today's constitutional flatulence

Oh for christ’s sake:

So let us bar the gates of Westminster and stop MPs leaving for their summer holidays until this crisis has been sorted out, and every nook and cranny of our political system has been reformed.

They seem to think we’re a parole board and they’re the old lags waving their open university degrees in sociology. Look at us: we’re reforming away. I suppose they have to do something public. The problem with all these claims of actively considering reforms is that active consideration doesn’t have any visible physical expression. They might be passively considering reforms, or thinking about something else altogether. Hence all the ostentation – and quite shrewd of the Guardian to find a way to muscle in on the Telegraph’s story by promoting it and generally posturing as the solutions provider.

We might get something out of it. I’m more in favour of a voting system that produces some form of proportional representation than not. Dave, standing to lose from the proposition, finds it harmful for democracy. Gordon may well be in favour of “fair votes” as representing his only hope of clinging on to some measure of power, though he’d better crack on if he is. Whatever. Just as PR is usually opposed for cynical reasons, the chances are that it will only be introduced for equally cynical ones.

Incidentally I quite liked Dave’s idea of bringing democracy closer to the people by reducing the number of their elected representatives. Very funny, that.

Comments

[redpesto]

Clegg sounded like a supply teacher saying that Year 9 will all have to stay behind after school until the mess is cleared up - it sounds tough, but most of the kids know he's not really the one in charge.

[Simon]

Incidentally I quite liked Dave’s idea of bringing democracy closer to the people by reducing the number of their elected representatives.

And incidentally, the detail of his proposal will mean that most of the seat reductions will take place in urban areas, with their higher levels of deprivation and thus higher existing caseloads. Oh, and their irritating tendency not to vote Conservative.

[ejh]

Yes, I thought when I heard that proposal that it was probably an excuse for rejigging the constituencies to the Tories' advantage. And fiddling is supposed to be the sort of thing we're against, isn't it?