Lord Holme to Gordon Brown

Jon Bright (London, OK): OurKingdom is publishing a memo by the Liberal Democrat peer Richard Holme - a memo for Gordon Brown. Holme was a close advisor to Paddy Ashdown in his negotiations with Tony Blair after 1997. Now he advises the next Prime Minister to dispense with “sofa government” (where major decisions are taken informally by the PM and a few close aides), make more use of the cabinet, and give parliament some real power. He also calls on him to “come to terms with the end of the UK as a centralised unitary state”, and to transform the British political system from one of “state power and subjecthood” to one of “democratic citizenship”. “The successful nations of the future”, he said, “will be those that open up their societies…to the fuller exercise of people power”. Will Gordon listen to Richard, who is the Chairman of the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution as well as chair of the Hansard Society? Read the memorandum in full here(opens in Microsoft Word).