the whole Windsor Framework Protocol arrangements to be scrapped.

Ruth Fox: Just on that, David, if the Assembly were to reject the motion, which might be unlikely given current polling numbers, but if it were to reject, what would happen then?

David Phinnemore: Well, the default position is that the provisions of Articles 5 to 10, so those governing the free movement to goods across the Irish border and also the single electricity market, would automatically cease to apply from the 1st of January 2027.

Now, in the interim period, what you would have is the UK and the EU trying to identify necessary measures which they would take in order to achieve the objectives of the Protocol Windsor Framework, which essentially is to avoid a hard border, [00:41:00] on the island of Ireland. Now, in the absence of them finding or adopting necessary measures, then the relationship will default to the trade and cooperation agreement.

Put simply, what that would mean is that the arrangements governing the movement of goods across the Irish border would revert to what's happening between Dover and Calais and Calais and Dover.

Ruth Fox: More complicated.

David Phinnemore: More complicated, and you basically have checks, controls, formalities on the movement of goods.

So it's exactly what Protocol Windsor Framework was designed to avoid in terms of the Irish border.

Mark D'Arcy: Actual border posts needing to be built on the Irish border.

David Phinnemore: Well yeah, so if you go back to the, one of the key reasons why we have the Protocol Windsor Framework is to avoid a hard border, and that is seen as any sort of physical infrastructure.

Partly because logistically it's very difficult to manage. There's also the psychological impact of that because for many people the absence of infrastructure on the border is very much a symbol of the peace process. And we know from the early post referendum period, considerable opposition, particularly amongst board [00:42:00] communities, to seeing any return to a hard border on the island of Ireland.

Ruth Fox: So to recap, David, if the Assembly rejects the motion, then we're back into the trade agreement and the prospect of a hard border. If the motion is passed with a majority of Assembly members and a majority within each community, unionist and nationalist, then in effect, the arrangements continue and will be in place for another eight years before the Assembly is asked to consider them again.

And then there's this third scenario, which I think politically at the moment is thought to be the most likely outcome, which is if the motion passes with a simple majority, but there isn't a majority within each community because many of the unionists are likely to oppose it. So it won't have cross community support.

So that will reduce the time for the next consent vote to four years. But then they'd also, as I understand it, kicks off a sort of an internal review process in London by the Secretary of State. And what is that going to entail? Do we [00:43:00] know?

David Phinnemore: When the protocol was adopted, the UK government at the time committed to hold a review, if there was only a simple majority in favor of continuing application of Articles 5 to 10, and that review would be into the functioning of the then protocol. And the idea was you try and find ways through that review for solutions which might actually secure in due course cross community support. Now, originally, the plan was for that review to sort of, I think, conclude midway through that four year period.

But under the Safeguarding the Union Deal earlier this year, the UK government brought forward the review so that within a month of the outcome of this forthcoming vote being known, the Secretary of State is to appoint the chair of that review, and then the review is to report within six months. So it's brought it forward.

What the Safeguarding the Union deal also did was not only commit the UK government to require that review to look at the functioning of the Protocol Windsor Framework, but also potentially to [00:44:00] look at the wider implications of the Protocol Windsor Framework for Northern Ireland's position within the United Kingdom.

The important thing to say there is that there's a May related to that, and it's going to be interesting to see what exactly the remit of the review is when the Secretary of State appoints the chair, presumably by the middle of January.

Ruth Fox: Has Hilary Benn said anything about this in any detail or is it all still to be decided and announced after the vote?

David Phinnemore: I've not seen anything and I doubt there would be anything said until we actually get the outcome of the vote. We're still to find out whether there will be a vote because no motion as far as I'm aware has yet been tabled. The interesting thing with the review is that it is very much an internal UK review. This is not something which is a joint review between the UK and the EU. However, the UK government, under the provisions for the review as laid down in the statutory instrument, is committed to ensuring that any recommendations are raised with the joint [00:45:00] committee between the UK and the EU, which ensures the implementation of the withdrawal agreement.

That said, there's clearly going to be no obligation on the part of the EU to act on any of the recommendations, although the UK government clearly want to ensure that they are very much aware of them, and I'm sure there'll be pressure from elsewhere for them to at least acknowledge and potentially take some action to try and address them.

Mark D'Arcy: What might happen next? Will it all be kicked into touch while this review goes on? Might the unionist parties want to show their displeasure in some way, perhaps even by collapsing the institutions of devolution again, as they've done before on different issues?

David Phinnemore: I can't, given the politics at the moment, see the unionists wanting to collapse the institutions.

I think the return of the institutions has been facilitated by the fact that I think that for the lot of unionist they realize that the storm has got to work. There's no point in trying to really collapse it. So I don't actually see that happening. What we're not sure about it is the extent to which the debate and potential vote and then a potential review.

