I have clearly been having a week of not paying much attention to politics, as I also managed to miss this at the time.

As you will know, I am a big fan of many of Douglas Carswell’s ideas. I have long supported the idea of a recall. I fully accept that there will need to be safeguards, and that we need to think seriously how to do this properly in a way that returns accountability to voters without undermining the concept of representative democracy. But overall I want a recall law.

If I lived in certain constituencies at the moment, I would be signing recall petitions against my MP this weekend (and probably would have done before). But I can’t. Because there’s no way for, for example, the voters of Redditch to say that they do not accept Jacqui Smith’s lies. Or Elliot Morley’s. Or (let’s not be partisan) David Wilshire’s.

What Douglas’ bill seeks to do is to first of all install a power of recall for MPs, and to then use primaries to select candidates for the subsequent election, at the same time as any other election that was going on.

As is usual with any Ten Minute Rule Bill, it was dismissed almost instantly – but why? All three parties have said they are in favour of such a mechanism, and it wouldn’t take long to take it through – it’s not very complicated.

While our democracy is a bit of a funny one – nothing really written down, it all sort of grows organically, and it is peculiarly British – that is kind of the point. Democracy in any nation must be at the service of the people who use it and therefore must develop in such a way as to suit those people.

I’m generally not one for rushing into things and I’m not a fan of legislating because ’something must be done’ but in this case I really do think it is essential that MPs acknowledge that they are the servants of the people not their masters.

My favourite bit about this particular bill though, is that Douglas asked Gordon Brown to co-sponsor it.  Apparently no response though…

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Tags: Accountability, Elections, Living in Britain, Localism, New Politics, Reengaging Voters, Voters

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 9:19 pm , written by Fiona Melville and is filed under Democracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.