Democracy in Britain leaves a lot to be desired – like actual democracy, for example. Governments secure unconscionable power with 33% of the popular vote; parties run multi-million pound election campaigns, ensuring they owe some millionaire or business, something, sometime; the anachronism of the constituency MP is still firmly in place and not going anywhere [...]
Now that Brown’s promised to step down, it’s looking increasingly plausible that our next government will be a centre-left coalition of some kind. No doubt if this actually happens the rightwing press will go into a frenzy about how illegitimate and unfair it is for the Tories not to get into Government, but they can [...]
Ian Kennedy – the man in charge of overhauling the parliamentary expenses – has done a good job of encapsulating all that I dislike about post-expenses scandal attitudes. In a speech to the IPPR he suggested that parliamentary expenses are inflated by the house choosing “work its own idiosyncratic hours” and that costs could be [...]
Tom Harris is being silenced. At least according to his latest blog post, entitled ‘Silence those who dare to disagree with us!’. He has taken exception to an advert in the Guardian, posted by constitutional reform activists Power 2010, which attacks 6 MPs for opposing electoral reform. And Tom is deeply aggrieved to be on [...]
After 4,500 submissions and 100,000 votes, the POWER 2010 pledge has finally been revealed. 1. Introduce a proportional voting system. 2. Scrap ID cards and roll back the database state. 3. Replace the House of Lords with an elected chamber. 4. Allow only English MPs to vote on English laws. 5. Draw up a written [...]
The Third Estate is brought to you today by the letters DEMOCRACY and the number 2010. In just one month the Power2010 campaign has received over 2000 ideas to reform our political system. To highlight their launch, I invited Guy Aitchison to set out the campaign’s stall in a piece that was met with mixed [...]
Walking through security at Portcullis House, the fabulously expensive building standing adjacent to the Houses of Parliament, is a bit like going through any airport anywhere in the world. But making your way through the spacious courtyard, past green trees and sun-dappled water features under the enormous sparkling glass dome towering overhead, you could be [...]
Earlier this evening The Guardian was served with a gagging order forbidding it from reporting parliamentary business. To quote the article in the paper itself: Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, [...]
Guest post by Guy Aitchison It is time for those who want a new politics to work together for change With the party conferences over and MPs returning to Westminster today following their 82-day break, now seems like a good moment to reflect on the crisis that engulfed the political class during the early summer [...]
When I want something to laugh at, I often find myself reading the blog tory MP Nadine Dorries. With her repeated evocations of ‘common sense’ she comes across as a thick version of William Hague (late 1990s version). Particularly entertaining, however, has been her response to the questions put to her over her expenses. A [...]
