It may not be widely known in the outside world, but we’re having a bit of a political crisis here in the UK at present. Scandal. Corruption. Ineptitude. Confusion. You name it, we got it.
Our political masters have, finally, fouled their nest to a degree where it’s hard to see how they can get themselves, or us, out of it. According to some polls, 57% of us, possibly more, think that we need a general election to get out of it.
The remainder don’t know. Some of them don’t know there’s a problem at all.
We’ve had to dismiss the Speaker, first time in over 300 years. Some Members of Parliament have had to fall on their swords and more of them are looking for the same way out. A couple of Lords have been suspended from their House, would you believe.
I have some problem in thinking that a general election is going to sort things out. What we need is revolution. Perhaps not Revolution, and hopefully not Bloody Revolution. No, a nice efficient Spring Cleaning would suit us better, sweeping the dust and the cobwebs of our rather silly system into history where they belong.
There are some that feel we should carry out a rapid rethink and reorganisation of our political system, along the lines of the USA federal government. That could work. It’s not commonly known that the USA system exactly models ours except that the three Houses of the American government are elected for fixed terms, where the House of Representatives maps onto our House of Commons, and the Senate maps onto our House of Lords. The President and his Administration no longer map onto the Monarchy as they did originally, however, but rather more on to our Prime Minister and Cabinet. All we need do is extract the Prime and other Ministers from the House of Commons and set them up as a separate body, sack all the present incumbents, and hold a General Election to beat all General Elections and, bingo, bango, bongo, we have a new system, all squeaky clean.
We could even keep the Queen in her cosy constitutional haven, safe and isolated from the whole lot of them.
There’s only one problem in all that. A written Constitution. We don’t have one. We need one like we’ve never needed one before.
Any volunteer writers out there?
We’re got more than a few problems of our own over here in the Colonies. I’d look over our system with some care before making any changes to your own.
Our system almost works most of the time. Problem is that our electorate seems to get dumber over time and are now driving us toward Democracy. That will put us too much subject to the passions of the moment.
Sadly, I would not trust any of the micro-thinkers and me-firsters on any country to write a workable and short constitution.
Good luck on getting the scum bag, crooked, inept politicians removed from all influence on your government. Over here we vote them out of office and their friends simply vote them to positions of more power but free from accountability to the voters.
I think that if ours were bounced back across the pond, it would serve as an excellent outline. It would be simpler over there since there aren’t all those fiddly states’ rights issues to address.
Here in Canada we are following all this on our national news and radio programs.
Man, it’s no wonder politician is a word synonymous with crook. Even one who started out honest … and there must be such a thing … right?
I’ve decided you are as much a cynic as I am.For the first time in my life I am going to spoil a Euro vote as they are a bunch of gravy train riders too.God bless the Queen tho I love her to bits. I cannot say the same about Charles and Parker – Bowles tho.
Like Maureen sez–skip Chuck and go straight to the handsome Princely grandson.
Your political system seems unfathomable and gives me a petite headache when I learn about it. Then again, you folks produce just about the BEST beer on earth. If you include Scotland and Ireland. And a revolution? Maybe its time the Welsh whupped some azz and became a REAL country and….hmm? Oh yes, well, anyway…
It seems like every politician is too far into the “what’s in it for me” mindset to be able to think very far ahead. A new constitution might best be written by academics, with the committee heavily loaded with historians. I do wish you in the UK the best of luck, sorting out this mess.
Hugs and best wishes, ~ Sil
There is one major difference in the electoral process of the UK and the USA. You have direct elections of your MPs, the head of the most popular party becoming PM in most cases. We in turn have to elect members to the odious Electoral College, who are under no moral or legal obligation to vote according to the mandate of the electorate. Also 48 out of the 50 states have “winner takes all” policies. So even if 50.1% of the state vote for a candidate, ALL the votes in the state go to that candidate in the Electoral College. This is how Bush in 2000 with 47.9% of the popular vote was able to defeat Gore with 48.4% of the popular vote. An absolute disgrace.
I had to research this, but over the years there have been 156 Electoral College who voted against the wishes of their voter’s designated candidate. The most recent case was in 2000 when Barbara Lett-Simmons, a Democratic Elector from the District of Columbia, did not cast her 3 votes for Al Gore as expected. Her abstention was meant to protest the lack of Congressional representation for Washington, DC.
One last work, then I will go quietly into the drizzly night. From all the stumbles of Gordon Brown, of which there have been, he will either be deposed as head of the party as Thatcher was, or the party will be unable to win in the next general election. Paradoxically, the Conservatives under David Cameron could be viewed in the same way as “new Labour” was under Tony Blair.
You can do the job? Yes?
Well, nobody has made this comment so far, so I suppose it’s up to me…
Sure, you can borrow our Constitution; we don’t seem to be using it much lately.
Our system used to work perfectly well, and could do again. As some fellow said, “it’s not the ships, it’s the men in ‘em”, and the same is true of British politics.
Some early-20th-century Prime Minister, on receiving suggestions for stricter rules of conduct for MP’s, is supposed to have said “there is no need; they are all gentlemen, and know how to behave.”
They were, and they did.
What we need is to get rid of the spivs and chancers and get some gentlemen back into Parliament; I believe they do still exist, but are all so disgusted with the current charade that they’ll have nothing to do with politics (especially Party politics) for any money. Who can blame them?
As for a written constitution, it’s a great idea, but who do you think would get to write it? Yes, the political class, of course. The ghastliness of the document likely to result is left as an exercise for the reader. Suffice it to say that it would not enshrine and defend anything resembling freedom or modest government.