Lack of Leadership
Adam Bouton hits the nails on the head in this article from The Sunday Times in which he argues that the current crop of party leaders are incapable of making the Westminster Parliament clean up its act.
To do so would require the kind of strong leadership that is beyond the reach of David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband because in different ways they are only interested in change which benefits their own political parties - rather than the wider public interest.
So Ed Milband is happy to talk tough about the need for accountability when it comes to a Tory MP (Maria Miller) while happily turning a blind eye to the fact that Gordon Brown, a former Labour leader and Prime Minister, is now effectively a part-time member of the House of Commons, able to come and go as he pleases.
Likewise with David Cameron who promised to 'cut the cost of politics' before the last election by, amongst other things, reducing the number of Westminster MPs, but fell out with the Lib Dems in Government which meant that Nick Clegg's party failed to support the reform when it came to a vote in the House of Commons - in a tit-for-tat reprisal over the Tories refusal to replace First Past The Post (FPTP) with the proposed Alternative Vote (AV) voting reform for Westminster elections.
Maybe the only way to bring about real change at Westminster is to shake the place up and that would certainly be the result if Scotland were to vote for independence, because that would mean the end of the House of Lords and would almost certainly force the House of Commons to bring in proportional representation for national and local elections.
Parliament won’t be cleaned up with Dave, Nick and Ed at the broom
By Adam Boulton
‘We get Friday and Monday; they get three weeks off.” That was the angry and instant response on social media to the news that the Easter break means the next session of prime minister’s questions will be on April 30.
The public is angry with politicians again. Five years after the MPs’ expenses scandal, people are brandishing pitchforks and torches outside parliament.
Maria Miller’s head on a spike was the least of their demands, supported in surveys by eight out of 10 Tories. Resignation from the cabinet is a career disaster for Miller but it spells woe for just about every elected politician. Once again they look greedy, venal and out of touch.
No laws or rules may have been broken but talk of a cut in repayments of taxpayer-funded expenses from £45,000 to £5,800, and a £1m-plus profit on a house that the taxpayer helped to buy, simply doesn’t compute with most people.
Politicians don’t want to draw attention to their embarrassment. That’s why Ed Miliband and his team were judiciously slow in taking up the Miller hue and cry. Why remind the voters that the greatest number of convicted expenses felons sat on the Labour benches, or that there are plenty of high-profile property “flippers” still ensconced there?
In May 2009, a year before he became prime minister, David Cameron promised radical reform to deal with political corruption. His speech in Milton Keynes foretold a “new politics” of democracy and transparency.
Five years on he told the Commons that “firing someone at the first sign of trouble ... that’s not leadership, that’s weakness”. As for transparency, don’t bother looking for the Milton Keynes speech on the Conservative website. It was expunged when Lynton Crosby took over the party’s communications.
As the prime minister and chancellor spelt out in speeches on Friday, they expect to be judged on their economic management. But the absence of reform, and the increased levels of toxicity in the body politic, will be one of the coalition’s most lasting legacies.
India, the world’s largest democracy, is electing 543 MPs for a new parliament. Each will serve an average of 2m constituents. There are typically 700,000 people in each of the 435 US congressional districts up for grabs in this November’s mid-terms. Britain’s 650 MPs have barely 100,000 constituents each.
Yet even as they have created extra jobs for politicians, thanks to devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, city mayors and police commissioners, Westminster’s politicians have stubbornly refused to reduce their operation. Cameron’s modest proposed cut in MP numbers fell foul of incumbent Liberal Democrats’ naked self-preservation. As a bonus for parliamentary time-servers, Nick Clegg’s veto of new parliamentary boundaries simultaneously scuppered reform of the ever-expanding Lords.
The coalition also pledged to enact a power to eject errant MPs. Last week the leader of the House told MPs it stood by the promise, although it probably won’t feature in the final Queen’s speech before the election.
Most outside observers agree that the solution to the MPs’ pay and expenses mess is to cut the complex claims and scrutiny system and boost salaries by a set sum to compensate. Whether they rent or own a second home or sleep in the gutter would no longer be our business. Privately the prime minister agrees. Yet neither he, nor anyone else outside a handful of oddball MPs, has the courage to tell the electorate that their representatives need a pay rise.
We are fed the cliché that since the period when Miller got into difficulties, MPs “no longer mark their own homework”. Yet when independent assessors urged a pay rise in the next parliament, Cameron, Clegg and Miliband resurrected self-regulation to strike it through with a thick red pen.
Seventy-four special advisers worked for the last government, 25 of them for Gordon Brown. Cameron said he would cut the number but there are now 98, 42 of them in No10. They cost the taxpayer £7.2m in 2012-13.
Cameron warned that “lobbying is the next big scandal waiting to happen”. In response the government forced though a much-maligned Lobbying Act, which Labour has pledged to repeal. According to the Association of Professional Political Consultants, the act does not cover 99% of contacts between ministers and lobbyists. Crosby, for example, does not have to register as one.
Cameron’s answer to these problems is heads down and on with job, but the parliamentary session that ends next month, like the 2012-13 session before it, is on course to be one of the record breakers of modern times — for fewest days sat at Westminster and lowest number of pages put on the statute books. MPs have indeed been given a 17-day Easter break and will have another holiday before the state opening of parliament on June 4.
Influential politicians as different as Graham Brady, chairman of the Tory 1922 committee, and the Green MP Caroline Lucas are united in urging big changes. In an outspoken Keith Joseph memorial lecture this month Brady bemoaned Cameron’s broken promise to introduce more free votes. Ultimately, he wants the “removing of the executive from parliament” and sees the select committees as the model for a parliament that scrutinises. Alas! Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the public accounts committee, has added her own dash of cold water, pronouncing that the slackness of Commons business means it fails its own value-for-money standards.
