Three Takeaways from the UK Election

Many Nigerians just love the parliamentary system of government without knowing it. That was my first take-away from the UK general election, which saw the Labour Party chase the Tories out of No 10 in one of the most comprehensive defeats in the country’s history. Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, assumed power and named his cabinet less than 24 hours after his party won 411 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, leaving the Conservative Party with 121. For context, the Tories had 365 seats and Labour had 200 before the election. While Labour gained 211 seats to claim the majority (meaning they can pass several bills on their own), the Tories lost 251. Massive.

After Starmer swiftly named his cabinet and met with his team a day following his appointment as prime minister by King Charles III, my WhatsApp started brimming with broadcasts comparing Nigeria with the UK. One reads: “The elections were held 2 days ago. Yesterday, the new Prime Minister has assumed office. The new cabinet is already in place. No transition committee.” There you go. In a parliamentary system of government, there is a governing party and an opposition party. The governing party is usually the one with the most seats in parliament, even if it takes a coalition to get the majority. The opposition party is usually the one with the second highest number of seats.

For the benefit of those who may not know how it works, the opposition party always forms a “shadow” cabinet when a new parliament is in place. For every cabinet position filled by the governing party, the opposition has an equivalent. They shadow the ministers of the governing party and have access to official documents. This enables them to make meaningful contributions to parliamentary debates, provide their own views and propose alternative policies. In a parliamentary system, the executive and legislative arms of government are merged, so most ministers/secretaries are members of parliament. There is no separation of powers. It is only the judiciary that is apart.

Therefore, naming a cabinet “within two days of winning an election” is not a big deal in a parliamentary system. As I have explained, the cabinet positions are shared before elections, with minor adjustments made where considered necessary. If a party does not win enough seats to form government and has to go into a coalition with another party, there could be a delay in naming the cabinet because of the horse trading. By the time a new parliament is proclaimed, however, the cabinet will be named. It would have been an anomaly if Starmer did not name his cabinet immediately. Rishi Sunak, as the new opposition leader, has already appointed a shadow cabinet.

In a presidential system, the type Nigeria practises, the executive is separate from the legislature. The president cannot form a cabinet until he has sent the list of nominees to the senate for confirmation hearing. He can only nominate. As an independent arm of government, the legislature can decide when it wants to conduct the hearing and decide the nominees to accept or reject. It cannot be hurried up to screen the nominees or forced to confirm them. I am not trying to justify the long delays in Nigeria — there was a time it took almost six months before ministers were appointed and this is totally unacceptable — but the president cannot realistically form a cabinet “within two days”.

Nevertheless, our presidents can do better. If there is a sense of urgency to set the ball rolling and there is some regard for Nigerians, nominees can be swiftly named and confirmed. But everything is complicated in our dearly beloved country. One, security screening takes ages. Two, names are dropped and chopped per minute. Three, the senate will still be trying to sort out its own leadership issues (National Assembly is usually inaugurated two weeks after the president). The senate will also need to schedule dates for the battalion of nominees. Give or take, we can get ministers confirmed within a month of the president’s inauguration — that is if we are really a bunch of serious people.

On the issue of transition committee, I don’t see it as a big problem. In the parliamentary system, there is hardly a need for a committee: the shadow cabinet was basically in the know of everything that happened in the previous government. The rest will be covered by the bureaucracy, which is very strong and independent. In the US, from where Nigeria copied its presidential system, there is a Presidential Transition Act that guides the peaceful and orderly transfer of power from one president to the other. There is a budget approved by the Congress for that. There is usually a transition team. Therefore, that “there was no transition committee” after the UK election is not anything novel.

By and large, though, I can see that many Nigerians love parliamentarism from the way we talk and behave. Our lawmakers pass “vote of confidence” on governors or presidents, whereas there is no such thing in our system. That is a parliamentary practice. When Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, then of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), was governor of Lagos state, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) formed a shadow government. It doesn’t work like that. (By the way, I also love and prefer the parliamentary system for many reasons, but I do not believe it will change our fortune. I stand by my pet theory that nations are developed by competent and patriotic leadership, not political systems.)

My fascination with the parliamentary system, as I have explained in the past, is mainly because of the competitive engagements in parliament. Policies are debated and dissected. The prime minister has to be accountable. Opposition has to be on top of its game. I love the prime minister question time, where probing and unflattering questions are thrown from the floor of the chamber. The prime minister has no hiding place. The parliamentary system also saves costs — you only need to win your constituency to be a member of parliament. You don’t have to print posters and campaign nationwide. In addition, most cabinet ministers are parliamentarians and cannot earn two salaries.

