By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982
David Cameron will tomorrow set out a series of pledges for reforming Parliament in the wake of the expenses scandal.
Cameron uses an article in the Guardian today to go over some of those proposals, and says there should be a "massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power...through decentralisation, transparency and accountability we must take power away from the political elite and hand it to the man and woman in the street."
Of course, the article is incredibly vague, and the language of "Want change? Vote Conservative" and "Progressive Conservatism" will always contradictory. But you have to wonder why Labour are not leading on this matter, and on the educational reform that Cameron lightly touches on in his article.
Education and constitutional reform should be comfortable ground for the Labour Party, but instead Cameron is being given the freedom to - whisper it - lead (or at least give the appearance of leadership) on matters of supreme importance to the electorate.
Some of his other proposals in the speech will include:
• Limit the power of the prime minister by giving serious consideration to introducing fixed-term parliaments, ending the right of Downing Street to control the timing of general elections.
• End the "pliant" role of parliament by giving MPs free votes during the consideration of bills at committee stage. MPs would also be handed the crucial power of deciding the timetable of bills.
• Boost the power of backbench MPs – and limit the powers of the executive – by allowing MPs to choose the chairs and members of Commons select committees.
• Open up the legislative process to outsiders by sending out text alerts on the progress of parliamentary bills and by posting proceedings on YouTube.
• Curb the power of the executive by limiting the use of the royal prerogative which allows the prime minister, in the name of the monarch, to make major decisions. Gordon Brown is making sweeping changes in this area in the constitutional renewal bill, but Cameron says he would go further.
• Publish the expenses claims of all public servants earning more than £150,000.
• Strengthen local government by giving councils the power of "competence". This would allow councils to reverse Whitehall decisions to close popular services, such as a local post office or a railway station, by giving them the power to raise money to keep them open.
Labour must now grasp the nettle and begin to act on reform, or risk passing the initiative to the Conservatives, on what is certain to be a key issue in the forthcoming general election.
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Why not open this up to *everyone* who earns over £150,000. Or rather publish the tax returns of everyone who earns that much or more.
I think that we, the people, should be allowed to see how the wealthy avoid paying taxes.
If nothing else cameron has to be given some credit for making some of his miscreants pay the price - the ultimate price
as far as career politicians are concerned. One thing that concerns me about cameron, ttjhough is that while he made steen go for his trees, a man described as *a contemporary of DCs at eton* has got away with financial jiggery-pokery because it was *a genuine mistake*. he needs to be seen to be even handed and not stand by the old school tie.
But apart from offering margaret moran as a target and vague huints about eliot morley what has brown done? He hasa done what he *always* does - nothing. Brown is all wind and water.
However, in terms of the banking bailout, the government blanket bailout was a dreadful interventionist mistake; certainly one of the two larger banks RBS and HBOS should have been firewalled and allowed to fail. The remainder should have been aided but a model of full balance sheet disclosure and washing out the toxic debt placing this under separate management would have been a far more effective policy to shore up confidence and restore business.
In the wider economy, consider that over 60% of all employment is generated by firms under 20 employees then there is where the biggest reforms should be. Ideas like LLC's are only part of a wider legal and business compliance framework and legislative reform in business law must be a priority, there is far too much a social cost burden on these small firms. The State has to provide more assistance if it wants these firms to provide the same social provision as larger firms.
As Blond put it - protecting the 'little man'.
Strictly speaking, a firm with a larger than 30% market share is considered monopolistic and government should seek to investigate the influence of such firms and also force them to either split or seek regulatory constraints on them.
Also, traditionally, UK firms have found the transition from 100 to 1000 employees very, very difficult and many successful and reasonably successful firms go under.
Whether government incubator policies for that transition or state aid is the answer I do not know. Personally at present I wouldn't want the State anywhere near my business, however, the idea of a bank giving me business advice would not fill me with confidence either.
I rather like the idea of more co-operative market exchanges not unlike AIM that specifically allow much smaller firms to obtain lending but also access to expertise. Compliance and access to the exchange is legally less stringent so conversion costs are lower, yet market disclosure is just as transparent. Potential much higher risk but not unlike the big VC rush into technology, the potential rewards are much greater. Think of it as a rather more formal Dragon's Den.
