The three concurrent inquiries at present – into the Iraq war, the corruption alleged to be behind the £43bn al-Yamamah arms deal, and democratic reform of the House of Commons – don’t seeem to have much connection. In fact they are all probing one single fundamental issue: how can the wielding of unbridled power be held to account by checks and balances which preserve the democratic rights of the majority over fundamental decision-making? Blair could only take Britain into an illegal war of aggression because he had crushed or manipulated the countervailing forces in the Cabinet, Parliament and in society at large. BAE was only able to carry through what is now widely seen as one of the biggest and most corrupt arms deals in history because it colluded with the Government, and Downing Street in particular, in evading all the normal mechanisms of transparency and accountability. The Wright select committee which recently reported on reforming parliamentary procedures was primarily concerned with limiting the overweening power of the Executive to get its way on everything irrespective of Parliament and the electorate.

All these issues, and so much else, is about power and how it is increasingly monopolised at the top. Power has been increasingly centralised over the last 30 years till today Britain is run by the key power-brokers – the financial markets, the trans-national mega corporations, and the media tycoons epitomised by Murdoch – doing their various (usually secret) deals with the Prime Minister and his immediate inner circle of unelected advisers. The cabinet, parliament, the wider party, and the various pressure groups now count for very little.
Opening up that small, tight constellation of power to wider democratic influence is perhaps the single biggest challenge facing British politics today because it underpins all the others. The Iraq catastrophe could happen again unless a Prime Minister knows that defiance of international law could land him in the ICC in the Hague. BAE will continue to seek out egregious profiteering through massively corrupt deals unless it knows it will face, unprotected by the State, criminal prosecution and if convicted, lengthy imprisonment of its top managers and directors. No.10 will continue to treat parliament with disdain unless and until the legislature takes to itself the key powers – much closer control over public expenditure, ratification of Cabinet appointees before they can take office, a House business committe to give MPs control over their own agenda, election of select committees to hold the Government to account, and the authority to set up its own committees of inquiry into murky dealings by Government – which are necessary to counterbalance the autocracy which at present rides roughshod over both parliamentary and electorate opinion.

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