Douglas Carswell's Blog

Why Westminster watchers miss the point

Political pundits are supposed to explain what is happening in Westminster and why.  Some are very good at it.  Others are not.

A few weeks ago, many Westminster watchers grossly underestimated the number of MPs prepared to vote for an EU referendum.  Why?

They were analysing pressures inside the Westminster village - and failed to see that momentum behind the referendum vote was being driven by pressure from outside SW1 altogether. 

The rising tide of MPs who insisted on a referendum – and still do - did not do so because they had hatched some plot in a basement bar in the Commons.  They were reacting to a new and resurgent pressure from the punters who put them into Parliament in the first place.

It is the internet - and the popular accountability it is starting to bring to politics - that explains the unrelenting, inescapable pressure for an EU poll. 

Shortly before the referendum vote, one pundit lectured me on why the whole motion was an "irrelevance" and showed "indiscipline".  It might look that way if you owe your position in Westminster to cosying up to other Westminster insiders.  It doesn’t look that way if you must answer to the world outside.

The internet allows the re-personalisation of politics.  Instead of being conducted as a generic game between party brands - with "lines-to-take" and the need to be "on-message" - it is increasingly about how individual law makers think and vote. 

And it is not only pundits who are discovering that the internet is changing politics. Political leaders are too.

Back in 1990-something, a British Prime Minister keen to cut a deal in Brussels, but worried about a backlash back home could spin their way out of trouble.  A robust sounding article in the Sun or the Times, perhaps.  Or a manufactured row allowing you to claim you’ve been bravely defending the national interest.

Yesterday’s headlines about vetoing a treaty that wasn’t in the national interest were unspun before lunch time.  Any concocted row to try to appear robust will today have the opposite effect.

What we are seeing in Westminster this week is not a re-run of old Tory battles on Europe.  It is as much a story about how the internet is starting to change our politics for the better.

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