Anger with politicians seethes beyond Westminster. And it is not all just because of one or two MPs' dodgy dealings.
Contempt for politicians stems from despair. You voted for someone promising to end mixed hospital wards, or control immigration or cut red-tape - yet nothing happens. While politicians squabble, unelected officialdom carries on regardless. Politicians are despised by people waking up to the fact that the House of Commons is really a house of charades; Ministers pretend to make the big decisions and we MPs pretend to hold them to account. Voters give up.
It is time for radical change. Forget talk of hares and tortoises; it is bigger than that. We need to pick up where the Levellers stalled.
Far from being backward looking, we must ask why it is, in this new "post-bureaucratic age", that we have to leave it exclusively to politicians to hold government to account? Why not give people a right of initiative and referendum to do so directly themselves?
If we want a legislature with fewer vacuous soundbites and which actually holds the executive to account, we need to elect MPs willing to be more than cheerleaders. Yet, regardless of which party wins elections, we always manage to return a House of Commons with a majority of MPs from "safe seats" on either side. And then we wonder why the political class is so out of touch, and why once idealistic young MPs end up so in thrall to their own Whips.
I totally oppose party list-type PR. And yet I ponder this; would any MP, from any part of the country, dare to renege on promises of a referendum on the European Constitution, if they faced a real contest in a multi-member constituency? It is not only over their expenses that they would need to trend more carefully.
Parliament is not working. Those we send there need to recognise that it is time for radical reform.
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