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June 24, 2008
Week end. Dead end.
So the Ministry of Justice have just launched a consultation on whether to move to weekend voting - either a Saturday, a Sunday, or both. Download the consultation document here (pdf).
A prize for the person who can guess the question that promoted the Government to answer "weekend voting". It wasn't what "factors motivate people to exercise their right to vote" (Michael Wills)? A separate Citizens' Summit will be held on that. No, the Government seems to have thought to itself that it would be too politically sensitive and challenging to tackle the root causes of political disengagement and low voter turnout, so instead is going after some easier, headline-grabbing pickings: what day we vote on. The idea seems to be that we will all be fooled into thinking "how radical", "how brave", "how modern" that the Government is wanting to overturn the hallowed conventions and electoral shibboleth of Thursday voting.
It isn't the first time, sadly, that Brown, Straw and Wills have mistaken symbolism for real bravery and commitment to change, at least when it comes to constitutional reform. Think back just under a year ago and we had Brown coming in and giving his first major public speech on the issue. Jack Straw was given the airtime and prominence to wax lyrical too. A Green Paper - The Governance of Britain - was published. There were a raft of good, necessary measures announced then. Measures that have now been through consultations and are now included in the Bill to be put before Parliament in the next Session. But mainly measures that had various forms of cross-party support already, were tidying up constitutional loose ends from earlier reforms, or were symbolic - enshrining measures which had already become convention, like the War Powers Bill.
Back in July last year we had already sussed out this ploy. And it was not just have noticed the hole in Brown’s plans and thinking:
"The missing link" – Guardian editorial, 9 July
"The one reform that really matters" – Clare Short, Guardian comment, 6 July
"Without voting reform, Brown's constitutional plans mean nothing" – letters page, Independent, 5 July
The Constitutional Reform Green Paper laudably stated that "creating a more participatory democracy requires a healthy representative democracy." One year on there is still a big question mark over whether this can be done and whether Parliament can become more accountable, one of the two aims of the constitutional reform route map Gordon Brown announced, without a fairer voting system.
More on the details of the consultation in another post soon.
Posted by malcolmclark on June 24, 2008
