In this morning’s Observer Liberal Democrat Leader, Nick Clegg calls for major reforms to restore people’s faith in politics:
Newspapers carried images last week of a dark cloud hanging over the Palace of Westminster. But the cloud metaphor is too generous: politicians are not innocent victims of the weather. We created this cloud ourselves. It rose from the decaying of our democracy.
It is because our political culture is so cut off from proper scrutiny that these Alice in Wonderland expenses rules developed.
For too long, we have believed the hype about the mother of parliaments. The truth is that the pomp and tradition – the tights, gowns and wigs, the silly names – disguise the fact that Parliament has been hollowed out, ignored by an overbearing executive of ministers and civil servants.
Nick calls for the establishment of a constitutional convention, overseen by 100 randomly selected voters to draw up a short constitution setting out what rights people enjoy and making clear the subservience of Parliament to the people.
He says that the party leaders should guarantee that the recommendations of Sir Christopher Kelly’s independent inquiry into MPs allowances are accepted in full, no matter what they say and he calls for the cutting back of the size and power of the Whitehall state, eliminating central bureaucracy and giving new freedoms, including money-raising powers, to local communities.
Clegg also calls for a system that ensures that if MPs transgress the rules, then there will be a way for their constituents to sack them. He wants a method of “recall” so that a small percentage of constituents can force a by-election on any MP suspended for wrongdoing. He concludes:
Finally, but fundamentally, we need to give people a proper say in who governs the country with fair votes. No government should be able to secure total power with the support of just one out of every five people.
As Nick says, we can no longer tolerate such a dysfunctional set-up, the old way of doing things is no longer credible. Our democracy must reform or die a long and lingering death.
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