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Grudgingly, he deserves an Alpha Plus for deciding to make such announcements to the House first of all.

We will have to see what he has to say but if Parliament is treated seriously then that has to be a good thing for British democracy.
If you are right about the Lib-Lab thing it doesn't really bode well for Browns state of confidence.
Giving Parliament the power to declare war is after Blairs lies quite difficult to argue against. Bur decisions may have to be made very quickly, can Parliament be quick?
I do feel worried that decisions like that may rest on the vote of someone like George Galloway or Clare Short.
Let's hope the Express is wrong. It's what I fear most.

PR for the Lords might actually be quite sensible - if you are going to have an elected upper chamber which you don't want to just block constantly PR gives you one where no-one has a majority, making this easier.

It would also demonstrate how the Lib Dem vote share would fall under PR...

Most of the Tory party still does not seem to get the importance of bias in the electoral system .The British electoral system like the USA system for electing the Senate and the electoral college favours small relatively demographically dec lining areas.In the USA these are the mountain and plains ststes,in the UK these are working class areas with declining populations.
The continuous bias against the conservatives is not new but it was masked for a long time by the better distribution of votes by the Tories.
What is Cameron going to do about it?Nothing much it seems and he is making matters worse for the Tories by pushing gay, women and ethnic candidiates all of whom lost votes for the Tories at the last election(see The British General Election of 2005 by Butler)Such candidates also lost votes for the other parties when it was felt they were imposed-see Labours results in Wales.
The AV system will entrench the bias against the Tories so long as the Lib DEms are seen as the sister party of the Labour party which they have been since about 1960.

Of course Brown will not touch the greatest constitutional outrage- Scots/Welsh/Irish MPs voting on English matters

When are the English going to wake up to the fact that they are being dominated in this way- why does not the Conservative Party drive this home- the soundbite- "English Votes for the English".
And do not forget, the Conservatives received more of the popular vote in England than the others in 2005- if that is not a mandate for DC to campaign on, nothing is.
And we can do this without being anti Scot etc

We could well find that any seemingly anti conservative constitutional change will be driven through on the non English votes of MPs

This has probably been stitched up by the 'scottish mafia' during the Blair / Ashdown 'merger' talks during the mid 1990's. Brown/Cook and the Minger/Kirkwood were fully involved in the shenanigans. If the words 'AV plus' are NOT mentioned during the 'constitutional' statement to the Commons i'll be surprised. Wonder if AV plus is on the table for a GenElec will Brown have the bottle to put this to the people in a referendum? Perhaps not.

If you want to undo the bias in the electoral system speeding up the process by which shrinking seats are abolished is possible - do it by electorate rather than census data.

I believe reducing the number of MPs has been wafting around as almost-party-policy for a while, and this would reduce Labour safe seats more than any other group.

The really radical approach (which would also be basically a gerrymander) would be to do it by turnout - because middle-class constituencies have higher turnout it would bias it in our favour... probably pushing it slightly!

The House of Lords and the concept of bicameralism is an English thing which was taken over by the British state in 1707 . The old Scottish parliament was always unicameral , as is the modern one .

The H of L has no input into Scottish internal affairs and yet it contains Lds. from Scotland , Wales and NI who are allowed to pronounce upon English affairs .
Totally wrong and unjust and completely ignored by Brown -and Cameron of course , .

The state of the increasingy warped and silly British constiution interests me less and less .
To all intents and purposes any playing around with it is just more attempts to avoid adressing the lack of any English representative body and English self government .

The latest bout of gerrymandering - arranged between various Scots of course , with the English as passive onlookers - is yet more of the same .

It is high time we in England got shot of all this tomfoolery and had an English Parliament .

The determined uselessness in defending justice for England of the 529 MP's in the British parliament who sit for English seats simply confims this point of view .

Given that constituency electorates are already several years out of date by the time that the Boundary Commission reports (and certainly by the time that new boundaries come into force)....surely it is time for Constituency Boundary Reviews to be done on a similar basis to local government Ward Boundary Reviews?

