What I would like to see is real democracy.
The Lords was originally meant to represent the gentry, landowners, aristocracy and so on, the people who had all the power before democracy.
The Commons was meant to represent the rest of us.
This was the original "them and us"
Then along came the Labour party and tried to monopolise the idea that they alone represented the masses, the working class man, thus creating a them and us within the commons. Of course, this was not correct, as the Tories also represented the masses. No one knows who the Liberals represented but for a century or there abouts we had swings between Lab and Tory in power.
But in recent years, the aristocracy have taken over the Commons, the political elite who have no idea about the real world or real people, now running all 3 main parties. And they have filled the Lords with their own cronies, but the Libs are outnumbered because their policies are so daft that no serious person votes for them so they have to look for ways of fiddling the results further. And now no one represents the masses.
THE LAST THING ANYONE WANTS IN THIS COUNTRY IS MORE ELECTIONS AND POLITICIANS.
So Yes, lets reform the Lords. Fewer of them, fixed term, not hereditary, but definitely not elected.
My favoured option would be for people to be nominated to a panel independent from politicians, maybe headed by the monarchy / Prince of Wales. People get nominated for none political reasons such as charitable work, many years dedicated to industry, etc, etc and the panel vets them before giving them the job.
But if you are serious about democracy, then lets reform The Commons.
1) Abolish the Whips.
2) Make every vote in the house, a free vote, no party allegiance.
3) Fixed terms and fixed number of times a person can sit.
4) Abolish party funding at elections, state funding anyone who wants to stand, (subject to a deposit), with a limit on how much is spent on candidates so everyone has an equal chance, including independents.
5) Have it written in law, that if parties want to put a candidate forward, said candidate MUST be chosen by a local branch of that party, not central office. They MUST also have lived in the area for a minimum of 5 years before standing.
6) Encourage cross party working relationships rather than the partisan "they are wrong we, are right" attitude to everything
7) Reduce the pay and perks so as to dis-courage the professional politician and encourage people to stand from normal working class backgrounds.
These are just a few ideas, but won't happen. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas and those politicians who say they want more democracy are lying. They just want more power for themselves.
Topic: Toby Perkins quizzing Nick Clegg (Read 4457 times)