How rotten is our democracy? Chris Bryant knows better than most what the answer should be to this. The chair of the House of Commons standards committee gave an impassioned speech about the importance of integrity when MPs were debating whether to suspend Owen Paterson for breaking lobbying rules back in November 2021 – but he has long been concerned about the standing of parliament. In fact, as he reminds us in his new book, Code of Conduct: Why We Need to Fix Parliament – and How to Do It, “the first motion I tabled as an MP in 2001 called for parliamentary reform”. This book is mostly concerned with how standards have disintegrated significantly since then, especially in the past three years of Conservative psychodrama. It is also one of those books that end up being called “part memoir, part manifesto”, as Bryant reflects on his time as an MP while also setting out his prescriptions to heal politics.
Bryant is an obsessive parliamentary pedant – the Westminster equivalent of those people who wear T-shirts declaring: “I’m judging your bad grammar.” In his first, considerably longer, book, Parliament: The Biography, he wasted no time in correcting urban myths about the Palace of Westminster, writing with the bouncy satisfaction of someone who knows they know more than the reader that “the red lines in the carpet of the House of Commons are not two sword lengths apart and are a Victorian innovation”. But he also illustrates his points in this book using the Sugababes and RuPaul’s Drag Race – as well as the sort of biblical references you would expect from a former curate. At times, he goes into more detail than a reader who is concerned about good politics might care for, including on how a man of the cloth might become an MP.
The pedantry and bouncy satisfaction are probably two reasons why Bryant sometimes rubs people up the wrong way. In parliament, he loves a good point of order complaining about procedure and can oscillate between being tremendously abrupt and also thoughtfully kind. I had expected the sort of passages that he includes in the book about being so annoyed by a situation in parliament that during a run of about seven miles “I did my fastest time for ages”, but I hadn’t anticipated quite the level of self-deprecation and apology. The refrain “I know it sounds pompous” crops up like a chorus in most chapters, though is always followed by Bryant explaining why what he’s saying really is important anyway.
That’s the trouble anyone encounters who gets a bit sweaty about the stupidity of private member’s bills or the number of hours devoted to debating hugely important national security legislation: everyone thinks you’re a bit pompous. That it’s so easy to dismiss these complaints as pompous, though, shows how casual we have all become about the state of our democracy over the past few decades, to the extent that governments have been able to pass laws without MPs even seeing them, as in Covid-19, or rigging the parliamentary timetable so that even ministers don’t have any idea what they’re asking their colleagues to vote on. And the people who complain about this are somehow the problem.
Alongside the pomposity and apologies for it is waspishness. Bryant once called Sky News presenter Kay Burley “a bit dim” and he enjoys being sharp about parliamentary colleagues in this book too. He copies out an extract from his diary about “Jacob Young, the 2019 MP for Redcar who looks as if he’s so excited at being an MP that he’s about to burst out of his jacket” and has an amusing story about Tony Blair telling him he still hasn’t made the cabinet at a reshuffle because Bryant is still in his 20s. “‘I’m forty-three, Tony,’ I replied.” He also drops a few colleagues in it more directly, revealing that Robert Buckland, the former Tory justice secretary, had privately told him that Paterson was “guilty as charged” of the lobbying rule breach the standards committee was punishing him for – but nonetheless signed an amendment scrapping the committee and delaying the decision on Paterson because the whips had told him to.
He wants cameras in the division lobbies to expose bullying behaviour, new offences of knowingly, intentionally or recklessly misleading parliament as a minister, and refusing to correct the record; and refusing to give evidence once legitimately summoned to a parliamentary committee of inquiry. He wants proper HR support for MPs and for staffing to be more tightly controlled by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority so that MPs who have not attended training on how to manage an office appropriately don’t get taxpayer funding for their staff. None of them are particularly revolutionary, which is comforting, as what Bryant suggests is actually based on what really happens in parliament, rather than a caricature. His section explaining why party whips aren’t actually the root of all evil is excellent, for instance.
He recounts the answer he gives to primary school children who set up the binary of voting with the whip or your conscience: “I have very rarely voted against my party whip. The whole reason I am in the Labour party is because its values align with mine – so my conscience and my party nearly always point in the same direction.” But he does go beyond the usual defence of why parties direct their MPs through the lobbies rather than leaving them to it, examining whether that level of micromanaging is actually necessary. “MPs’ consciences should be sacrosanct, and a space should be carved out for disagreement and conscientious objection.” He doesn’t want to ban all second jobs for MPs, arguing reasonably that those who work as doctors, for instance, are bringing truly valuable insights to their parliamentary work.
What is missing is an examination of when standards started to fall as much as Bryant argues they have. He does talk briefly about the last Labour government, but is clearly mostly wound up by Boris Johnson’s cavalier approach to the truth. But there were shifts in political culture before then, including Blair’s spin culture and, yes, that government’s handling of the Iraq war, which did lay the ground for what we see today. Perhaps it is because of partisan blindness. Perhaps it’s just that the whole thing was rather long ago: there are teenagers who have gone through puberty without any knowledge of life under a Labour government. Perhaps he will correct me on missing his examination of his own party’s role in the decay of standards – before apologising for sounding too pompous.
• Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of the Spectator. Her latest book, Fighting for Life: The Twelve Battles That Made Our NHS, and the Struggle for Its Future, is published by Viking (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
• Code of Conduct: Why We Need to Fix Parliament – and How to Do It by Chris Bryant is published by Bloomsbury (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
