open Democracy News Analysis - Parliament - Comments

Toque on "Bring Westminster lobbying into the open - My idea for Power2010"

Toque — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:02:37 +0000

Sounds like a good idea to me Tom, I'm sure the big beasts on the Tory frontbenches will already be renegotiating their contracts with tobacco firms, missile manufacturers and hedge funds.

I've been up in Yorkshire, so sorry for not coming back to you sooner. As I think you may have guessed I don't really have much to add to David's "Game Changer" post, but I've given Power2010 a late plug here.

cracen on "Time for a citizens' convention?"

cracen — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:56:53 +0000

Failing that, we will likely have to suppress our democratic aspirations until the people are even angrier. It may be a long wait. T

Mike Haseler on "Time for a citizens' convention?"

Mike Haseler — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:24:58 +0000

Anyone interested in a citizen's convention will be interested in the following petition:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/CitizensReform/

Please do sign and send on the link to friends and colleagues.

FloTom on "Time for a citizens' convention?"

FloTom — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:39:44 +0000

People that beleive in England should take the pledge and sign up to The English Claim of right 960 English people already have. When you have tell your family and freinds to take the pledge too.

http://www.englishclaimofright.com/

JFox on "Time for a citizens' convention?"

JFox — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:14:04 +0000

MP's expenses are a triviality compared with the weakness of parliament, the dictatorial powers of the executive, our unrepresentative electoral system, the ritualistic trampling of democratic principle under the heel of arcane ritual. These are the issues that need to be addressed.

Our mostly Conservative media can be relied upon to echo Cameron & Co. in calling for an early election: the inevitable dispiriting response to the current disarray. Without prior reform of our sclerotic parliamentary system, however, an election will do no more than plunge us back into the same morass - with yet another government deaf to anything beyond the sound of its leader's voice.

Neither of the two largest parties is committed to constitutional change or, indeed, to anything other than a continuation of the present system with themselves in power.
How do we begin to address this?
Partly, at least, through the media.
If the clamour for change is sufficiently strong, politicians seeking office may start to pay attention.

The other target is the current government. Experience should have taught us that freshly-elected governments do not turn on the system they have just inherited. Our best of chance of reform lies with the lame ducks, those who know - or fear - that their time is up. A root-and-branch reappraisal of our constitutional arrangements may represent Labour's only hope of dignified survival. Brown probably won't grasp that branch, the only one that might arrest his party's free fall; but there's always a chance.

Failing that, we will likely have to suppress our democratic aspirations until the people are even angrier. It may be a long wait. The last revolution of any significance in these islands took place in 1688.

owly on "Time for a citizens' convention?"

owly — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:31:50 +0000

I think the Labour Party has been a total and utter disaster in the constitutional area. They have always thought of Party and seldom of Country. The creation of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly are a perfect example. No effort was made to address the 'English' question, and we all know why. In England Labour lost the popular vote and it would have a very hard time ruling without its Scottish and Welsh seats.

Similarly there is a certain irony in the current expenses mess. Labour MP have been by far the worst offenders and it was they who would not vote for a Tory as Speaker. The Labour whips connived to get 'our man' elected, so as an article in The Times noted yesterday Michael Martin owed his position to the Labour machine. And so it goes on.

It is also interesting to note that there is acres of waffle here about Constitutional reform and yet no one ever mentions the most worrying aspect in all of this. The EU now creates something like 70% of all new law, and yet most of this is never subject to any proper form of democratic accountability. If you were serious about democracy and constitutional reform and integrity you would all be vocal campaigners for the return of powers back to the House of Commons from the EU. Such a move would do more to reinvigorate our democracy than any tinkering with this or that.

Tony Curzon Price on "Time for a citizens' convention?"

Tony Curzon Price — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:46:19 +0000

Thanks for reminding of the constitutional change and crisis posts - here was my contribution to the debate at the time.

My conclusion at the time: ""Why should a Prime Minister want [constitutional reform]?" Because there is a crisis that nothing else will solve. If you want a good constitution, you have to hope for the right crisis."

I think this is a particularly good crisis: it is not one that invites leadership and therefore centralisation, but is instead a crisis of leadership---one that needs to be exercised in a completely different way.

tony

britologywatch on "Flippinggate - Purdy versus Hassan"

britologywatch — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:30:14 +0000

Paul Kingsnorth's abstentionist despair, while entirely understandable, is effectively merely a negative protest vote. It's because politically informed or indifferent people have stopped voting that the mainstream parties can get away with governing on such a ludicrously low base of public support (only 22% of the electorate voting Labour in 2005), effectively making them unaccountable to the people.

What's interesting about the European elections is of course that they are carried out using a highly proportionate voting system. And that's why people who do vote at them feel so liberated to either vote for the party they actually support, or to make a protest vote: because their vote does count. Political accountability can come only if the popular vote is taken into account. No wonder the Westminster elite has resisted any form of electoral reform for UK-parliamentary elections for so long. If a decent PR system was introduced (multi-member STV being the best), they'd be bricking themselves: they could be wiped out in UK elections and not just the European sideshow.

