Facing Out laments the “ability of political power in Britain so easily to stonewall public demands”; and there is the related demand that MPs should more reliably “act as the voice of their constituents in Parliament”.19 But just who is ‘the public’ here, and what are their ‘demands’? Should MPs act as the voice of those in favour of the policy in question, or those against? All these comments buy into a fallacy of popular consensus on issues – as if somehow ‘the people’ are united in what they want and the political class is somehow failing to act on it. This is a key rhetorical device of populism – not only used to define citizens in opposition to politicians, but also to confer legitimacy on the views of individual complainants.20 There is also a tendency to overstate political consensus by focusing on those broad propositions on which we can all agree – which can in turn lead people to undervalue political negotiation.21 Very few people are against less crime or a strong economy. So why can’t the politicians stop bickering and get on with delivering what we all want? Because there will be intense disagreement about how to achieve these goals. Take the current ‘consensus’ on climate change. Certainly, agreement on emissions reduction targets marks important progress. But the real politics comes in the further debate – how will the targets be met? What type of market interventions and distortions are necessary? To what extent should people pay for the costs of their resource use? Achieving consensus on these questions would be an altogether different proposition.
3) Different issues might be related Another common complaint is that parties are too ‘broad brush’, requiring support for broad programmes of policies, whereas campaign groups are “much more focused and require only that an individual supports change in one area”.22 12