The latter take some pro-active account of likely changes in population (e.g. by including estimates for additional residents for all known planning permissions in their figures).

Perhaps this forward-looking element could be improved/extended further by overlaying some simple demographic trend analysis onto seats' likely populations for, say, five years' hence (from the Boundary Commission's initial enquiries).

At the moment we are always playing 'catch-up' - with constituency populations always being at least four or five years out of date. At times, I believe that they have been as much as 10 or 15 years in arrears.

One for our Party's constitutional policy review to consider?

Gordon Brown has a track record of meddling with the constitution to further his and the Labour cause, even if the consequences are unintended.

He uses moments of opportunity to permanently change the political landscape in Labour’s favour. Example: widespread disillusionment with 18 years of Tory rule north of the border were seized as a golden moment to ensure Labour had a permanent base north of the border regardless of the status at Westminster. Result: A mess, with the SNP in power and driving for full independence.

Browns ‘great intellect’ is a myth, he is driven by grudges, the ghost of his father, and a hatred of the Tories – this severely clouds his judgement and leads to mistakes. He is using this opportunity now to drive through changes that he believes will make it easier for Lab-Lib pacts to succeed against the Tories in the future. He fails to realise that this will be bad for both the main parties in the long run, and very very bad for joined up policy making any government going forward. We should do all we can to thwart this move.

Correct . Brown was a prime mover in the setting up of a Scottish parliament and therefore the end of the UK . He was so besotted with this that he failed to realise that it is the Labour party which is the great beneficiary of Britishness . The Conservatives could do perfectly well without it . Liberals also probably .

He is now belatedly attempting to repair the threat to his party .
Any move by Brown is to be seen in this light .

I repeat something relevant to this which I posted on the reshuffle thread:

It's interesting that Cameron has followed Brown in putting people into the House of Lords specifically to join the Government/Front Bench. This development needs addressing by those in both parties who are so keen on an elected second chamber, or even a chamber with a set ratio of 80/20 or whatever between life peers and elected peers. How will the flexibility of the present system be continued with any of the new models? So, first task for Nick Herbert etc, junk any dalliance with an elected second Chamber and then challenge the Labour Party strongly on this point.

Is this a policies for Peerages scandal?

Any chance of him bringing legislation back to the British Parliament?

Interesting that he is considering moving the day on which we hold elections. I have always wondered if elections at the weekend might not be a better idea. It would certainly cut away the excuse for not voting.

Gordon Brown has said in the past that he is not persuaded of the case for electoral reform, yet now he seems to be leaving the door open to a review of the voting system.
Am I being overly cynical in thinking that Mr Brown will suddenly become persuaded by the need to change the voting system just before he looks like he may lose an election under the present system?

Yes this announcement IS about Lib-Lab relations ahead of a future hung parliament but won't people be appauled that instead of dealing with the increased terror threat and sorting out our public services, Mr Brown is embarking on a costly battle to fiddle the voting sysytem? Or will people let them off the hook AGAIN?

The most important message from this for me is that Brown seems to already know that he can't win a majority at the next election, which is why he is beginning woo the lib dem vultures.

My worry is, why are Labour so keen to back electoral reform? It is the equivelant of giving a maniac a gun with which to hold you hostage with! I can see why the Lib Dem maniac would want to be given the gun, but can't for the life of me see why Labour would want to GIVE it to them!?

Labour are not keen on electoral reform. They promised a review of voting systems in their 1997 and 2001 manifestos. There is a report sitting on the desk of the old DCA with a conclusion on voting systems: we should be challenging Brown to publish it.

A deal was done with the LDs on Scotland and Wales and look where it has got them. We have done well in Wales and Scotland under reform, that is why the clever Welsh Tories are considering the single transferable vote for local government.

We already have reform in the UK but it is the English who are being denied democracy. Cameron has to support an English Parliament to give us back our voice and establish a forum for discussion. This puts very clear water between us and Labour.

Remember we need 40% to win an election and Labour only need 35%. On today's polls, Brown will win.

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