Saturday 25 July 2009

Political Changes

After the Norwich by election some of the points that arose after the MP expenses scandal raised themselves again. The main being nothing much has changed. The anger has cooled and been replaced by disillusionment and apathy. Chloe Smith ran a good,modern,{air quotes} inclusive,campaign. She had the freshness and earnestness to carry it off too. I expect it will become the template for all parties MPs election strategies come the big one.
Local issues, bound to the parties national message.

After the expenses explosion the Prime Minister had a unique opportunity to get the people to engage with their politicians. But week after week, due to his own weakness in eloquence and his inability to credibly defend his position, openness and debate are shut down wherever possible and replaced with spin and obfuscation. A master, like Lord Mandelson, can play a weak hand with skill and charm, but many of his colleagues cannot and few people are convinced.
Tony Blair managed to make his statements sound like the truth. Gordon brown manages to make his sound like he is lying.

Gordon's hope lies in policy making. He can make the dry announcement and his associates can do the presentation. But he needs really bold ideas.The feeble, watered down standards bill won't do it. A bit more radicalism needed..

He could try..
Fixed by-election timetables.
Speaker must resign as an MP, and a by-election held.
Speaker must come from an Independant or a third placed or lower party.
At PMQ's only opposition MPs may table questions.

Or ... your suggestions welcome.


16 comments:

Elby the Beserk said...

Well, frankly, the best thing he could do would be to fuck off and not come back. Simple as that. Useless is one thing. Corrupt and useless another entirely. A nasty, malicious, damaged man, with a huge chip on both shoulders.

Electro-Kevin said...
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Electro-Kevin said...

Brown seems to think that this is about expenses. It is not.

The election may have been precipitated by the expenses scandal - but the disaffection with Nu Lab is most definitely not about fiddling.

It's about immigration.

measured said...

Heads need to roll.....not knocked together.

T' old 'un said...

Until the population of this (or any other) country is truly in charge of its own destiny, and not ruled by liars, both political and religious, the current cycle of mental, moral, and physical corruption and mayhem will continue ad infenitum.
What sort of intellect puts forth a schoolgirl as a prospective MP, and how desparate are the poor bastards who elect her? What experience of the world has such a child got.
Spin,smoke and mirrors on all sides and it matters not one jot to those holding/seeking power, because they all piss in the same pot........and it leaks like a seive!

Anonymous said...

The voters get what they deserve. They get the rulers they elect. Churchill said democracy is the worst system except for all the rest. He was so wrong!
The universal franchise has made sure we would sooner or later run into the eternally corrupt governing elite political class (of Peter Oborne)which we now have and will never rid ourselves of.
Of interest in Norwich was the almost universal wish of the voters to have their old MP back, a man who was sacked by his party's Star Chamber for abusing the allowances system for family gain. And here was I thinking the people could tell the difference between an honest and a dishonest person. It's a bit like that scouser jury voting a chav footballer innocent of affray when he was obviously guilty.
Truth is society is no longer able to tell the difference between the honest and the dishonest, and what's more it doesn't care. The rabble voted in the present criminals three times with huge majorities knowing they never told the truth, if the truth looked unfavourable. Knowing they were destroying education, the economy, the sacred NHS, and the armed forces as well as advancing replacement of the indigenous population. How degenerate is that?

Bill Quango MP said...

Elby The Beserk:
He will be back though. He has managed a remarkable feat. Making the top job so unappealing not one of his rivals wants it.

EK: That is a factor. I think the economy is looming largest at the moment. By the time of the election who knows what will be the main issue. I doubt it will be fox hunting. {one of the planks of Labour's failed Norwich North strategy}

Measured: But heads did roll. Ian Gibson's. Yet the voters wanted him back.
He certainly wasn't the worst trougher, yet he was clearly behaving inappropriately.
Hazel blears must have breathed an enourmous sigh of relief as her chances improved massively.

T' old 'un:
Has it been any different? The last Liberal government sold honours on an almost industrial scale. The last Tory administration depended on not losing a single seat and could not control its own members excesses.
The PM himself was playing away during the whole back to basics nonsense.
Old Labour's Atlee government was despised for its petty regulations and inability to provide the housing it had promised.