I seriously believe that electoral reform is the only way to salvage UK-parliamentary democracy; although whether I would actually want to salvage a system that is even more undemocratic and unfair towards the people of England than it is to the other nations of the UK is debatable. One thing for sure is that an English Parliament would be elected using PR; and that fact again is a major reason why the main parties are opposed to it: no chance of either Labour or the Tories gaining a disproportionate parliamentary majority in England, whether the members of the English Parliament were either entirely separate from or integrated within the UK Parliament.

According to the Times Populus poll last week, 41% of respondents in England and Wales (therefore, one assumes, a higher percentage in England alone) want an English Parliament. Similarly, at the last general election, roughly 39% of the electorate didn't bother to vote (compared with 22% that voted for the majority Labour government). By my book, this makes the 'English Parliament Party' or the 'Abstention Party' the leading parties in England and the UK. Isn't it time to channel this silent large minority into an electoral movement that can force the established parties to carry out root-and-branch reform of the system, including an English Parliament (if the majority in a referendum want it) and PR? Maybe this is the way forward: something like an Obama-esque 'Change Party' to fight the next general election and to stand on a simple platform of major constitutional reform, including as a minimum PR and a referendum on an English Parliament, after which new elections would be held.

Who knows - this might even bring about the very English revolution that is surely needed to create a parliament that is once more accountable to the people. I'd certainly be willing to be a founder member if a party along these lines were to take shape. What do people think?

Gerry Hassan on "Swine flu infects the whole political system"

Gerry Hassan — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:45:58 +0000

Great Tawney quote;

Here is another revealing quote - which has added potency in this crisis - from Enoch Powell in June 1982:

I slightly bridle when the world 'democracy' is applied to the United Kingdom. Instead of that I say, 'we are a Parliamentary nation'. If you ... put us into the jar labelled 'Democracy', I cant complain: I can only tell that you have understood very little about the United Kingdom.

alex_buchan on "Flippinggate - Purdy versus Hassan"

alex_buchan — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:48:02 +0000

As Guy Aitchison says “the issues of economic recession, social disintegration and environmental degradation can't be divorced so easily from the corruption, venality and sheer contempt for democracy at the heart the system.” This, to my mind, is evidence of how much the attitude, borne of Thatcherism, of “take what you can, when you can” has infected our politics just as much as our banking and business. She also saw to the demise of the public service ethos. What we need is a long overdue show-down with this pernicious political philosophy.

Guy Aitchison on "Swine flu infects the whole political system"

Guy Aitchison — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:47:42 +0000

Great comment Tom and great quote from Tawney.

Tom Griffin on "Swine flu infects the whole political system"

Tom Griffin — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:57:03 +0000

Hassan links this uncompromisingly with the broken constitutional system and the prevailing neo-liberal political and economic ideology of our ruling class.

Its vital that a deeper constitutional argument comes out of the expenses scandal. Nick Robinson made a striking comment the other day:

"My point is simply that for the past 20 years or so MPs have behaved in precisely the way that they have legally prevented other groups from behaving. Trade unionists, doctors, the police and many many others used to argue that they could be trusted to manage their own affairs. Few would argue that now."

"Yet the House of Commons has run itself as if Members of Parliament can and should be assumed to be honourable and, by implication, better than those they govern."
http://tinyurl.com/ohl2bl

This is an instance of a point David Marquand made in his speech to the IPPR last year in a passage on Tawney:

"Democracy was not just a matter of counting heads. Democracy was a matter of having a democratic culture. and Britain didn't."

"'Britain when it became a democracy', Tawney said, 'had undergone no inner conversion. She accepted it as a convenience like an improved system of telephones. She did not dedicate herself to it as the expression of a moral ideal. She changed her political garments but not her heart. She carried into the democratic era, not only institutions, but the social habits and mentality of the oldest and toughest plutocracy in the world. She went to the ballot box touching her hat."
http://tinyurl.com/9kwntf

This is an opportunity to make the argument that parliamentary sovereignty is not an adequate substitute for popular sovereignty and a deeper democratic culture.

Hendre on "Flippinggate - Purdy versus Hassan"

Hendre — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:08:40 +0000

And another thing ... I read Clare Brown’s response in the Guardian yesterday. Far from being ‘dignified’ it was a self-pitying whine which neglected to mention that Gordon Brown (as far as I can make out) chose to continue to occupy and claim for a London flat when grace and favour accommodation was available to him.

Toque on "Flippinggate - Purdy versus Hassan"

Toque — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:00:52 +0000

Douglas Hogg's expenses letter is incredible. No wonder it's been so difficult to reform our democracy when the people who are the guardians of that democracy have been milking the system to such an extent.

I suppose you might expect it from a Tory.

But a "socialist"? John Prescott clamed a yearly food allowance of £4,800, only £153 short of the basic state pension. Clearly he's a man with little shame, but surely even he must remove himself from public life now.

God bless cheque book journalism if he does.

Guy Aitchison on "Swine flu infects the whole political system"

Guy Aitchison — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:25:19 +0000

Jon Snow makes the connection between the expenses scandal and cash for amendments in his Chnnel 4 blog:
http://blogs.channel4.com/snowblog/2009/05/11/peer-review-but-life-still-means-life-in-the-lords/

He seems to be one of the few in the MSM who grasps the full extent of the rot.