I’m not saying we’re nailed on to win.
But just as Francis Maude has been asked to run the preparing for Government programme, we ought to be prepared from Day One to ensure that all of our MPs are ready to work to enact our manifesto.
I haven’t checked the figures but I read somewhere that, say we win a majority of 60, 44% of all the parliamentary party will be first-time MPs. That offers both great opportunities and the potential for some disasters.
The disasters include MPs not having offices, staff or the first idea of what they need to do in the House of Commons. They also include the possibility of a number of people who didn’t really expect to be elected (as with Blair’s landslide in 1997 when Alistair Campbell etc had no idea who many of the new MPs were) and so haven’t made any preparations to leave their jobs and move to London.
But the opportunities are myriad as well. Just the fact of having a whole load of new, fresh faces, keen to make their mark, will put a rocket under the way government works. They will also hopefully be deeply aware of the responsibility they have to change the way that voters perceive politicians, to govern in a way that preserves what is good and removes what is not and to ensure that they avoid the mistakes made by previous governments and MPs.
I’m hoping that those responsibilities are what will guide their behaviour. I’m beginning to wonder, though, if we need a better way to hold our politicians to account than just elections every four or five years? Are there other ways? Do we want to expand the www.theyworkforyou.com concept? Do we have an equivalent of the recall ballot (famously used in California before Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected)? Shouldn’t there be a way for an MP to be forced to stand down?
Constitutional reform isn’t an interesting or a headline grabbing or even a particularly vote-winning area – but it’s one I’m increasingly convinced the next Conservative government is going to have to tackle.
No related posts.
Yes, and also the number and extent of MPs. Perhaps there should be a “school” for potential new MPs or old hands be given someone to look after for their first term.
I always thought the school for potential new Conservative MPs was called Eton?
Anonymous at 1.29 – that’s unnecessary. I’d like to think that we can all accept people of any background on their own terms, rather than always being snippy about privileges they may or may not have had.
Pingback: Platform 10 » Blog Archive » Change them now
I just found a really interesting comment in the New York Times from 18 May 2008 (no idea why I still have the article!).
Carl Hulse says, speaking of the Democratic march in the run-up to the US elections last year, “By prevailing in conservative districts where they ordinarily would not have a chance, Democrats are widening the ideological divide in their own ranks and complicating their ability to find internal consensus. It is a nice problem to have, but it is one that can bedevil party leaders. As their numbers expand, they have to juggle the competing interests…”
A future post, I think, but interesting in this context too.
Pingback: Platform 10 » Blog Archive » Where Platform10 leads: 2
Oh, the usual. Conservatives aren’t really interested in anything other than getting into power.
They’re all pragmatists, and the nearest they have to a thinker is Michael Gove, a neo-con, and like most of this aspiring government, a not so secret admirer of Edwardian days, the real roots of what the ‘progressive’ Conservative party is all about.
Pingback: Platform 10 » Blog Archive » Thinking allowed
Pingback: Platform 10 » Blog Archive » Policy of the day: recalling MPs