Where is the golden age of politics? Campbell-Bannerman?

Anon: I do believe we can do much better. I think real change in the HOC would improve the country.

I don't subscribe to the 'its all so shit nothing can be done' faction. But I do note how little has been done. One can only vote in another lot and hope.

Listening to MPs on their holiday entitlement there is no sense that they connect to voters at all.

The smart party would demand a continuous parliament that MPs attend any two or three days mon-fri. Its such a vote winner. Punishing MPs and making more of the Parliament too.
Two/ three days left for local work each week. This wouldn't be a hard and fast rule either. 5 days in Westminster or 5 days in the constituency. Whatever they want.
But 6 weeks holiday a year only, like everyone else. If the PM is on holiday the Deputy stands in. As in any factory or shop or business. Two of the 6 weeks off are at Christmas too, the only time the Parliament doesn't officially sit.

As for Mr Gerrard... The video evidence didn't sway me much, but then I didn't care much.
What was extraordinary was the judge's summing up. He almost worked in 'this paragon of virtue, this captain of football, lion of England, a vision of "elegance, fragrance and radiance".

Bet he wasn't an Everton supporter.

Budgie said...

Anon 4:50 said: "The voters get ... the rulers they elect. The universal franchise has made sure we would sooner or later run into the eternally corrupt governing elite political class ..."

No. Nearly 80 per cent of the electorate at the last GE did not vote Labour.

It is true our politicians are corrupt, but it was ever so. Power and corruption go together as pithily observed by Lord Acton. But there is no reason why the "universal franchise" should result in politicians who are more corrupt than without it.

What we really need is not loss of democracy, or universal franchise, but an extension of it to reduce the power of politicians. We need Direct Democracy.

Electro-Kevin said...
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Electro-Kevin said...

The 'boom' made mass immigration bearable - just.

The issue keeps me awake at night on occaision. This is probably true for around 80% of the population according to a recent pole.

(Not Stanislav.)

banned said...

Some Labour wonk on Radio 2 after Norwich was trying to convince us that 'the voters' did not desert Labour because of expenses ( which Gordon has 'sorted out' ) or because of all the great things that Labour has done.
"We lost because Labour has failed to get across to the public what it plans to do in the future".

Wrong, it was very much about expenses, which have not been sorted; it was very much about the dreadful things you have done and we are only too well aware what you are likely to do in the future.
That is why Labour lost and will coontinue to lose.

James Higham said...

After the expenses explosion the Prime Minister had a unique opportunity to get the people to engage with their politicians. But week after week, due to his own weakness in eloquence and his inability to credibly defend his position, openness and debate are shut down wherever possible and replaced with spin and obfuscation.

This is all it ever is these days, Bill. It's depressing.

Unsworth said...

It's far too late for him now. Every day the General Election creeps nearer. Anything which he does will be viewed with deep suspicion, mulled over for hidden nuances (i.e. lies), and treated with contempt as political posturing. He will never regain credibility - nor will his colleagues (directly as a result of their slavish unquestioning support of this mendacious bombast).

The best thing he could do for his Party, and certainly for this country, is to resign immediately.

Paul E. said...

Heh. I love this blog. It calls itself 'capitalists at work' and dwells under the illusion that it's politicians that are corrupt, dishonest and incompetent in a year when we've all been robbed blind - perhaps the most extreme example of mass larceny since Attila the Hun - by capitalists.

I don't suppose that there is an argument in the world that could penetrate the wierd bloggertarian skulls of your readers, are there?

Nick Drew said...

back to the topic ...

there are loads of things GB could do that would regain the initiative for him, he has so many levers in his hands

and in Mandelson he has one of the supreme political tacticians (and no mean strategist) of modern times

but he seems to be on strike ! if this is the best they can come up with

wait and watch, we will see some extraordinary moves between now and May next year

Unsworth said...

Mandelson is positioning himself (probably in every sense). He's looking to depose Brown. He's temporarily satisfied with his Lord High Panjandrum status, but it won't be long before he wants more.