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The real problem which current events have illustrated only too clearly is that the House of Commons where all executive powers rest, is increasingly divorced from the people, us the citizens, that it is supposed to represent. That the Labour Party is by nature “tribal” is a fact but never more so than under Brown and facing electoral oblivion.

Although hardly a ‘vote winner’ or even a subject of great interest to the average voter, under New Labour we have seen the never ending erosion of our Civil Liberties which accelerated to Light Speed after 9/11. Constitutions are designed to protect the rights of the individual citizens from being oppressed by the State whilst also defining the rights and obligations of being a citizen, it is meant to be a two way street and today just isn’t because it is far too weighted in favour of the State.

Bully Boy Brown

That Brown is hopeless as any kind of politician (art of the possible), is obvious because he just doesn’t understand concepts such as compromise and persuasion which Blair certainly did. For Brown having a 60 seat overall majority and a Parliamentary Party so cowered by him that none dared stand against him in the Leadership Election, is all it takes for him to “get his way” and that is all that matters to him because in his mind he is “right” and in time all us lesser mortals will see that !

Do I see Brown as inherently evil ? Of course not, my guess is that he is just lacking in “emotional intelligence and insight” and most likely is an insecure emotional retard who can “talk of love” but neither express it or feel it. But it is not my point, sure I detest what Brown has visited upon these island peoples through his vanity and incompetence in High Office but he has also done something else which is far more important in the longer run, he is our modern “King John” and like Lackland himself, can be used to put things right which currently are wrong.

The Main Problem

Members of Parliament are supposed to be independently minded and are there to represent the interests of their constituents regardless of whether they voted for them or not. Unfortunately, the rise and rise of the ‘professional politician’ who is devoted to his/her career rather than personal conviction means that self interest will always trump any principles involved in particular issues.

The election of Speaker Martin in 2000 was because the ruling party decided to defy ‘convention’ which said that a Tory should be elected because Betty Boothroyd his predecessor had been a former Labour MP and was simply because the Labour Party had a staggering majority in the House and could although their candidate was even then known to be less than credible.

The problem is that the Prime Minister in the UK has total power and therefore once any party is elected with an overall majority and if their Leader was as Brown, they have the ability to do anything they like and the Opposition becomes powerless. Normally the PM would be constrained to a large degree, by public opinion but in the case of Brown he seems to think that he is totally correct and by May 2010, all will see that this is so.

But leave aside Gordon Brown who is just deluded and instead imagine a British Adolf Hitler with an “Agenda”, what then, just how dangerous might that be ?

A Mind Game

To protect against this because we can no longer count on the integrity of MPs as a “given” and must assume “Party Loyalty First” – the hand that feeds them, as the norm, we need to inject some uncertainty into the ‘mix’.

Let us suppose for a moment that a ‘rule’ existed that the ‘First Among Equals’ had to be chosen not upon the basis of being the Leader of the Party with the most MPs but upon a free vote in the House that gave a majority to the person or persons who step forward and ask to be considered for the post regardless of party.

I suspect that the reality is that we would end up with the same situation as with the election of Speaker Martin, partisan voting for the office of Prime Minister and regardless of personal merit or ability to do the job. The majority party would just vote for their Leader.

We could impose an arbitrary vote barrier of say, 2/3rds of all the MPs in the House but that might just lead to behind the scenes horse trading, so just how do we alter the current system so that it ensures a viable government but that robs any party of total power whilst leaving the Executive free to pursue British Interests ?

Solutions

The above could be immediately achieved by introducing “proportional representation” but the result would be coalition governments which we in the UK don’t like, we do like, ‘First Past the Post’ so how ?

There is a simple solution, get more “Independent” Candidates to stand for Parliament and vote them in to dilute the political parties which I suspect emotionally, the public would love to do anyway. If following a General Election out of 650 seats, 350 were held by independent candidates, 120 by the Tories, 100 by Labour and the rest split between the LibDems and the various Nationalist parties, the picture will have changed dramatically, the chances of a British Hitler reduced to nothing.

A Prime Minister who was elected by two thirds of the House who drew a Cabinet from across the whole House and devolved policy decisions and supplied the departmental information to support them to debate on the floor and vote accordingly, would be far more in tune with the electorate and the Commons might produce far less and far better legislation, methinks.

The Mechanism

The main political parties and their funding problems could just get on with it but clearly, there would have to be checks on potential independent candidates. It may be that a maximum number of say 3 independent candidates could be ‘qualified’ per constituency, each would undergo a background check and supplying a petition of say 50 local people who would underwrite them in terms of supporting them.

From here there might be a nominal fixed funding grant of £5-10,000 and a maximum ceiling to any other funding plus full accounting of their election expenses. This would not prohibit any other independent candidates from the “Loony Banana Party” or whoever from standing as they currently do and wouldn’t prevent them from applying to be a “qualified candidate” either.