Without Ukip, Douglas Carswell could be a brilliant independent MP

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/13/ukip-douglas-carswell-independent-mp

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Douglas Carswell would be – and perhaps will be – an outstanding independent MP. As someone who successfully stood as an independent myself, I should know. Carswell has a mind of his own and an admirable aversion to being showered with public money. He was uncomfortable in the Conservative party and now seems no more at ease in Ukip.

Related: Nigel Farage at odds with Ukip MP over use of post-election funds

His position is a difficult one. As Ukip’s only elected member of parliament, he may be seen as the representative of the 3.9 million voters whose other candidates were not successful. But he has no grand ambitions. He actually represents the people of Clacton – and only the people of Clacton. He is reluctant, as a lone backbencher, to take on the staff to run a national operation from his parliamentary office.

The “short money” that would finance such an office has nothing to do with the size of the banknotes. It was a parliamentary reform introduced by Ted Short, leader of the house in 1974, to help opposition parties, without an army of civil servants behind them, to function more efficiently. Carswell doesn’t need lavish funding. When he speaks, others listen. In a conflict between his private principle and someone else’s public expediency, the public expediency does not stand a chance.

We know him well enough to be sure that, if his rift with the party continues and deepens, he will leave the party and call a by-election. He has done it before and will do it again. Unlike certain other MPs, he would not just cross the floor and continue to draw his salary without a popular mandate. I have no doubt that he would be re-elected. He has a strong following inside the constituency and the support of many outside it, like myself, who do not share his views in Europe. Parliament needs its awkward squad, and has been somewhat short-staffed in that department since the retirement of Tam Dalyell.

We may be sure that the MP for Clacton has never trimmed his views for political advantage; nor has he begun a question with the unctuous phrase “May I congratulate my right honourable friend…”

I know from experience that the role of an independent MP comes with its disadvantages. No seats on select committees or standing committees (though these can be negotiated). No dispatch box on which to rest one’s papers. No cross-bench seat except one that is technically not in the House at all. No claque of supporters around you. A constant need to catch the Speaker’s eye (much easier in my case with Betty Boothroyd than with her successor Michael Martin).

But there are advantages too. Every vote is a free vote. No deputy chief whip to urge the planting of questions. No rubber chicken dinners in other MPs’ constituencies. Other MPs seek your independent support for their causes as a kind of non-party validation. And a certain amount of public goodwill accrues from the practice of operating outside the mainstream parties’ battle lines.

Carswell, if he chose to run outside – and indeed against – the party structures, would be more than an oddity. He would be a one-man political force. Nor need the MP for Clacton fear being sidelined. He already has a higher profile than most other back bench MPs. He will be heeded where others will be ignored. And he will be well placed to play on the interface between politics and the media. As I discovered to my surprise and satisfaction, a well-timed intervention on the Today programme can cause a government to rethink a policy.

It seems to me that Douglas Carswell has a choice of three courses, only one of which he would regret. That is to take the full amount of the “short money” offered and establish an expensive parliamentary beachhead on behalf of his party. He would then become its prisoner. As he points out, he has no reason, at public expense, to hire a staff as large as that of a US senator. Ukip plays the expenses game expertly in Brussels and Strasbourg, but as a party of insurrection it would be ill-advised to do so in Westminster.

The good choices facing its only MP are either to soldier on with a more modest allowance of “short money” or else to take the independent course. If the people of Clacton can bear to have three parliamentary elections in less than a year – all for a good cause – I think Douglas Carswell should go for it. He is already an independent MP in all but name – let him have the label that he has so richly earned.