The extent and proper level of the Westminster parliament’s power has long been disputed. So what impressions do UK newspaper readers receive on this question? Meg Russell and Lisa James summarise a new study showing that the dominant right-leaning newspapers, in particular, often present negative messages about parliament: depicting it as either too weak or too strong.
Parliament sits at the heart of the UK constitution. But, despite valuable communication and outreach programmes by the parliamentary authorities, the public’s understanding of this central institution is likely to be heavily influenced by its presentation in the media.
We have recently published an article, ‘Representation of the UK Parliament’s Power in the National Media: Too Weak, or Too Strong?’, investigating how parliament is portrayed in UK newspapers. It explores, in particular, how the print media depicts parliamentary strength. The actual level of parliament’s power has long been a debate among academics: is it a mere rubber stamp, dominated by the executive, or a more influential shaper of policy? Some scholars have charted the well-established but dubious ‘parliamentary decline thesis’. Others have suggested parliament is more powerful than often assumed, that procedural and political changes have led to a ‘new assertiveness’, or even that the institution may have become ‘too powerful’. But what messages do the public receive from the media about such questions? Our article is the first to explore this directly. It also explores how these messages changed in the turbulent years following the June 2016 Brexit referendum, when the government faced increasing challenges in the House of Commons.
The article is based on an analysis of over 650 newspaper articles published between 2013 and 2019 (a 3.5 year period either side of the referendum). These articles spanned papers which were left-leaning (Guardian/Observer and Mirror), right-leaning (Telegraph, Mail, Express and Sun) and more centrist (Times). We explored three broad questions, regarding the extent of coverage about parliamentary power, whether parliament is more often represented as weak or strong, and whether parliamentary power was presented positively or negatively. In all three cases we analysed whether and how matters changed in the period after the referendum.
Coverage of parliamentary power
Parliament exercises its power in various ways. On occasion, this includes dramatic defeats or forced climb-downs by government. But more often, parliament’s influence is subtler and takes place behind the scenes.
Studies of ‘newsworthiness’, on the other hand, tend to emphasise the importance of conflict, tension and drama. This means that many day-to-day manifestations of parliament’s power might be expected to pass largely unnoticed by busy journalists. The post-referendum period, however, saw more overt conflict between groups of backbenchers and the executive, which might lead coverage to increase.
Our results largely bore out these expectations. Articles referring to the power of parliament (whether positively or negatively) increased markedly in number post-referendum. While using the same search terms throughout, 62% of the resultant dataset comprised articles from the post-referendum period. Indeed, 25% of all articles dated to 2019 alone – the year when the Brexit deadlock was at its most pronounced.
Parliamentary strength and weakness
Partly for similar reasons – that the numerous subtler manifestations of parliamentary strength are a poor fit for ‘newsworthy’ values – and partly thanks to the entrenched ‘parliamentary decline thesis’, we might expect to see parliament often represented as a weak institution. But this also seemed likely to change after the referendum.
In fact, the pre-referendum coverage of parliamentary power proved more balanced than might have been expected. In articles that made any reference to parliamentary strength, 53% tended to depict the institution as strong, and 35% to present it as weak. But there was important variation between different types of newspaper here. The left-leaning press published three times as many articles highlighting parliamentary strength as weakness, with depictions of strength including coverage of backbench rebellions across a variety of topics, as well as the work of select committees. In contrast, the right-leaning press published roughly similar numbers of articles alleging strength and weakness. While picking out similar examples of strength, articles depicting parliamentary weakness often suggested that parliament had been eclipsed by EU institutions and UK or European courts.
Post-referendum, an overall higher proportion of articles depicted parliament as strong – 69%, compared to 20.5% alleging weakness. This rise was mostly driven by changes in the right-leaning and centre-ground press. In the former, 70.5% of post-referendum articles depicted parliament as powerful, compared to 51% pre-referendum; in the latter, the proportion rose from 33% to 74%. Meanwhile in the left-leaning press the proportion of articles noting parliamentary strength remained largely unchanged post-referendum.
Normative views of parliamentary power
A crucial question concerns how the newspapers presented parliamentary power in ‘normative’ terms – i.e. whether it was depicted as a good or a bad thing. This proved particularly interesting in relation to the right-leaning press. These newspapers all took a Eurosceptic position, and had historically used parliament’s alleged powerlessness compared to EU institutions to support that position. After the referendum, therefore, they might have been expected to celebrate a return of parliamentary power. However, given the clashes between the government and the House of Commons over Brexit, we might in contrast expect the newspapers’ Euroscepticism to prove more important, leading them to take a dimmer view of parliamentary power.
