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December 03, 2008
Queens Speech initial reaction
We've had the pomp, we've had the the speech, but we are still waiting for the real details to be made public. There's always so much more than just what the Queen reads out in her - briefer than normal - speech. But what do we have so far?
"My Government will continue to take forward proposals on constitutional renewal, including strengthening the role of Parliament and other measures."
That's presumably a reference to the Constitutional Renewal Bill, which has already been looked at in draft form by a parliamentary committee. The main hope for us is that Jack Straw has conceded a 'long' title for this Bill, which makes it easier to tack on amendments which discuss electoral reform. Nothing yet on whether that battle has been won.
"My Government will bring forward legislation to promote local economic development and to create greater opportunities for community and individual involvement in local decision-making."
That is the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill , which will make it a duty for Councils to "promote democracy", to respond to petitions, and to "involve" people in local decision-making. Not sure what all this means in practice, or whether any new money is going to become available.
"A Bill will be brought forward to increase the effectiveness and public accountability of policing, to reduce crime and disorder and to enhance airport security."
This is the Policing and Crime Bill. The big thing is the proposal to allow people to elect representatives to police authorities. This is quite a controversial proposal. There are arguments for and against the suitability of having elections. And there is already a <u>debate about whether the BNP could use the elections to their advantage. Irrespective of that, if elections were to be held, there needs to be real consideration over what type of voting system would be best. Taking an unthinking 'First-Past-the-Post is the best' attitude - which already some in Government and beyond have done - is counter-productive. A winner-takes-all system may exacerbate some of the problems elections were meant to solve.
There is also the Political Parties and Elections Bill, which would regulate the spending of political candidates for longer periods so it can be "more effectively constrained". MVC has no position on this per se, except that it is tackling the symptoms rather than the causes of the party funding issues. It does nothing to change the dynamic that most money and resources gets pumped into the small percentage of marginal and winnable seats, at the cost to democratic engagement elsewhere.
Posted by malcolmclark on December 03, 2008
Comments
Fraser Nelson, again in the Spectator, umhappy with Westminster's power and publicising Carswell's open primary system.
Let's hope we get a minority Tory administration relying on LD support at the next GE
Posted by: Andrew Kitching at December 5, 2008 05:56 PM
Just posted this on politicalbetting.
Speaker Martin wanting to ‘pass on’ his seat to his son tells you all you need to know about the rotten borough system that is FPTP. Under a system like STV he could be one of 9 Labour candidates for a multimember seat called, I dunno, Northern Glasgow. If the people wanted him above the other Labour candidates, they could vote for him!
by AJK December 8th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
The whole speaker thing stinks!
Posted by: Andrew Kitching at December 8, 2008 08:00 PM
We're democrats and believe in free speech, but we're also committed to civil and rational debate. We reserve the right to delete material posted to our site, but we hope and expect to exercise this right rarely if at all.
