If the dramatic political events of yesterday tell us anything, it’s probably that we were barking up the wrong tree on Lords reform. We were thinking too small. We should have been chasing Westminster reform.
To everyone sitting in the Westminster bubble, I say this. In last month’s Commons vote, Lords reform passed with a majority of 338, with support from all three of the main parties, yet it will not see the light of the day. What does that say to the wider public about how well, or rather badly, “the system” works? We can blame “game playing” by Labour (a charge we in the Lib Dems have now opened ourselves up to – we were all for equal constituencies not so long ago…) or weak leadership from a Prime Minster incapable of getting his backbenchers to support legislation fashioned (let’s not forget) by a non-partisan, cross-party group of Parliamentarians. But actually none of this, nor the subsequent game of he-said-she-said, does our politics any credit.
No, the electorate just sees a dysfunctional system that cannot deliver a reform promised for 100 years and writ large in everyone’s manifestos. Is it any wonder, then, that the public turns its back on political parties, who have seen their membership fall so dramatically, as a result? Is it a surprise that we get excited about a 65% turnout at a general election when, until as recently as 1992, turnouts of 75 or even 80% were the norm? Or that the most popular Conservative politician in the country isn’t even a member of Parliament?
Sure, most people in the country don’t have Lords reform at the top of their list of priorities right now. But that only makes the failure to achieve it even more bizarre – this isn’t some high profile vote loser or winner, yet our elected representatives have conspired and connived to make delivering it impossible in an orgy of game playing, petty politics and self-interest. A lot is being written about who the winners and losers from the affair are. But outside the bubble, the words piss up and brewery are the ones that first spring to mind.
Richard Morris blogs at A View From Ham Common, which was named Best New Blog at the 2011 Liberal Democrat Conference.
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