Douglas Carswell: This outdated oligarchy must be reformed
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Independent Minds
It is not just the details of MPs' expense claims that have been laid bare. Now, at last, we can see the House of Commons for what it really is: an outdated, self- regarding, self-serving oligarchy.
Without proper accountability to the voters, our politicians have become a caste apart. They have exempted themselves from the rules that they impose on the rest of us, including tax-free incomes off-balance sheet expenses; opt-outs from Freedom of Information laws, and dispensation not to apply equality legislation to political parties.
It is not merely MPs' expenses that need to change. If our politicians have been so inept at managing their own expenses, how effectively do you suppose they have been managing the country's?
The reality is that as a legislature, the House of Commons has grown monumentally useless at holding those with power to account. At last, we begin to see why it is that under both parties, government has grown ever more expensive and ever more intrusive.
It is time for change. Progressive reformers on all sides of the chamber need to come together and elect a new Speaker by secret ballot. The new Speaker – owing their position to the legislature, rather than to government whips – needs to clean up Westminster and to ensure our political class is made truly accountable again.
But cleaning up the expenses mess is only the beginning of a progressive agenda. We also need a right of recall so voters can sack wayward MPs. If constituents could trigger by-elections, I doubt there would be any nonsense over MPs' second homes.
It is time for a right of popular initiative. Then perhaps our politicians would spend less time discussing their opt-outs from Freedom of Information, and more time dealing with real public policy concerns. Ultimately, change must mean addressing the fact that most MPs never have to face a genuinely competitive democratic election. Safe seats mean many MPs come from one-party fiefdoms. This means most voters are denied real choice over who gets to be their MP.
If there was only one restaurant or supermarket in the town where you lived, you would probably be overcharged and find the service less responsive. Why do we run our political system like that?
Reform must mean either open primary selections for sitting MPs, or multi-member constituencies. Or preferably both. It is time for the party that believes in competition and choice in business and commerce to apply those principles to politics.
The author is the Conservative MP for Harwich and Clacton
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Comments
They have exploited us, the taxpayer and started a war on individual liberty, individual rights and privacy in complete contravention of what we want.
They have shown massive hypocrisy and double standards.
We want less laws, rules and regulations, we want them out of our faces. We want to be free, to do what we want to do.
You have this now. The article says what you want for yourselves. The medical, the school fees, the Railways, Power and Light, Water, the gutter cleaned daily, the police do their honest day?s work, the Parliament do their work without pilfering, the profits go to the banks and the CEOs take the right salaries, the monkeys stay in the trees and the prices of the food come down as we cannot afford the price of a loaf same as the price of oil. I am tired of the mess we need???
You need ideas first to ask what you want. Read more of what has happened then think, Sit down with your wife if you have one or some one?s if you do not have, dig, dig, dig deep, then state, ?What do you want now in 2009 and later?.
I thank you
Firozali A.Mulla
And in between those democratic intervals, parliament can ignore the will of the people and impose unwanted laws. Parliament is sovereign. Look at all the intrusive and controlling laws this parliament passed. What about Maggie's Poll Tax?
We need a new balance between Parliament and the people.
What about giving people to call the right to a referendum on a law if enough signatories request it? And other mechanisms to truly holding Parliament accountable? Recall, as Mr Carswell suggest. Yes. Choice of candidates. Yes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seXu531j
Our continuing problems with the EU will never be properly resolved until we leave it but the real reason lies not in wanting to be a Little Englander, it is far more basic than that, it is our fundamental culture going back to the Middle Ages and although one may say the Normans created England and the connections with France and the Continent were strong for centuries, we have evolved very differently.
Not having been over run by Napoleon, our roots remain based in Trial by Combat - the Adversarial System as do the various offshoots that sprung from these islands and form the Anglosphere. From this comes the Two Party System which is the natural expression of the cultural roots of these Islands. Although I am sure that was not your intent, to blame the SYSTEM rather than the individuals involved (in party politics), is the same as MPs blaming the SYSTEM for making ridiculous claims on their expenses.
The Liberal Party which grew out of a combination of the Whigs and the Chartism Movement, were overtaken in terms of being a radical political movement by the Labour Party around 100 years ago and they haven't recovered that support. If you think about it, is it not odd given its roots that the Libdems are considered more Tory Lite than a serious contender to the Labour Party and their movement in the polls is relative to the Tories rather than Labour ?
The problem is that I would imagine being Leader of the Libdems is a dreadful job, a bit like trying to herd cats or push wet string uphill. The Liberal Party (Libdems) has suffered too long with the British Leyland syndrome which was to keep making cars to a low quality that people didn't want to buy.
