What happens when social contracts break?
MPs have abused their expenses, seeming to treat them as perks or part of their remuneration. In doing so, they have shattered a social contract with actions that sometimes appear criminal.
It is ironic, then, that in this week Gordon Brown has given us his first key note speech on crime as PM and John McFall has alleged that remuneration packages in the financial sector have lead to a social contract being broken.
So, MPs and bankers both stand accused of breaking a social contract. What does this mean? And what are its consequences?
Wikipedia defines a contract in these terms:
“A contract is an exchange of promises between two or more parties to do, or refrain from doing, an act, which resulting contract is enforceable in a court of law. It is a binding legal agreement”.
But what is a social contract? An exchange of promises between two or more parties to do, or refrain from doing, an act, which resulting contract is enforceable in a court of public opinion? Harriet Harman once threatened to throw a banker to the lions in this court but MPs are now as likely to suffer a mauling as even Fred the Shed.
That said, the long history of the term social contract, appealed to by thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to John Rawls, makes it harder to properly define in terms as concise as Wikipedia’s definition of a contract. The vagaries of legal courts are legion but are nothing as compared to the vagaries of the court of public opinion, for one thing. In contract disputes, it is also usually clear between whom the original promise was reached. In contrast, it may be a surprise to some bankers that they have a contractual obligation - a social contract – to anyone beyond their employer. Presumably, MPs have, at least, a dim memory that the Fees Office are not the people with whom they have entered into a contract. Electors, I believe, they are called. The ultimate sanction in the case of MPs who break their social contract is also clearer than it for bankers. It is to be found at the ballot box. Fred the Shed will be grateful that this doesn’t determine his fate, as he would only receive two votes: one from a Hearts player and another from Jackie Stewart. Though, there are MPs, elected with fat majorities, who must now wonder whether they are any more capable of attracting popular support.
When once respected MPs and bankers can dredge such depths of unpopularity, the ballot box may not seem for all an entirely adequate sanction for the breaches of the social contracts that have occurred – not least when this sanction doesn’t even apply directly to bankers. Some may sigh and shrug, feel even more powerless than they do already and not vote. Some may vote for a party like UKIP, up 12 points in the polls in the past 7 days, in the belief that minor parties will be more respectful of the social contract than major ones. Some may react even more extremely: voting for the BNP and/or engaging in violent protest. Am I getting too excited?
I’m not sure. Trust has been lost on a massive scale, as it is when any contract is broken. This is very difficult to recover. Tony Blair, for example, never regained the trust that he lost over the invasion of Iraq. Broken trust begets broken trust, as violence begets violence. Broken trust often begets violence and vice versa. Certainly, neither broken trust nor violence begets anything positive. Only negativity suggests itself.
Britain has, rightly, moved away from the absurd, unjustified hierarchies that defined us as a deferential, class-based society. But it is hard to imagine a society that doesn’t need leaders of some kind in politics, business and elsewhere. Social contracts are formed between these leaders and those that they lead but such contracts are only viable when the leaders can command respect on some basis. This respect has long since ceased to derive from class, while most of our present leaders in politics and business struggle to command respect by virtue of their abilities and virtues. The breaking of social contracts would, therefore, seem to have produced a crisis of leadership. Whether it produces anything graver than that will depend what, if anything, emerges to fill the vacuum of trust and respect that this crisis has opened up.
MPs have failed the British people by virtue of their lack of foresight and ability to so what they were elected to do, listen to the people of this country and serve them selflessly. Instead, they have demonstrated that their moral compass is somewhat lacking, when compared to the majority of the law-abiding people.
A breakdown of trust of this magnitude takes some doing, but much of it is a a result of voter apathy turning into voter antipathy. Much has to do with the New Labour government electing to ignore the public and assume that they (Labour politicians) know best. Then, when they have got it wrong, trying to deny, or spin their way out of it. This leads to further mistrust.
Some politicians have decided to come out fighting, they are the very people that have misread the mood, now is the time for MPs to show contrition, genuine concern and start listening. And, above all, offer an acceptance that it is the people who are in charge, not them. They are there to serve our will.
If they don’t then I do believe that we will see people voting for parties and/or individuals hat have not been sullied by the expense scandal and/or been guilty of taking the electorate for granted. If this happens, our two or three party system may be broken for a long time.
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