On both sides of the Atlantic, democracy is in crisis

Theresa May and Donald Trump don’t have much in common, but they have both fallen out with their legislatures. The British Prime Minister and the American President are simultaneously engaged in constitutional battles with, respectively, the House of Commons and the House of Representatives. This situation is probably unprecedented — and it suggests that the institutions of democracy are coming under strain on both sides of the Atlantic.

Here in Britain, it is unusual for Parliament to be at loggerheads with the Government. That is because we do not separate the legislative and executive powers, but combine them in one institution. Ministers of the Crown are also Members of Parliament, and by convention the Prime Minister sits in the Commons. He or she must command a majority there or make way for someone else.

What has gone wrong for Mrs May is that since the last election her party has had no majority and so she can govern only with the Democratic Unionists, who disagree with her on her main policy: Brexit. This has opened up space for the Commons to assert itself, not only defeating the Government but even altering long-standing conventions.

With an unwritten constitution, conventions matter and with one side in the dispute proposing to change the rules of the game, we are now in uncharted waters. The ultimate question in politics is always: who decides? In Britain, the executive can normally set the rules, but Mrs May is unwilling to exercise powers that have lain dormant for centuries. She is now faced with a cross-party alliance threatening to mount a coup that would effectively enable the Commons to seize control of the Brexit process.

Yesterday Jacob Rees-Mogg, the unofficial leader of the European Reform Group of Conservative Brexiteers and a man who knows his Bagehot, made a novel suggestion. Why doesn’t the Prime Minister simply ask the Queen to prorogue Parliament? The effect of such an interruption in the current legislative session would be to nullify any motions that had passed against the Government. This would enable Mrs May to keep control until the end of March deadline, when Britain is due to leave the EU.

There are various objections to the Rees-Mogg plan, but the one that is likely to weigh most heavily with the Prime Minister is that it would drag the Queen into the centre of the bitterest conflict for at least a generation, over Brexit. By convention, the Sovereign must be kept out of controversy at all costs.

Using the Queen to defeat the Commons would be at best a pyrrhic victory. It would pit the monarch against the legislature — and such conflicts never end well for the monarchy. The Queen has no wish to emulate her uncle, Edward VIII, let alone her ancestor, Charles I; and she would have no compunction about reminding any prime minister of such precedents.

In Washington DC, by contrast, such conflicts between Congress and the White House are normal. The separation of powers ensures that the Government cannot function without funds supplied by legislators, but the President can drive a hard bargain by imposing a shutdown. The present one, over Donald Trump’s signature policy of building a wall on the Mexican border, has already broken all records. It has just created a new precedent: the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has rescinded her invitation to President Trump to give the State of the Union Address until the shutdown ends.

The President has raised the stakes so far that he cannot now be seen to back down. Equally, Mrs Pelosi is risking the loss of public support by tampering with tradition. Her role as Speaker requires her to seek bipartisan solutions to constitutional conflicts. As neither side is yet willing to give ground, a compromise still looks unlikely. Meanwhile, key parts of the US administration are grinding to a halt and public servants are working without pay.

Comparisons between the predicaments of the two leaders are instructive. Unlike Mrs May, Trump thrives on conflict. Unlike Mrs May, who could lose office at any moment, Trump cannot be brought down by Congress unless he is impeached, which happens quite often, or declared unfit to hold office, which almost never does. Presidents can appeal to the voters over the heads of their representatives — and often do.

On the other hand, Mrs Pelosi has in effect banned the President from entering the House of Representatives. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow, tried to exclude the Prime Minister. That such a move would be unthinkable here indicates how very different our two political systems, despite our common origins, really are.

These two constitutional stand-offs illuminate the crisis of democracy in the West. The two greatest parliamentary institutions in the world, the British Parliament and the Congress of the United States, are both asserting their authority against leaders who claim to be carrying out the will of the people. Confidence in politics and especially politicians to resolve conflicts has collapsed in both countries. There is only one antidote to the malaise that afflicts our nations. It is called statesmanship. Right now, on both sides of the Atlantic, it is in desperately short supply.