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Our MPs are kept in the dark on purpose. Their own party leaders want them bewildered and afraid to do anything but recite talking points

How does this activity not simply leave members of the U.S. House, whose 435 voting members barely exceed our own Commons’ 338, sprawled exhausted across a pile of bills, motions and briefing documents? To say nothing of the American Senate, whose mere 100 members do valiant committee work. The answer is for once short, sweet and simple: staff. Lots and lots of staff.

Members of the U.S. House are limited, if that’s the right word, to 18 full-time and 4 part-time staff. Your MP might have six. And American House and Senate committees have on average over 50 additional staff of their own. Many are doing administration, of course, like those in individual offices. But a legislator hopelessly behind in routine paperwork is unlikely to get busy ferreting out incompetence or worse.

Other staffers are doing PR, we grant. But quite a few are doing policy including investigation. And while some are paid entry-level salaries for mundane work, others are seasoned experts making six figures. It’s easy to talk of feather-bedding. But the upshot is that American legislators are well-equipped to know what’s going on personally or at least have people who know brief them before the cameras roll. And because, on most committees, majority and minority hire their own staff, opposition members have an independent knowledge, expertise and investigative base. Independent of the executive, and independent of their own party.

Our MPs, in sorry contrast, are kept in the dark on purpose. Their own party leaders want them bewildered and afraid to do anything but recite talking points; the other parties want them to look ignorant; and the bureaucrats live by the Yes Minister aphorism that in government, if nobody knows what you’re doing, nobody knows what you’re doing wrong. People without staff barely know what they’re doing, let alone what you are.