My second take-away from the UK election is that when voters are tired of the party in power, there is no amount of rhetoric or reasoning that will dissuade them from voting for a new party. The UK is a Conservative country and the Tories own it, just as Bayern Munich owns the German Bundesliga and Real Madrid the Champions League. But once in a while, voters get tired of the governing party and want to try something else. Sunak was the unfortunate victim. Apart from being a decent guy, he had also steadied the ship as prime minister after the shenanigans of Boris Johnson and the aftermath. The economy was recovering very well, but the British voters just wanted a change.

The amazing thing is that Starmer did not offer anything extraordinary. In fact, most of his campaign promises were lacking in detail. He refused to make specific commitments on tax rises and how he would curb immigration. Yet, the pendulum continued to swing his way before the election, forcing Sunak to shift from campaigning for the Conservatives to retain power to warning the voters against giving Labour an absolute majority. There was nothing he could say and there was nothing he could do to sway the voters. The Tories had been in power since 2010. Voters wanted a fresh breath. It did not matter if the Labour offered nothing better, but voters wanted change for the sake of change.

This is a democratic phenomenon. In the US, voters alternate between the Republicans and the Democrats. In fact, it is a usual feature, unlike in the UK where a Labour victory is once in a blue moon. It happened in Nigeria in 2015 too. The PDP had been in power from 1999 and many Nigerians were genuinely tired of them. Some politicians pulled off their PDP jerseys and teamed up with the newly formed All Progressives Congress (APC) to campaign for “change” and President Goodluck Jonathan became the first incumbent to be defeated. All his efforts to say APC had nothing better to offer failed. When the voters are tired of you, no rhetoric or reasoning can change them.

My third take-away: Fellow Nigerians, it is all politics. That is actually the title of my debut book. In it, I argue that Nigerian politicians are geniuses at playing politics, scheming and strategising, manipulating and manoeuvring, and plotting and politicking non-stop just to score a political goal. Thereafter, they forget the core purpose of politics and power: which is to promote the greater good of the society. Politicians must politick. I saw plenty of this at play in the UK. But I must quickly add a caveat: many British politicians offer genuine service to the society, and the system is robust enough to put them in check if they step out of line. Nevertheless, the political grandstanding was visible.

To send Labour packing from No 10 in 2010, the Conservatives played up the politics of high immigration figures and poor funding of public health. Some 14 years later, Labour played up the same politics of high immigration figures and poor funding of public health to get the Conservatives out. Expect the Conservatives, as opposition, to deploy these same sentiments in discrediting the Labour government in the years ahead. It is all politics. In 2015, APC overpowered PDP by playing up the raging issues of corruption and insecurity. Since then, PDP has also been playing up the same issues in trying to dislodge APC from Aso Rock. That is the nature of politics. We saw it in the UK too.

AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…

LG AUTONOMY

The Supreme Court has made a landmark ruling on the autonomy of LGAs, notably declaring that council elections must be conducted to end the epidemic of undemocratic caretaker committees. But the justices audaciously amended the 1999 Constitution by overriding Section 162(6) which states that “each state shall maintain a specific account to be called State-Joint Local Government Account into which shall be paid all allocations to the local government councils of the state from the Federation Account and from government of the state”. The provision is so clear and unambiguous. The court has now assumed the power of unilaterally amending the constitution. Disturbing.

ADAMAWA SALVO

In what seems to be a response to the Supreme Court ruling on council autonomy — a case initiated by the attorney-general of the federation — the Adamawa state government is seeking to stop the federal government from making any deductions, except permitted by law, from the federation account before allocations are shared. In simple English, this is intended to stop the federal government from deducting petrol subsidy expenses and the cost of collection by federal agencies, such as Customs and FIRS, before the federally collected revenues are distributed. I understand more constitutional cases are loading as the governors prepare to take their pound of flesh. Thriller.

AIRPORT SUBSIDY

There may be 22 airports in Nigeria but only three are profitable, according to the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN). The rest are money guzzlers. Ms Olubunmi Kuku, FAAN’s managing director, said the agency is cross-subsidising 19 airports. “We also have about six or seven airports that are either owned by state governments or private individuals or entities which we also support with either aviation security or fire and rescue services,” she said. Nigeria is now doing airport subsidy. The sad part is that many airports were built not out of economic need but because some governors wanted to be taking chartered flights because of the bad roads and insecurity. Nigeria!

NO COMMENT

The opposition to the Samoa Agreement because of the supposed LGBTQ+ content has brought out the selective righteousness in us. There was a question I asked in 2013 when we passed the anti-gay law and I am going to ask it again: when are we going to have an anti-adultery law? From the way we talk, it seems homosexuality is the only thing this our God hates. Many of those “righteously” opposed to the demonised Samoa Agreement have no problems with pornography, fornication, adultery, sex orgies with those tiny university girls, padding budgets, looting the treasury, and sniffing white powder. It seems to me that LGBTQ+ is the only thing this our God does not like. Wonderful.