After the party

Helena Kennedy can rouse a crowd to the cause of political reform like no other, but does she overdo the 'apparatchik' bit?
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Given the febrile political atmosphere of recent weeks, it's hardly surprising that there was a certain buzz about a hastily convened (hors de programme) session with the somewhat spartish title "Overthrow Parliament Now". Seasoned Hay regulars Marcus Brigstocke, Helena Kennedy and Philippe Sands took the stage, with the BBC's Jim Naughtie at the helm – and all seized the revolutionary theme enthusiastically in front of massed ranks of the festival's sans culottes (though perhaps the sunshine had more to do with their dress).

Sands' enthusiasm for empowering citizens almost resulted in a possible referral to the Bar Council when he appeared to call for spray-painting of constituency party offices – before hastily explaining that he in no way endorsed criminal behaviour. Marcus Brigstocke was possibly outgunned by his colleagues on the nuts-and-bolts of constitutional reform, but supplied the requisite gags. Asked whether Labour should look for a new leader before an election, his retort was "Why waste another pilot on a plane that's going down in flames?" People liked that.

But mostly, they loved Helena Kennedy. She has a bone to pick with Gordon Brown, for starters: after she delivered the report of the Power Inquiry, which, if implemented, might indeed have forestalled our present crisis of democratic politics, Brown kicked it into the long grass. Not many people can do barnstorming (strictly, here, tentstorming) on the subject of why we need "a new architecture for politics" or get an ovation with a call for PR, but she brings a fiery passion to it. And OK, possibly a Hay audience helps.

Her top line was to plug the idea of a Citizens' Convention, as per the UnlockDemocracy proposal (Kennedy was a stalwart of Charter 88, its predecessor). She said there were rumours in Westminster that No 10 were sniffing at the idea, as a way of trying to rescue some political capital after what will, no doubt, be a meltdown for Labour in the 4 June European elections. But then she added that she expected Brown to funk it. Again.

Kennedy's voice is very much one you want to hear at the moment. Her critique of what's gone wrong with our politics has purchase as never before, and thank God for truly independent-minded peers like her. She's about the best, perhaps only, argument for not abolishing the House of Lords as currently constituted. But where perhaps she overstates her case is her characterisation of parliamentary parties as pure machine politics, with MPs chasing preferment and patronage by slavish, mindless loyalty to the whips and party line. Yes, that happens far too much, and as Sands memorably said, our political system now has both presidential and parliamentary elements but "the worst of both", without the checks and balances that should be part of each.

And yet, moribund as they are (and I speak as a member of none), do we not still need them? And are they not a vital and necessary building block of our democracy?

Hollowed out though they may now seem, parties still have deep, historical roots in civil society. They have their own representative, constituent assemblies, insufficiently strong though they may be. Above all, they are the modality by which people combine, both in large numbers as members and huge numbers as voters, to effect political change. Parties get elected on the basis of a platform of policies and, if elected, win a mandate for their political programme. Going through the lobby for your party is not necessarily a matter of toadying to the whips; it can also be about delivering on what your party stood for. That matters more, I think, than Kennedy gives credit for.

If all independent politicians looked and sounded like Helena Kennedy, then possibly we could manage more or less without political parties. The trouble is that, in reality, what we'd get would be a lot of Rantzens and Kilroy-Silks. And that might not be what the citizens bargained for.

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