I have never believed there to be a good reason for reducing the number of UK MPs from 650 to 600. Gerrymandering is an explanation: it is not a good reason.
If cost was that explanation David Cameron's plan to create 40 new peers, leaked today in The Times, blows that apart. It is true that peers are not as expensive per head as MPs but let's not also pretend they are costless
So this policy is what most of us always presumed it to be, which is an exercise in increasing Conservative Party control iof government, whether democratically justified or otherwise.
The march from democracy continues. And the cost will be born by those whose voices will no longer be heard, which is why this matters to me.
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Maybe not the place to air this concern but how soon before those of us who want equality and fairness become classed as terrorists?
How long is a piece of string in the Tory world?
It’s part of a project to create a permanent one-party corporate “democracy.”
Fix the franchise by creating larger constituencies with gerrymandered boundaries and reduced voter registration; bend the election spending laws (see CH 4 reports) to bus in a mass off party workers in key marginals; stymie the opposition by cutting off their sources of income and politically neutering charities, trades unions, academics, BBC, privatisation of CH4 etc; stuff the Lords to the gills to reward rich patrons; and finally sign up to TTIP (whether in or out of the EU) to complete the corporate take over of the NHS and any remaining state services. No wonder George loves China.
Meanwhile the Tory press, Mail, Express, Sun, Telegraph all talk of ‘taking back our country”. I suppose we read ‘us’ as meaning all of us and they really mean the few.
“The march from democracy continues. And the cost will be born by those whose voices will no longer be heard, which is why this matters to me.”
Spot on, Richard, but so few people seem to understand your conclusion, including many good people of any or no political persuasions who would be horrified if they did. How to reach them in the face of media silence on this is the biggest problem.
Agreed
Do agree this looks to be brazen and contemptuous of democratic representation but as some of the affairs of the Commons are now devolved to Scotland and Wales there is a case for either increasing English representation or reducing that of Scotland and Wales, so, instituted properly, this need not be all gerrymandering. Indeed Scotland has long been over represented because of its relatively sparse population. But now they run more things themselves there is no reason for this. And there is an argument that Wales and Scotland have too many elected legislators and England not enough. Though of course all three have far too many UNelected legislators! And this proposal certainly makes that worse.
While I am concerned at the latest Tory attempts to undermine any sense of political democracy in the UK, it is not surprising as this is what the establishment elite will always do as any form of “democracy” that they do not control threatens their wealth, power and dominance.
The missed opportunities during 1997 to 2010 to fundamentally reform the UK constitution, electoral process and system of government is one that all New Labourites should be truly ashamed of. They were playing the same stupid political game that the Tories are playing now, in trying to game the system to their own advantage rather than create the foundation for true political and economic democracy.
A systemic problem, needs a systemic solution otherwise the corrupt tinkering around the edges will just continue unabated.
Ralph Milliband was making the same point about Labour since 1945-too many compromises with the existing institutions of capital and finance as Historian Peter Hennesey writes:
Milliband [in his book] ‘Parliamentary Socialism’…could see nothing but feebleness and compromise in the Post War Labour Government. Milliband saves his toughest criticisms for Attlee’s failure to present ‘no serious challenge to the power of the men who continued to control the country’s economic resources.’ But, while paying tribute to the NHS and the new system of social security (@in Housing, in education, in welfare, it could well boast to have done more than any other Government had done before-and to have done it in the midst of acute economic difficulties.’) he , none the less, found ‘the Government’s impact upon postwar Britain was profoundly ambiguous.’
So there’s quite a history of dissatisfaction with Labour well before our tacky era of neo-liberalism.
The HoL is getting so large they will need to cast the net more widely. I rather fancy being the Baron of Snorings. Surely Earl Murphy of Melton Constable would be worth his weight in expenses? Apart from that as we no longer have representative government and indeed a government than can do anything well it is all academic.
Now there’s a title to play with. Hard to see much sign of the Crewe of North Norfolk these days
Perhaps JC should propose proper PR, much as he doesn’t like it, right now in order to demonstrate that democracy is more important than the personal prefernces of MPs and, in the process, nail those who did not make it happen and those who now seek to demolish even the imperfect democracy under which we currently labour (no pun intended!).