The Right Dishonourable

In the past fortnight we’ve heard suggestions that the local elections scheduled for 6 May will be delayed, some for the second time since the Covid-19 pandemic erupted. Local authorities tasked with running them are cash-strapped and unsure they can do it safely, and such elections have dismal turnouts anyway.

As I argued in The Article earlier this week, such thinking devalues democracy. Officials like London mayor Sadiq Khan have been holding office without a mandate for months already, and voting is the most fundamental function of any democratic government – not an optional service.

It is common among British armchair constitutionalists to advocate for Parliament to be moved away from Westminster and plonked elsewhere – usually the North or the Midlands. A less explored candidate is cyberspace. But that was before the pandemic.

A virtual home for parliamentary business is mooted in a new paper by the Study of Parliament Group (SPG) which looks at the impact of the pandemic on the functioning of legislatures in Britain and elsewhere. While the paper does not advocate a wholesale abandoning of the Palace of Westminster, it suggests that more online legislating would be good.