Lessons from the Shadow Government

A focus on blame and credit for policies

This week has been an absolute flurry for current events. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump both launched new cryptocurrencies (memecoins) right before his inauguration, Trump mass-pardoned the January 6 insurrectionists, and a pile of the new president’s executive orders has already been legally challenged by a variety of actors. While this is admittedly a treasure trove of information for any political writer to start picking at, I decided to hold back.¹ Rather, I would like to talk about the “shadow government” or, more accurately, borrowing ideas from it.

The term shadow government likely conjures up cloaked figures puppeteering in the dark, the “deep state,” and other conspiratorial ideas and images. However, the shadow government I am referring to exists within the United Kingdom’s parliamentary system.

Enter the “Shadow Cabinet,” one of the opposition party’s main tools for critiquing the majority. Essentially, the opposition forms its own “government” that has no real power, mirroring real cabinet positions. For example, take the current Secretary of State for Education for the Department of Education, Labour Party MP Bridget Phillipson. Now let me introduce you to her doppelgänger in the opposition, Conservative Party MP Laura Trott, Shadow Secretary of State for Education. The Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Defence, the Department for Transport—all cabinet positions that are staffed by the majority have a mirror.²

Functionally, the Shadow Cabinet plays two pivotal roles for U.K. parliament. First, it allows the minority party to critique and keep the majority accountable. Shadow ministers learn the same information their counterparts learn and they also become experts in that specific ministry, leading to them to be the best critics of the current administration. It goes along the lines of “If I were in power, I would do X, Y, and Z, rather than A, B, and C.” They create their own policy in accordance with their party’s beliefs; it creates a clear contrast between the opposition and the majority, allowing the difference to make itself apparent to constituents. Second, since a vote of no confidence can oust any PM and threaten their party’s control of government at any time, coupled with the ability of the majority to call a general election early, the political balance of Parliament can quickly shift, which requires a new government to take the reins quickly. By having their own crafted policy ready to go and by also knowing the same information as current Cabinet MPs, the Shadow Ministers can seamlessly slip into real power, allowing for a smooth transition and quick flow of new policy.

If you want to see this style of critique in action, all you have to do is tune in to Parliamentary procedures on Wednesday to watch “Prime Minister’s Questions.” It is an impressive back-and-forth between the opposition and the current government, trading clever criticism very much in the style of British humor. One thing that stuck out to me was how straightforward the critiques were, broadcasted to all who wish to see and stated directly to the Prime Minister and their party. This stands in stark contrast to the spirit of debate that we see nowadays in America amongst congressional members, taking to the floor to deliver long speeches and making sound bites in news interviews in a way that tends to avoid direct, relevant debate between the opposition and the majority.³

Why is this Relevant?

Democrats have a lot to reflect on from this last election cycle. While some changes will take some time and debate within the party on the direction the party should take, one thing that Democrats can do in the meantime is look to our neighbors across the pond and adopt lessons from the Shadow Cabinet.

Unfortunately, Democrats are unable to form a “Shadow Government.” Unlike the U.K. political system, the American political system separates the executive and legislative branches. Even if the Democrats appointed people to a shadow cabinet position, we would have no guarantee that in a Democrat-led executive branch that those same people would carry over into the new government, as there is no guarantee as to who the president will be due to the primary process that we have. In other words, the separation of powers create a barrier for implementing a similar system.