We're actually just create another [00:46:00] opportunity to revisit a lot of the contestation that we've seen over the last number of years around the Protocol Windsor Framework. Give it a give it a further airing and therefore sort of reinforce some of the frustrations which, which have been coming through, particularly from unionists about these arrangements.

Because I think it's, it's interesting the last year or so, things have quietened down a fair bit, partly because the UK government, I think, has sought to address some of the concerns. And we've also had a slightly more pragmatic approach to implementing the Windsor framework. And also, I think it'd be interesting to see how Labour responds on this, because the one thing \\it can't really afford is for difficulties around the Protocol Windsor Framework to really feature much within its attempts to reset the UK EU relationship.

Because I think that the EU bottom line is, okay, you're not going to see much progress in terms of closely UK EU relationships unless the UK is seen to be implementing its existing obligations. And core amongst those are the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement and the Protocol Windsor Framework. [00:47:00]

Ruth Fox: What do you think might happen at Westminster in respect of this?

Is this going to be something that the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, newly constituted for this Parliament, is going to have to get to grips with? Or is this going to be something that's primarily just going to be reserved for the Northern Ireland Assembly as an issue?

David Phinnemore: We don't really know exactly what the terms of any review are going to be.

The statutory instrument is quite general on this. It's going to be down to the Secretary of State to determine who's actually going to be leading it, who's going to be involved. The report and recommendations will, it is envisaged, be presented to Parliament. And that obviously creates an opportunity for the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and the new committee in the Lords to engage with it. But I'm not aware of there being any formal role as yet set out for either the Northern Ireland Assembly in the review or the Commons or the Lords.

Ruth Fox: What's the view of the public in Northern Ireland, David? Because your team of researchers have just published some new public opinion polling about this.

And um, one of the things that was, was said at the time [00:48:00] this deal was done, that was that Northern Ireland would benefit from being in both markets, you know, we'd get the benefit of both sides of being in the EU, single market, but also the UK internal market. Have those benefits actually been seen in practice?

David Phinnemore: I think throughout the period of the product wins a framework, we've basically had divisions within society. Most nationalists and people who identify as neither nationalists or unionists are broadly supportive of the arrangements and would see economic benefits. Most unionists would be very skeptical of the arrangements and would be less inclined to see it as something of either actual or potential value for Northern Ireland.

At the moment it's too early to really say whether there's been benefits because there's been such contestation around it and it hasn't all necessarily been implemented. And also there's an argument to say that amongst that contestation attempts weren't necessarily made to sell the benefits. I would actually require a more settled period that said, what we're seeing at the moment is [00:49:00] that broadly their support for the Protocol Windsor Framework insofar as about 56 57 percent of people would prefer MLAs later this year to vote in favour of continued application of articles 5 to 10, a third of voters would prefer them to vote against democratic consent. There's about a 20 percentage point difference there in public opinion. The latest polling does show though a slight decline in those who see there being either actual or potential benefits of the protocol. So in terms of those who think that the Protocol Windsor Framework is having a positive impact economically, I think that's just dipped below 50 percent.

A slightly larger proportion see there being potential benefits. And I think that reflects the fact that they know there are certain things which still need to be implemented on that. It's worth noting that by the time we get to March next year, there'll be new arrangements being put in place, around the movement of parcels, they were delayed from October this year.

And [00:50:00] I think there is some concern that those could bring about a certain amount of disruption. And that will obviously feed into some of the public opinion around the value or otherwise of the Protocol or Windsor Framework in terms of economic benefits.

Mark D'Arcy: David Phinnemore, thanks very much indeed for joining Ruth and I on the pod today.

Thank you.

Ruth Fox: Thanks David. And that was David Phinnemore. Well Mark, I don't know about you, but that felt like pretty high fibre to me.

Mark D'Arcy: Well that was high constitutional politics, but pretty high stakes constitutional politics as well. And it's something that could start gumming up the works in Westminster in a few months time, when those reviews and so forth have started to come home to roost, as you put it earlier.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So, watch that space, we'll know by the end of the year what the outcome of the vote is and then we'll have to wait for Hilary Benn to tell us if there's going to be a review or not and find out more at that point, in which case we'll have to get David back on the pod to explain it all to us again.

So with that, Mark, I think that's probably all we've got time for this week. Just to remind listeners that we will have a special [00:51:00] bonus episode, I think it'll be out probably on Monday, with Nigel Fletcher of the Centre for Opposition Studies, where we talk to him about how to set up the operation of the Leader of the Opposition.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, all the kind of things an Opposition Leader newly enthroned has to do in order to perhaps one day become Prime Minister. Tune in for that next week.

Ruth Fox: See you then.

Mark D'Arcy: Bye.

Ruth Fox: Bye.

Well, that's all from us for this week's episode of Parliament Matters. Please hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app to get the next episode as soon as it lands.

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