Democracy day

We are to get a democracy then in 2011 if we decide to re-elect Gordon Brown.

Speaking at CentrePoint in central London,the Prime Minister,pledged a free vote on reducing the voting age to 16, a committment to fixed term parliaments, movement towards a written constitution and a promise that no MP can be elected without a majority of constituents' backing.

He also promised an elected second chamber and backed recall for discredited MPs.

"It is time to see an end to the old politics and to change our politics for good."

said the Prime Minister

The British people will make the choice on the central questions of our constitutional future in a referendum next autumn, that will rightly give the people the final world."

he told the assembled audience.

and as far as the Conservatives are concerned

for all their talk of change, remain hostile to the fundamental change in our politics that the people so clearly seek.

Tory shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve though accused Gordon Brown of a "stunt" over his plans for constitutional reform.Speaking on BBC news he said that The proposals,may not have included much that was new

Project 585

One thing that is on the Tory agenda is a plan to slim down the size of Parliament.

Called the 585 project,it is a proposal to cull 10 pr cent of the number of MP's to 585 and according to Michael Crick

Mr Cameron is absolutely committed to the idea, and, I'm reliably told, his plans are extremely well-advanced.

He adds that

So MPs will be under huge pressure in the next Parliament, knowing they face a 10% cull, especially when much of the dead wood has already been pruned away over the last few months, with record numbers of retirements.
The question is how MPs will react to this threat? Will they become more independent-minded, more aware of local constituency feeling?

Watson comes out in favour of AV

Ex Minister Tom Watson professes that once he was a great fan of our electoral system,now he is not sure.

Writing in the Guardian this morning he says that

The rupture at the core of British democracy can only be healed with a radical programme of constitutional reform, reinforced by the authority of the people in a referendum.

Where once he believed

that if working people were to retain a voice in parliament, the current system of first past the post should be defended.

but now

Our voting system is the source code of the power wielded by MPs. It bestows the authority of the people on their representatives. Yet few MPs can claim support from more than 50% of their electors.

Wilby on why reform is for anoraks

Those who quote Cromwell’s “In the name of God, go!” miss an important point: Cromwell replaced the Rump Parliament with an assembly of nominated placemen, setting himself on the road to dictatorship.

writes Peter Wilby in this week's New Statesman and adds that

both Houses of Parliament are already composed very largely of nominees, with democracy providing just a veneer of legitimacy. Membership of the House of Commons is heavily determined by the parties’ lists of “approved candidates”, with neither party members nor voters in general having much of a say unless they strain themselves to make trouble.

It is an interesting perspective and as he continues,the trouble with Parliament is that it was simply not designed to do the job for which it is now supposed to do

MPs originally ensured that governments didn’t raise taxes without good cause or adequate account of how the money was spent. Their function as intermediaries between constituents and central government – sorting out the myriad ways in which each now makes demands on the other – is almost entirely a development of the past 50 years. That explains why MPs think they are overworked and require two homes.

Good ideas but once in power?

It is an easy thing to say when you are not in office and I agree with many of the sentiments of David Cameron's constitutional ideas in the Guardian this morning.

However how easy would it be for a new Prime Minister to take office and set in motion measures to effectively diminish his powers.

Cameron's piece contains measures that those who believe that our constitutional system is flawed will welcome.

I believe the central objective of the new politics we need should be a massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power: from the state to citizens; from the government to parliament; from Whitehall to communities; from the EU to Britain; from judges to the people; from bureaucracy to democracy. Through decentralisation, transparency and accountability we must take power from the elite and hand it to the man and woman in the street.

he writes

His main thrust being the move from executive to Parliamentary power which swung radically the other way first under Mrs Thatcher and then under Tony Blair.

His choice of medium is interesting.The Guardian has been running a new politics for the last week or so opening a discussion on a new constitution and it is the chattering political classes that Cameron will need to win over.

Hats off for taking the initiative.Tony Blair tried to do the same in 1997 but quickly New Labour's constitutional reforms were lost in the mists of bureaucratic wranglings.

As I started the article,I shall finish it.Good ideas but once in power?

What the weeklies are saying

The Economist looks at Jack Straw's white paper on constitutional reform,

tinkering with its ancient and inscrutable constitution might not strike outsiders as a particular priority.

the bill is described as

Timid. A proposal that Parliament must vote on whether troops are committed to war is hardly radical: Mr Blair held a vote before the Iraq war and it would be politically difficult to go to war without one in future. Mr Straw held out the prospect of giving MPs greater say over public appointments and the date of general elections, but details are yet to emerge. Other ideas, such as restoring the right to protest outside Parliament and allowing the Union flag to be flown on government buildings at any time, are mostly symbolic.

Over at the Spectator,Alan Milburn gives his first interview since Gordon Brown moved into No 10

I thought the most helpful thing would be for me to keep quiet,’ ‘But now, I feel I’ve earned my passage. Let’s face it, there have been plenty of opportunities to rock the boat during the last few months

He agrees that Brown,although maybe too late has become a Blairite but

What Gordon needs to do when he talks about this “new politics” that places power in the hands of people, is to announce a policy that gives that huge symbolic lift.’

and his answer

by dramatically cutting the size of Whitehall. I would slash it over and above what is being done by a quarter.’

The New Statesman asks is Boris a fake?.Brian Cathcart tells us

a man with a lurid history of verbal incontinence is playing the 21st-century election game, with all its gaffe-traps and correctness tripwires - and he is winning.

Meanwhile at the Spectator David Selbourne writes

Britain has lost its identity and its sense of nation, The citizen is treated as a mere ‘consumer’, liberty reduced to the ‘freedom to choose’, politicians held in contempt and hostile forces such as Islamism appeased. The stakes could scarcely be higher.

In a must read article he says

A lot of this is owed to ‘Blairism’ and its corruptions of the body politic; much, too, to the previous Conservative period in office. The main parties, reduced in organisation and membership and with their inherited principles in dissolution, have themselves paid a high price in public recoil for what they have done to the country. Yet, compounding their misjudgments, each seeks the same chimerical ‘centre ground’ where stand the idols of Empowerment, Opportunity, Aspiration, Competition, Modernisation, Choice and so forth. It is the ground not of a Normandy beach but of a quagmire in Notting Hill.