This latter prediction was strongly supported by the data. Not all newspaper articles discussing parliamentary power expressed an opinion on its desirability or undesirability – such opinions are more likely to be found in editorial or comment pieces than ‘straight’ reportage. But of those articles in the right-leaning press that did express an opinion, 66% of pre-referendum articles painted parliamentary power in a positive light, compared to just 29% that represented it negatively. Post-referendum the picture was close to the reverse: positive representations of parliamentary power dropped to just 22%, while negative ones rose to 68.5%. While nothing similar was seen in the left-leaning press (indeed positivity slightly rose) this change from the right-leaning Eurosceptic newspapers, and a smaller shift in the same direction from the more centrist Times, drove an overall shift in normative representations of parliamentary power – with positive representations dropping from 61% to 45%, and negative ones rising from 27% to 42% overall.
Why might this have happened?
The quantitative results therefore show intriguing patterns. Before the Brexit referendum, the newspapers presented parliamentary power in a fairly balanced way, noting instances of both strength and weakness. Such power was generally presented in a positive light. Unsurprisingly, depictions of parliamentary strength increased post-referendum; but the framing of parliamentary power became far more negative, with this change largely driven by the right-leaning newspapers.
One explanation for this shift is purely instrumental. Newspapers may have no settled view on whether parliamentary power is a good or bad thing – instead, their stated view might change depending on how far they support what parliament is trying to do. This could result in enthusiastic support from the right-leaning papers for parliamentary power in the pre-referendum period, but greater criticism when that power was later used to put obstacles in the way of the government’s Brexit plans. We do find some support for this in the data.
But a closer reading of articles from the right-leaning newspapers suggests an additional, more nuanced, explanation: the newspapers’ reading of the idea of parliamentary sovereignty, and their assumptions about the proper roles of the executive and parliament.
In pre-referendum articles, parliamentary sovereignty was often used in a loose sense by the right-leaning newspapers, to effectively refer to national sovereignty. Thus, one Daily Mail article argued that during the UK’s EU membership ‘the British Parliament and Government are not sovereign’. While ostensibly arguing for greater power for parliament, such representations did not consider the actual role of parliament compared to UK institutions as a whole.
The frequent post-referendum clashes between the government and its backbenchers forced these newspapers to reckon more with the role of parliament as an institution distinct from the executive. Confronted with this, commentators began to suggest that, again in the words of the Daily Mail in 2019, ‘Parliament is there to hold the government to account – not do its job’. Given the referendum context, there were also suggestions that parliament was showing ‘contempt for democracy’ – a kind of ‘parliament versus people’ framing adopted, at different times, by both Theresa May and Boris Johnson.
Conclusion
Prior to the Brexit referendum, UK newspapers tended to present parliament as both weak and strong, but – whether seen as present or not – parliamentary power was generally depicted as a desirable thing. Right-leaning newspapers were more likely to present this power as being sadly missing. Post-referendum, the picture changed substantially. Parliament was now depicted as strong – but in the right-leaning papers, often as too strong. This shift was underpinned both by instrumental considerations, and by a lack of clarity about the meaning of parliamentary sovereignty and the distinction between parliament and the executive. Right-leaning newspapers have long enjoyed a dominant UK market share, and their positioning on Brexit was seen as important to the outcome of the referendum itself. Our findings show that between 2013 and 2019, their readers were presented with a consistently negative image of the power of parliament – that the institution was either too weak, or too strong.
It seems at least plausible that these kinds of negative depictions may influence public attitudes to parliament as an institution. In a classic work from 1979, Michael Mezey noted that legislatures crucially depend on public support in order properly to perform their functions. Democracies, meanwhile, depend both on legislatures, and on their core institutions enjoying public support. Our findings suggest that the role of the media in shaping such support for parliament deserves far closer attention.
This blog represents a summary of the arguments and conclusions of the authors’ long-form article, Representation of the UK Parliament’s Power in the National Media: Too Weak, or Too Strong?’, which is available to read in Parliamentary Affairs. A subscription is not required to access the article.
About the authors
Meg Russell FBA is co-author of Representation of the UK Parliament’s Power in the National Media: Too Weak, or Too Strong? and The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit, and Professor of British and Comparative Politics at UCL and Director of the Constitution Unit.
Lisa James is co-author of Representation of the UK Parliament’s Power in the National Media: Too Weak, or Too Strong? and The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit, and a Research Fellow in the Constitution Unit.
Featured image: Newspaper Stacks (CC BY 2.0) by shauser.