Your reply makes very interesting reading and gives much pause for thought. Obviously, it was never my intention to blame the system in order to absolve individual responsibility, something in which I believe wholeheartedly, nonetheless I still believe, given the drift of modern politics that a reformed voting system would yield a very different outcome in terms of party sizes. I believe that a great many people either do not bother to vote or choose the lesser of the two party evils because the present sytstem allows them no choice. This I believe, is why the two main parties always oppose its introduction,
There is a lot in what you say about the majority and voting, a 60% turnout, an elected "Government with a Mandate" and a large majority that has polled less than 25%, does not seem very democratic at all. In the immediate and without any constitutional changes - lets face it, Turkeys don't vote for either Thanksgiving or Christmas so anything that has to go through the Commons, is best avoided, there are two possibilities:
If we could get people, especially the young people to vote "None of the Above" by spoiling their ballot papers, we MIGHT, just might shame MPs who have won their seats and know more people voted NOTA in their constituency than voted for them.
The second one, more Independent MPs so that the grip of the Major Parties is loosened, would be good and relates to something below. However by this I do not mean a lot of Martin Bells and Esther Rantzens - Heaven forfend, I mean ordinary candidates who may well be Independent Conservatives, Labour, Libdem but who will not take a Party Whip and vote only on conscience and in the interests of their constituents.
The biggest problem we face are the "career politicians" who will slavishly follow the party line just to enhance their career, are "tribal" in their behaviour and never consider the best for these Island races first and foremost. The consequence today is that this lack of independence of thought has led us into an elected dictatorship of up to 5 years duration.
This must be changed by carefully considering just how the Executive (PM and Cabinet) is separated from the Legislature (All other MPs), it may require outlawing the Whip System, taking away powers from the Prime Minister and distributing them to Parliamentary Committees in order to massively reduce the PMs patronage. Lots of work to be done and it will take a lot of debate and likely a decade to bring it all about.
Surely this should be:
"Without proper accountability to the voters, we, your politicians have become a caste apart. We have exempted themselves from the rules that we impose on the rest of yiou, including tax-free incomes off-balance sheet expenses; ..."
It is amazing how MPs always manage to convince themselves that when complaining about their own shortcomings they believe that we won't include the speaker in that group. Any MP who really feels that the shortcomings of Parliament have nothing to do with him/her should resign.
I am also surprised to hear that MPs income is tax-free! Presumably the author must be referring to his own dealings with the IR and one hopes that IR will take a close look at his returns. Ignorance of accounting seems to be another shortcoming, expenses certainly don't appear in balance sheets.
The next paragraph should read "If we politicians have been so inept at managing our own expenses, how effectively do you suppose we have been managing the country's?". No doubt if you think expenses appear in the balance sheet the answer is obvious.
"The reality is that as a legislature, the House of Commons has grown monumentally useless at holding those with power to account." I don't quite see that "as a legislature" is necessary. However, in whatever guise, this is surely due to the Party whipping system, which means that MPs simply do whatever the leadership decides is in the interest of their constituents. This system has become so pwerful that there seems little point in having more than a score of MPs in the house, each representing the powerful lobbies and interests that have access to the present Party offices.
The new Speaker,,, needs to clean up Westminster". No, not at all, this is not the function of the Speaker. You, the MPs, need to clean up your own mess. The first step might be for those of you who have not been mis-using the expenses system, who claim to be in a majority, sit down together, away from Party lines and produce some legislation to make us all believe you truly want to be representatives of the people.
"If constituents could trigger by-elections ...", What nonsense. Who is going to pay for all these byelections? The constituents? The MPs? No, the general taxpayer no doubt. How out of touch can you get. We don't need to keep electing yet another party hack, what we need are honest politicians in the first place.
"This means most voters are denied real choice over who gets to be their MP." Really. "Most voters" is a synonym for "the majority of the voters in the constituency", and they get exactly the MP they have voted for. The rest of this bizarre article seems to be a plea for independent MPs rather than political parties as a basis for democracy. Well, the author can stand as an independent in his constituency, as many pople do. He knows very well that his chance of success is very low, which is no doubt why he has joined a party to help him get elected, despite the fact that he clearly doesn't agree with its activities in Parliament.
Unfortunately the author is, in my opinion, typical of those who get elected in the UK. Voters should ask themselves why this is, and indeed why so few of the sort of people they would like to see in Parliament, are prepared to stand. The media would of course lose a great deal of their content. The voters seem to prefer reading about MPs ripping them off, than taking an active part in the democracy they belong to and seeing that they get the MPs they wnat rather than tose they deserve.
Calling for popular initiative is contrary to anything his party has ever stood for. The fact that I think that he is right is equally amazing, but I seriously doubt the ability of the incumbent occupants of seats in the Commons to enact any reform that may endanger a safe seat. For many that would be equivalent to political suicide.
I applaud Mr. Carswell's recognition of the lack of accountability of politicians to the electorate; I do not think that he sees himself as part of the "caste apart" - but ubfortunately he still is.
Yes, change is necessary but I can't see it happening from within the current tired, jaded and evidently corruptible system. The big problem is, how do we start again after hundreds of years of tradition, pomp and ceremony to really build a proper working democracy?
The voters are responsible for safe seats, not MPs. Given that most voters in this constituancies want an MP from one party they're hardly denied 'any real choice'.
If there's only one supermarket in town you can go to another town.