“You must stand up for what you believe, but first of all, by God, believe in something.” If only Michael Sheen’s words were adapted for the parliamentary oath MPs are compelled to recite as they take their seats. Sheen’s passionate plea in Tredegar – and his defence of Britain’s most treasured institution, the NHS – will surely resonate across political boundaries. Look at parliament, the heart of our “representative” democracy: all too unrepresentative, technocratic, professionalised, too full of managerialists who quibble over details and nuances rather than meaningful differences, let alone grand visions.
If only Labour politicians showed the same passion as Sheen in defending the NHS, people have tweeted me. The Tories, of course, regard the NHS’s existence as some sort of affront to their basic values: it is an institution that puts need before profit, an approach that neoliberalism was supposed to have definitively disposed of. Its very existence is subversive, a reminder that society could be different. It wasn’t just the Tories – having opposed the NHS’s very foundation – who have undermined it, as Sheen notes. Labour’s current opposition to the Tory policies of privatisation and marketisation is all too often hobbled by its own record. “You drove the private sector into the NHS first,” comes the predictable cry.
But Sheen was making a broader argument – about a political elite that has abdicated power to the market. This is what has eroded our democracy: having outsourced everything from housing to basic utilities to profiteers, politicians have surrendered so much power that it is hardly surprising that voters lose faith in the democratic process as a vehicle for change.
There is a predictable comeback to critics of the state of British democracy. Easy for you to pontificate and make it all sound so simple as you strut the stage in front of cheering crowds, the Labour leadership could respond. No difficult decisions for you; no baying media scrutinising your every move and pillorying the mildest deviation from the status quo; no economic realities of the globalised world; no juggling electoral arithmetic. Accountable to no one, you are liberated to say what you feel and suffer no consequences.
Yet the neoliberal consensus was established by people of fervent belief. There are those of us who believe it cannot last, it is not just unjust but it is also unsustainable. It will equally need a movement of real belief to dispose of it: of those who believe that the many often formidable obstacles to radical change are not excuses to accept the status quo, but can be overcome with enough commitment and resources. We live in a society in which the wealth of the richest 1,000 can double in five years even as living standards fall for the longest period in generations for millions; where corporations engage in tax avoidance on an industrial scale even as hundreds of thousands are driven to food banks in one of the world’s richest countries. As I say: unjust and unsustainable. And yet our parliament has failed to produce the radical solutions that are desperately needed.
What a shame it is left to unelected Hollywood actors and bishops to be the most eloquent critics of the existing order. Why are there not more passionate, resolute opponents of the status quo in our parliament? In our nation of food banks, zero-hours contracts, legal loan sharks, stagnating living standards and a shameless, self-enriching elite, they are desperately needed.