However, I do think adopting the style of debate and critique of the Shadow Cabinet is important for Democrats. By adopting a more direct approach to critique, it serves two functions. First, it helps jump over the perception that Democrats are poor on messaging, helping focus their critiques beyond simply “We are not the party of Donald Trump.” If they were to channel the spirit of debate of the U.K’s. MPs, it would help sharpen their messages into ones that can carry over into the next election and prepare them for when they come into the reins of power. While it is outside of the legislative scope, the party could even assign the equivalent of court reporters to each Cabinet office and write how Democrats would run that office if they had the power to do so. Second, it addresses one of the issues that political scientist Juan Linz wrote in his famous article “The Perils of Presidentialism” of “Dual Legitimacy” (i.e. is the will of the people located in the presidency or Congress?).⁴ Relatedly, if policy does not pan out or a party is unable to get its purported goals translated into legislation, who do you blame? Do you blame the President? Do you blame Congress? Was it the House’s fault? Or was it the Senate that stonewalled it? In cases of split governance (ex: Republican President, Democratic Senate and House), this becomes even harder to parse out. On the flip side, who do you give credit to for successes in America? We have seen that the murkiness of accountability and general confusion surrounding it allows for congressional members to take credit for bills that they never voted for in the first place.

With President Trump claiming a strong mandate for his policies and ideas, it is important for Democrats to chip away at this notion and properly differentiate themselves from Republicans. This means borrowing another aspect from the Shadow Cabinet, and more accurately, from the party dynamics of U.K. parliament: party discipline. Looking at the current voting pattern of Republicans in the House, they tend to vote as a bloc, minus a couple of members, while Democrats are more split.⁵ I believe that Democrats should adopt this bloc-like behavior from both the U.K. system writ large and from Republicans themselves. By voting as a bloc against Republican policies, this means that outcomes are fully assigned to Republicans. Essentially, this means to let them own their policies. If and when Democrats elicit enough major concessions on any given bill, they should also vote as a bloc and properly attribute themselves credit for those concessions. This is not meant to imply that Democrats should not work in a bipartisan manner or should not propose their own bills (as there are very real and pressing needs of the American people that need to be addressed), but rather to be more mindful of how they convey their criticisms of the Republican Party to the American public.

I do realize the massive political realities that stand in the way of adopting such a system. It is important to remember that the Democratic Party is a wide coalition across the political left. Members of Congress that reside in purple districts are going to be much more likely to feel pressure to work across the aisle. Additionally, those that reside on the progressive left will more likely be combative with their Republican counterparts and even more moderate Democrats. Either way, all members of Congress have constituents that directly voted for them; some Democrats may have promised them a very specific thing that goes against the broader party’s ideals. Even if, hypothetically, Democrats do manage to somehow consistently vote against and for any given policy as a bloc, Republicans might be able to use unanimous voting against Democrats. If they are voting against Republican policy, they are throwing bipartisanship out of the window and should be condemned as a result. If they vote for Republican policies due to compromises, the Republican Party and Trump can capitalize on this phenomenon as their policy being so popular that it was adopted by all. Summed up, these create very legitimate objections to the idea of voting as a bloc as I just suggested.

Despite these own self-found objections, there is one lesson from the Shadow Cabinet that Democrats should use to shine a light on how they move forward, it is how to land the proper critique of proposed policies and properly attribute blame. They should be more direct, be more consistent, and be more clever.

1. If you want to see decent coverage of the following events, the podcast Pod Save America did a decent breakdown of the first week of Trump’s presidency, his executive orders, and his pardons. For news on Trump and Melania’s cryptocurrencies, Coffeezilla, an investigative journalist on YouTube who specializes on cryptocurrency scams, did quick breakdowns of both coins.

2. A full list of the Shadow Cabinet can be found here.

3. Of course there are debates that happen. However, this is the tendency that I have noticed over time. Either way, even with debate in either the House, Senate, or even committees, it is markedly different than the Prime Minister’s Questions.

4. Unfortunately, this article is behind a paywall. See Linz, Juan J. (Juan José). "The Perils of Presidentialism." Journal of Democracy 1, no. 1 (1990): 51-69. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/225694

5. Take a look at a recent bill that passed the U.S. House that I would like to highlight, the “Fix Our Forests Act.” Republicans were nearly unanimous in their voting pattern, with only three absentee votes. Democrats were heavily split on the bill, with 64 Democrats voting alongside Republicans and 141 voting against the bill. This is not an indictment of the content of the bill, but rather that of the voting patterns.