Clegg fleshes out the new politics

Jon Bright (London, OK): Nick Clegg will call for around 150 parliamentary seats to be dissolved this evening in a speech in Sheffield. I'll be interested to hear his exact reasoning - so far, it seems to revolve around cutting the price of politics significantl. He will apparently also call for a £3 voluntary donation option to be added to each ballot paper at the general election, with people giving the money to the party of their choice (or not at all) - which I think is very similar to a proposal made by the Power Inquiry. Getting any party funding reform will be hard - and getting MPs to vote for a drastic thinning of their own ranks should be next to impossible. Nevertheless, it's interesting and relatively radical stuff.