In terms of redistributive income mechanisms, Blond has some startling statistics but no ideas in terms of how to adjust this skew and no matter how you cut the last 12 years - all recent attempts have failed. Indeed since 1976 - all attempts have failed. I agree with Blond's assertion that Thatcher was faced with some stark choices. Remembering the late 1970s and early 1980s, things were a lot worse than they are now and her choices were limited.
Cameron is faced with a worse government debt but with a vastly more dynamic economy. If Thatcher inherited a ship with a broken engine, Cameron has inherited a ship with a working engine but a broken rudder.
In terms of how Cameron will seek to redistribute income, I don't think it will be through the tax system - it does not work; certainly smaller and simplified government will mean lower taxes for all especially the lower paid. Getting people back into work will be a massive challenge.
However, it has everything to do with poverty of aspiration, social mobility, the ease of doing business and the potential to invest. Cameron's education policy is to go much further with the City Academies describing them as the modern Grammar schools. The State will relinquish its monopoly on education which I think will be a big force for good.
As it pans out, one thing is certain, the country is going to move on in another jarring shudder of quite revolutionary policies. I seriously cannot see Labour even coming to terms with it for 4 years, nor 8 years.
Should I go left?... should I go right?... should I stay still?
He dithers and U-turns and spins about his axis like a top!
Absolutely hopeless!
If you're rich you want small government, nothing getting in your way, the right to sack staff as you want, the right to build where you want whereas if you're poor you want more government - employment, housing and planning rights, NHS and state education paid for by everybody not by you when you need it. Part of Cameron's ideas is more Nimbyism - the right to ensure nobody else can enjoy the right you have of having a home where you are. I thought getting a home was difficult enough, although Brown's made it harder also.(For some reason he's calling Nimbyism 'Housing Trusts').
I'm surprised he's calling for fixed term Parliaments when he's calling for this one to be ended earlier - if we already had fixed term Parliaments it would have a year to go. What happens if we have a fixed term Parliament and the Leader of the Opposition wants it to end a year early.
I'm not so opposed to fixed term Parliaments as opposed to opportunistic Tories but I think it would be better to require a General Election in the first six months of any year divisible by 5. That way an election could be called more often but everybody would know when there would be an election - the main advantage of fixed term. However, what about Annual Parliaments - something called for a long time ago which would have solved our current predicament. I'm sure it won't happen but how can you call anything Cameron's proposed as 'radical'.
I'm not sure any of the other reforms would do Parliament any good as they miss the point. In the debates I've seen each MP gives his little speech then disappears - you see him talk, see the MP's around him, see the next one talk, when the camera goes back to where the first one was sitting his friends are still there but there's a big gap where he was. I don't believe that they listen to any other speaker - no 'debate' as I would understand it, just a load of speaches. Also most of the opposition comments really make me mad so that had I been open to persuasion before hand I would probably vote for the Government not out of loyalty but against the Tories. Most of those debates I've seen are ones where the Government has been a bit too Tory for my liking yet all the genuine Tories oppose it with daft non-Tory reasons because their hatred of Labour overtakes their own beliefs. Remember when Blair made jokes at his own expense - first everybody would laugh then Tory scorn would take over. I reckon Tory scorn is more powerful than Labour's Whips at motivating support so reducing the power of the Whips might be ineffective. Also how do you deliver on your manifesto promises if you can't make all your MP's co-operate?
So how come Cameron wants to reduce the number of MP's but doesn't want to scrap the House of Lords? Could it be that the Lords show a continual Tory bias despite commentators saying it is balanced or even pro-Labour? His argument for reducing the Commons is that we have more Parliamentarians than most other democracies but that's adding in the Lords, not without them. Now personally I'd prefer a House of Lords like the current arrangement but with it having no veto on the elected House. Then again I also want some form of PR - say the German model of half MP's elected by constitiuencies, half nationally. Scrapping the Lords might cause constitional problems abd I like the idea of having ex-MP's able to point out flaws in legislation. I just don't think you should have an elected second chamber. That will just lead to Acts only passing if they meet the lowest common denominator. Obama's just passed a Bill allowing you to carry a loaded gun into state parks - previously you couldn't without the permission of the park rangers - so that you can shoot any criminals you might find. Or rather Obama's just past a credit card reform bill which some republican added the gun freedom clause onto, knowing that Obama wouldn't stop it and so stop the very popular credit card rights Act. All because their Founding Fathers gave too much power to both Houses of Congress - we shouldn't make the same mistake. Advice yes, veto no. Besides having half the Commons elected from constitiuencies, half nationally not far different from having 2 Houses of Parliament elected differently.
