Rachel Sylvester in yesterday’s Times had an important piece about the election of John Bercow as the new Speaker on Monday. I’m not going to go over the arguments for or against any of the candidates – none of them were particularly inspiring. Most of them have expenses problems. Almost all of them had in some way acted against more openness in the House of Commons, either by voting to exempt themselves from FoI requests, or by other votes. Most of them were virtual non-entities.
I quite liked some of Parmjit Dhanda’s ideas. I particularly liked his insistence that MPs don’t understand why the public have disdain for them.
Until MPs understand why so many voters are so angry, there is no chance of the changes that are needed. The constant carping against John Bercow, for example (who, for the record, I thought did a pretty fair job at PMQs today) is pointless – who the Speaker is is just not that important in the wider scheme of things, and it smacks of self-obsession to continue to complain. The Speaker is who he is. Get over it.
What is important is that MPs grasp the mettle of reform. They need to make changes to the way the Commons works so that MPs’ activities and the laws that are passed are responsive to their constituents, transparent, honest and provide value for money. It is no longer good enough for whips to stitch up backroom deals or for MPs to be able to hide behind bleats of ‘we regulate ourselves’.
It’s time to change how politics works. This speech is a good place to start but there’s plenty more to be done.
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Ben Brogan in today’s Telegraph gets it.