This week, Theresa May cancelled the “meaningful vote” on her Brexit agreement – as opposed, we must assume, to the meaningless votes that usually stuff the parliamentary calendar – and promised to bring home some words from Brussels that would “empower” MPs. But what sort of thing counts as empowerment?
The original sense of “empower” (or “impower”) in the 17th century was “to invest with legal or formal power or authority” (OED). May can’t have meant this, since having to beg the EU to empower parliament doesn’t sound much like taking back control. The more modern meaning arises with the US civil rights movement in the 1960s and has become a key term in counselling: to empower someone is to give them a greater sense of independence, self-esteem and so on.
So it seems May really wants to offer MPs a psychological placebo, so that they feel better about themselves while magnificently wresting back the sovereignty they never gave up. Curiously, however, while modern empowerment is always good, “power” itself is still usually bad. (It corrupts, and so forth.) Is it possible to be empowered but powerless? Since she cannot command a majority in the Commons, May might bleakly say yes.