People keep pushing for a more powerful Parliament but I look at the US system and the similiar arrangement with the London Mayor and I prefer our current system - a fairly powerful PM with Parliament as an electoral college - an electoral college that can remove him if he loses their support. Knowing this he should act in their interests. Of course Brown may be doing just that, in which case everything we have against him we should have against the PLP. Alternatively, because they can't agree on a successor, he can do what he wants. There is a third possibility - there's not a lot he can do because he's restricted by law - witness the Gurkha fiasco - it maybe that Brown couldn't grant them leave until the Treasury had signed off on the additional costs that would be incured, perhaps because Parliament had already passed a law requiring that. I think Parliament has enough power as it is. Just bring in PR.
The left and right of politics is just presentation, and but the people or intent behind it can also be left and right. Control freaks can be in Labour just as much as kind people can be in the Tory party. People get this but lack the language. The Tao crystallises it pretty well but others may be able to put it in a way that more readily gels with the Anglo-Saxon mind.
My general view is that the smokestack industries and licensed greed are yesterdays news and people, individually and collectively, regardless of status and allegiance, need to get over this. When people get over it a better sense of leadership, society, and long-term success will develop. Britain will be far better positioned to succeed and relate to the rest of the world.
Labour are best placed to realise that while Cameron would bring down the hammer and drag everyone back to a purer form of a failed yesterday. The Libera's merely preach vanity but have no spine to deliver. This is why I believe it's vital for Britain that Labour both change and win the next election but it's not going to happen unless Labour grasps that.
That is true in more than one sense. The corporate Private sector has failed even more spectacularly than the State, and is having to be bailed out to an unimaginable degree.
I advocate liberalisation in the sense of the liberalism elucidated by John Stuart Mill - alongside Adam Smith, one of the finest political economists there has been.
Cameron memorably said that there is such a thing as Society but it's not the State. I agree with that, but add that it's not the Private sector as we know it either. An economy run for the profit of rentiers is IMHO every bit as toxic and unsustainable as state capitalism proved to be. That is why the taxation of privilege and the distributism to which it gives rise is so important. Blond sees that, I think: the question is whether or not Cameron can or will.
"Game, Set and Match Cameron"
Definitely not yet.
Two sets all, and Cameron to serve, maybe, but if he sides with the privileged class whence he comes then his rhetoric will remain just that.
As for morality, I see Left/Right distinctions as pretty worthless.
As J K Galbraith memorably put it:
"Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness".
unwrap it and its the same old first past the post system and a unelected House of Lords.He gets away with it due to Brown showing no vision on the subject at all.Brown screwed the last attempt of electoral reform when Roy Jenkins presented proposals under Blair..
"For Cameron, PR is a trap.
His senior advisers are warning him to remember that it was promoted by Peter Mandelson as part of the strategic plan before Blair came to power to ensure the centre-left had a majority in Parliament for the rest of the 21st Century.
It will lead to coalition politics, sure enough,
but
it will also leave Camo facing electoral suicide if he doesn't stop a PR referendum in its tracks"
from The Mole, firstpost.
"Dave" is quick on his feet. no worries though.
The party that is represented by the clunky fist will get him.
Remember folks, speed implies lack of depth.
superficiality or depth. the choice is yours!
Sadly not true. Until recently, the Boundary commission favoured Labour votes over Tory ones. There was an inbuilt bias of about 12 Labour constituencies.
Labour had the chance to go for PR after the Jenkins report in 1998 - it concluded it wasn't the right thing to do. With Labour's support under 30% - why PR now?
Thatcher was right, Labour will never die, it will merely seek ways of preserving itself at the cost of everything else. PR governments are a pure deckchair shuffling form of governance. It has served Italy spectacularly well, 35 odd post-war governments in 60 years.
erm...what does Philip B has to say about matters abroad, and more specifically our relation with our neighbours in Europe.