Another MP is lined up in the antechamber of humiliation — Patrick Mercer, who lost the Tory whip over lobbying allegations. Meanwhile, the independent MP Eric Joyce and the former deputy Speaker Nigel Evans might not have got into so much difficulty had they had less time to hang around in parliament’s subsidised bars and clubs.
There could hardly be a more unfortunate time for voters to express their discontent than in the looming election for the European parliament — which by its own admission is not really a parliament and is widely seen as a gravy train.
From energy companies to the press and welfare claimants to top earners, MPs lay down the law for the rest of us. If they are to win public respect they must first follow the proverb from the gospels, “Physician, heal thyself.”
The public is angry with politicians again. Five years after the MPs’ expenses scandal, people are brandishing pitchforks and torches outside parliament.
Maria Miller’s head on a spike was the least of their demands, supported in surveys by eight out of 10 Tories. Resignation from the cabinet is a career disaster for Miller but it spells woe for just about every elected politician. Once again they look greedy, venal and out of touch.
No laws or rules may have been broken but talk of a cut in repayments of taxpayer-funded expenses from £45,000 to £5,800, and a £1m-plus profit on a house that the taxpayer helped to buy, simply doesn’t compute with most people.
Politicians don’t want to draw attention to their embarrassment. That’s why Ed Miliband and his team were judiciously slow in taking up the Miller hue and cry. Why remind the voters that the greatest number of convicted expenses felons sat on the Labour benches, or that there are plenty of high-profile property “flippers” still ensconced there?
In May 2009, a year before he became prime minister, David Cameron promised radical reform to deal with political corruption. His speech in Milton Keynes foretold a “new politics” of democracy and transparency.
Five years on he told the Commons that “firing someone at the first sign of trouble ... that’s not leadership, that’s weakness”. As for transparency, don’t bother looking for the Milton Keynes speech on the Conservative website. It was expunged when Lynton Crosby took over the party’s communications.
As the prime minister and chancellor spelt out in speeches on Friday, they expect to be judged on their economic management. But the absence of reform, and the increased levels of toxicity in the body politic, will be one of the coalition’s most lasting legacies.
India, the world’s largest democracy, is electing 543 MPs for a new parliament. Each will serve an average of 2m constituents. There are typically 700,000 people in each of the 435 US congressional districts up for grabs in this November’s mid-terms. Britain’s 650 MPs have barely 100,000 constituents each.
Yet even as they have created extra jobs for politicians, thanks to devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, city mayors and police commissioners, Westminster’s politicians have stubbornly refused to reduce their operation. Cameron’s modest proposed cut in MP numbers fell foul of incumbent Liberal Democrats’ naked self-preservation. As a bonus for parliamentary time-servers, Nick Clegg’s veto of new parliamentary boundaries simultaneously scuppered reform of the ever-expanding Lords.
The coalition also pledged to enact a power to eject errant MPs. Last week the leader of the House told MPs it stood by the promise, although it probably won’t feature in the final Queen’s speech before the election.
Most outside observers agree that the solution to the MPs’ pay and expenses mess is to cut the complex claims and scrutiny system and boost salaries by a set sum to compensate. Whether they rent or own a second home or sleep in the gutter would no longer be our business. Privately the prime minister agrees. Yet neither he, nor anyone else outside a handful of oddball MPs, has the courage to tell the electorate that their representatives need a pay rise.
We are fed the cliché that since the period when Miller got into difficulties, MPs “no longer mark their own homework”. Yet when independent assessors urged a pay rise in the next parliament, Cameron, Clegg and Miliband resurrected self-regulation to strike it through with a thick red pen.
Seventy-four special advisers worked for the last government, 25 of them for Gordon Brown. Cameron said he would cut the number but there are now 98, 42 of them in No10. They cost the taxpayer £7.2m in 2012-13.
Cameron warned that “lobbying is the next big scandal waiting to happen”. In response the government forced though a much-maligned Lobbying Act, which Labour has pledged to repeal. According to the Association of Professional Political Consultants, the act does not cover 99% of contacts between ministers and lobbyists. Crosby, for example, does not have to register as one.
Cameron’s answer to these problems is heads down and on with job, but the parliamentary session that ends next month, like the 2012-13 session before it, is on course to be one of the record breakers of modern times — for fewest days sat at Westminster and lowest number of pages put on the statute books. MPs have indeed been given a 17-day Easter break and will have another holiday before the state opening of parliament on June 4.
Influential politicians as different as Graham Brady, chairman of the Tory 1922 committee, and the Green MP Caroline Lucas are united in urging big changes. In an outspoken Keith Joseph memorial lecture this month Brady bemoaned Cameron’s broken promise to introduce more free votes. Ultimately, he wants the “removing of the executive from parliament” and sees the select committees as the model for a parliament that scrutinises. Alas! Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the public accounts committee, has added her own dash of cold water, pronouncing that the slackness of Commons business means it fails its own value-for-money standards.
Another MP is lined up in the antechamber of humiliation — Patrick Mercer, who lost the Tory whip over lobbying allegations. Meanwhile, the independent MP Eric Joyce and the former deputy Speaker Nigel Evans might not have got into so much difficulty had they had less time to hang around in parliament’s subsidised bars and clubs.
There could hardly be a more unfortunate time for voters to express their discontent than in the looming election for the European parliament — which by its own admission is not really a parliament and is widely seen as a gravy train.
From energy companies to the press and welfare claimants to top earners, MPs lay down the law for the rest of us. If they are to win public respect they must first follow the proverb from the gospels, “Physician, heal thyself.”
