Miriam González Durántez, Mrs Clegg to the rest of us, has ideas. Remarkably, for a liberal, they are good ones. She has a prescription for curing Spain of its failings, and has learnt it from Britain.
Spain could be made a great again. It has a solid, confident culture; it has bags fo room to spare to build; it sits amidst world trade routes; its fundamental constitution is a solid basis for sensible government; but it has a political class which squanders these blessings, so Miriam says – and all I have learnt agrees with this.
Corruption is deeply embedded in the system
Señora de Clegg sagely notes the contrast between a British MP’s first concern for his or her constituency, and a Spanish Deputy’s being a slave of the party, ignoring his local electorate once elected. We achieve this through a single-member constituency system: Spain fails through having a party list proportional system – the system her husband’s party advocates from Britain.
If a Deputy is elected as a name on a list controlled by the party bosses, then he is at the mercy of whoever keeps this list, cowed and told what to do by the Party or be struck off the list – and constituents be damned. Here, an MP looks every day at his vulnerable majority and tells his party what to do.
Another issue identified is the handing out of government contracts in return for favours. That is seen across the world, in both democracies and dictatorships, in this big-state age. The big state is the problem. Corruption in the field is less prevalent in the Anglosphere, if far from absent, because of our long-established systems and the independence of the civil service. Here you have to bribe the civil servant, not the politician, and that tends to get noticed. If the politicians are also handing out state jobs for political favours, as in Spain, there is no distinction.
That jobs-for-favours is an issue once described to me: essentially ‘give us your support and we will hand you taxpayers’ money by employing your family’. In the European standard of workers’ rights, a man once employed cannot easily be dismissed, and so the payroll increases relentlessly, with little actual work being done. If Miriam’s philosophy could solve that issue, allowing state and private employer’s to dismiss unwanted workers the way prospering countries do, she would be much of the way towards breaking Spain’s self-imposed chains.
‘Now it is our turn to eat’ – the attitude of the unrestrained political victor is anathema to the Anglosphere view of government. Having lived in the two great nations of the Anglosphere, I hope that Mrs Clegg has imbued their principles. A fundamental historical difference though sunders the understanding of English-speaking peoples from less blessed nations: for us, democracy grew organically in an idea where government was as a distant function in a generality of individual freedom, while in Europe, it was shoe-horned in to hold back the expectation of absolutism. It was only in 1977 that Spain held democratic elections, after decades of rule by a dictator who believed the state should control all, like any socialist. The mindset of freedom has just not been there, and always they look back at the horror of the Civil War, only just passing put of living memory.
How to fix it then.
The distinction between politicians and the state is crucial. No politician can ever climb to the top of the tree, because that spot is taken. Government is a function within the nation, not its chief. Here, every minister is reminded that he is not a servant of his party, but of the King. Civil servants too are directed by ministers but are employed by the Crown.
If political parties control their deputies, there can be no dissent nor middle ground, there can be no appointments but political ones and there can be no concept of political neutrality.
Spain has to opportunity to make the same distinction that we do: the King stands above government and Cortes and courts, just as in Britain, and if only political parties would stop getting in the way, the mutual relationships would work as well as in Britain.
Judges have no formal dependence on the government even in Spain: they administer the law on behalf of the King, not the government – but González Durántez asserts in a recent interview in The Times “The main parties occupy every media institution. They step into the judiciary, they govern everything”. That is not a failing system: it is a failed system. She has learnt, from residence here and in America, that an independent, politically neutral judiciary is fundamental to the prosperity of the nation. The rule of law depends on it, and prosperity depends on the rule of law.
Someone has to appoint judges though, and she should go further, to explore what is wrong with the system of judges in Spain. In common with other European countries, lawyers train as judges from graduation, and are appointed once the exams are taken. The sort of people appointed is controlled by whoever runs the training and sets the exam, and they are placed on the bench without ever have had to argue a case themselves or meet a client. Here, a barrister has to practice in the courts for years, gaining the respect of his peers for wisdom and evenhandedness before he can be invited, after secret soundings, to receive such honour and responsibility. It ensures judges who are (for the most part) not only intelligent and diligent, but who also understand something of real life and those who live in it, having represented high and low before the court, and who know how the law works, having argued its minutiae. Spain could win if it abandons career judges and appoints from those who know what they are doing, leaving appointment to the politically neutral.
This leads back to whether Miriam González Durántez, with her experience of the Anglosphere, can make a change at home.
What one can expect from her España Mejor movement I hope may be read in González Durántez’s writings, but it looks very like a one-person movement. We have become used to that in Britain too. She should be aware that in creating a movement for dissent from the establishment, she has to keep it personal to keep it from being kippered, even though the personality cult kept straight by one caudilla goes against the philosophy itself and what it seeks to achieve.
If Spanish voters listen to the lessons brought to them by Miriam González Durántez, the corruption can be swept back, all without changing the state constitution but reforming practice. Spaniards can achieve their great potential for prosperity.
There is good precedent for such a dissenting movement. To make Spain great, as it should be, she aims at a ground-level, populist struggle against the establishment. She wants to break the grip of the entrenched élites. She calls for reform. Her book is entitled “Devuelveme el Poder“, which is in essence “Take back control”.
Perhaps a call to Clacton would be in order.
See also
- Nw world-teachers needed
- Are we European though or Anglospherical?
- Murmuring the judges:
Books
- Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
- Revisiting the European Union as Empire Hartmut Behr, Dr. Yannis A. Stivachtis, Ioannis A. Stivachtis (eds)
- The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham (former senior Lord of Appeal
- A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Sir Winston Spenser Churchill:
- The Dream of Rome by Boris Johnson
- 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, by Jordan B Peterson