Cameron has also been consistent on blond's principal assertion is that state and society have fractured (Broken Britain) and he argues that the State's role is to challenge the natural monopolies that exist - that includes the Welfare State as much as Tescos and Sainsburys. Cameron has also been far more scathing than Brown on banker's behaviour.
Again, Cameron's assertion on morality is aligned to Blond's as he also argues that the issue of morality must be wrestled from its current liberal-left default position to a more centre-right moral code. Iain Duncan Smith's CSJ work dovetails into this almost perfectly as does Cameron's selection of other countries social programs; the Wisconsin model for welfare-to-work and the Danish education model.
Where Red Toryism differs from late-20th century conservativism is that the State is political neutral to who it favours.
This again, is completely compatible with recent Conservative governments. There has been a total failure in the British corporate model and the State in future is a mere enabler not provider of services. The decisions made and empowerment sit at the smaller local level and micro-economic scale. Essentially liberalisation of State provision is as important as going after a monopolistic retailer.
In a nutshell that's Red Toryism.
If there is a precedent, an evolution, it is from One Nation Conservatism.
The issue is, what will the Thatcherite wing of the party make of it. If there are any left that haven't been fiddling their expenses.
Game, Set and Match Cameron.
Even vagueness about policy, or promising to do nothing until he sees the enormity of the task after winning an election seems far more comforting than the expletives and smears emanating from the Drowning street bunker
Cameron has stolen a lead because Brown is too busy trying to discover the "divides"
Too busy with his diktats and announcements of tractor production
Brown has been discovered for his shallowness, and all that can save the Labour party at the next election is
1/ the voters who hold their noses
2/ Introduction of PR
3/ Ditching Brown, and going with Postman Pat
Even the visit of Bliar to Drowning street to check on his middle east expenses, doesn't seem to have been able to pull the trigger
...and all those people in Cabinet who could yet be investigated by both the Met and HMC&E. A sad way to end a parliament if they are lead away in handcuffs, but this is something that didn't "start in America" and it was this NuLiebour "government" that changed the rules to allow it to happen, molly coddled Martin, and didn't tighten up the Fees Office
Call Me Dave is a soulless, vacuous nonentity ... when compared to anyone BUT the Labour Party. Compared to them, he's a pillar of principle, strength and intellect.
Red Toryism
thinking.
It will be interesting to see whether or not Cameron is prepared to put flesh on the bones of his rhetoric with the sort of decentralising Distributist solutions Blond is talking about.
I have been advocating taxes on Privilege rather than people for some time now - and IMHO such taxes would be the mechanism through which such pre-distribution of wealth may be achieved.
Historically the Tories have of course always been the party of privilege, and it was the last stand of the Tory House of Lords which stopped Lloyd George's distributist Land Tax in 1912 at the cost of neutering that House subsequently.
So it will be interesting to see whether or not Cameron - from the most privileged of privileged backgrounds - is able to follow the road down which Blond's thinking leads. I have a standing invitation to meet Blond next time I am in London, since he says he finds the partnership-based "co-ownership" possibilities I have identified "completely interesting".
Both Labour and Tories are stuck in the rut of insisting that all value originates from labour. Until it is recognised that this fundamental assumption of political economy is complete bollocks, and that taxation can and should be focused on property rights over productive Commons like location, energy and knowledge, then no solution will be found to the current crisis, I believe.
The fact of the matter is that there is now no shortage of credit, but rather a shortage of the creditworthy, and this shortage can only be addressed by some form of fiscal Distributism. There have been other mechanisms proposed aimed either at credit (ie Colonel Douglas' Social Credit) or at Capital (Kelso's Binary Economics).
There has yet to be a coherent alternative covering both credit and investment. I believe that the direct "Peer to Peer" Finance enabled by the Internet is seeing the evolution - from the ground up, and independent of any statute - of new partnership based possibilities.
He has talked at length about decentralising the powers of Westminster on the concepts of localism for some time. There have been key Conservative works and books on the matter. He has spoken at length for smaller, more accountable government for just as long.
The fact Labour have spent the last 18 months saying 'Do nothing Tories' shows that Labour hasn't been paying attention at all.
Brown is a centralising Statist - the ideology of localism and decentralisation is a total anathema to him. Labour's idea of reform is very 1980s 'Yes Minister' by dispatching the problem to committee for 5 years and then don't act on the findings.
Cameron is offering leadership and he is listening.