Monday 15 March 2010

Trapping

Jack straw has decided now, six weeks before his government of 13 years loses power, that it is time for complicated idea of parliamentary reform to be brought to the fore. Well, I hate this issue being used from an electoral stand point because frankly most people know too little about politics and our system to really come to an educated opinion. Our system and constitution is incredibly complicated and esoteric, having slowly evolved over centuries. So turning it into an election point seems like a bad idea on those geounds to me, though I can understand why they would want to.

My bigger problem with it, though, is that it has clearly been designed and timed so that the Tories are forced to fight an election campaign all the while saying that a non-elected upper House is a good thing. I suppose this loops in with what I said above, about, with most people too ignorant to realise that, democratic or not, it has (in the last decade) repeatedly been the Lords who have been the ones who have been fighting for liberty, and the commons have been those constantly trying to erode it. The obvious example here is 90 day detention.

But the worst part is that they're playing such a silly electoral game with constitutional reform. Maybe I shouldnt be too worried, though, since Labour won't ever be in power to actually enact it (which is, perhaps, the point, like all of the Lib Dems batty policies) and even if they were in a position to enact something like this, they've made no qualms over breaking manifesto pledges before, so it may not be an issue anyway. But you can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of people in the world who are qualified to actually enact constitutional reform of such immense complexity, and the idea of that being wielded as an electoral tool is troubling to me.

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