“If Britain wants change that counts, there’s an election it can vote in today”

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“If Britain wants change that counts, there’s an election it can vote in today”

20.01.2010 // by Guy Aitchison

There's a fantastic article by Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian today assessing the prospects for political reform at the next election.

Tim's description of our "bizarre" mess of a constitution which "owes more to Heath Robinson than to Edmund Burke" is spot on.

Although voters' democratic choice is limited by the fact there is almost no ideological difference between the parties, he writes, the next election does offer the prospect of change:

There is one genuinely fundamental issue which this election could affect. This issue is not who governs us but how we are governed. For we British now live in a state which is at once the most ramshackle and the most intrusive among the advanced democracies of the world. Marquand reminds us that it is more than 35 years since the then judge Leslie (later Lord) Scarman described the need for a "new constitutional settlement" in Britain, a country whose system of government the Conservative Lord Hailsham soon thereafter characterised as "elective dictatorship".

Tim ends with a call to his readers to get involved and vote for their top 5 reforms to form the POWER2010 pledge:

The thing you can do at once is go to www.power2010.org.uk/votes and vote for what you think are the top five political reforms that Britain needs. The Power 2010 movement will then confront parliamentary candidates with these demands, and try to persuade them to endorse them.
The more of us join in, the more oomph this campaign will have. As I write, the top five are 1) a proportional voting system, 2) scrapping ID cards and rolling back the database state, 3) fixed-term parliaments, 4) a written constitution, and 5) English votes for English laws - but that list can change when you all vote. No need to wait till May. This is an election you can hold today.