Today's call by 27 of the 2005 intake of Conservative MPs to allow voters the power to recall and sack wayward MPs is very encouraging. It suggests that the Conservative party in Westminster is beginning to "get it".
Westminster politics, and many Westminster politicians, are hopelessly out of touch. A supine Commons, stuffed with Whips' sycophants, is monumentally useless at holding the executive to account. "Men-in-tights" debating rules favour seniority over originality. How can it be right for our country to be governed by a cosy gentlemen's club? Is it not precisely because the Commons is so dozy that it has allowed real power to drift away from it?
Let's not stop at a right of recall to eject useless MPs. In order to allow the people to hold their politicians directly to account, we need proper open primaries, so that there is political competition, even in "safe seats". Why not have a right of initiative, so that the voters can have a direct say in what politicians vote on? Instead of giving yet more taxpayers' money to big, corporate party machines, why not force politicians to use the web to commuicate more and raise their funds?
Here is a coherent and credible agenda - and a new, anti-establishment Conservative party would do well to adopt it.
