The Mother of All Parliaments

One of the pleasures of spending time in the United States is the availability of C-SPAN. (Okay, that marks me as a terminal loser, but there you are.) And one of the great pleasures of C-SPAN is that it replays Prime Minister's Question Time from the British House of Commons. Pleasure, and sorrow: it's enough to make a grown Canadian cry, so great is the contrast with our own House. The questions are thoughtful, well-marshalled, serious. And the Prime Minister actually endeavours to answer them! Scroll down to the link marked "Prime Minister Tony Blair Statement on Hutton Inquiry Findings (01/28/2004)" This is a lengthier episode than most, and it's riveting. Blair himself is a wondrous public speaker, as is well known. But the general quality is very high, even amid the passions of the moment. MPs, moreover, speak as individuals, spontaneously: you can see Labourites deviating from the PM's line, just as you see Conservatives who are plainly sympathetic to his ordeal (unlike the Tory leader, Michael Howard, who missed an opportunity to take the high road.) Notice how packed the chamber is, members standing in the aisles, etc. This was deliberate: when the House was rebuilt after being bombed in WWII, Churchill (who knew a thing or three about political theatre) explicitly instructed that there should be fewer seats than members, to heighten the sense of urgency on great occasions. Notice, too, how small it is. Result: members tend to speak to one another, rather than just hauling off and bellowing into space. The absence of desks is critical, not only to the intimacy of the place, but also the tone. Who sits in rows of desks? Schoolchildren. Bureaucrats. Prison-workers. Who, by contrast, sits on benches? Judges. Councils of elders. Church congregations. (Also hockey teams - ed. Okay, I didn't say they were saints.) Environment conditions behaviour. If we're ever to have a functional Parliament in Canada, we need to change not just the rules, or the people: we need to change the design of the House itself.