Parliamentary Representation

On her blog last week, Zehra Zaidi highlighted recently proposed plans by David Cameron, in an interview with the Financial Times, to cut the number of MPs in the House of Commons.

The FT article briefly notes that Cameron wishes to cut the size of the Commons by at least ten per cent, which in real terms would account for around sixty MPs and could lead to the axing of a number of safe Labour seats.

In spite of the supposed independence of the Boundaries and Electoral Commissions, as Zehra Zaidi rightly remarks, Labour has helped create a substantial imbalance within the system over the past ten years – which of course has been to their benefit.

Therefore, as all political parties that obtain power attempt, in some way or other, to use the system to garner electoral benefits, it’s not that surprising that the Conservatives have now said they will try to rebalance the system if elected.

Click here to continue reading the article…

As I Was Saying

I have reluctantly returned to occasionally reading ConservativeHome. Despite the fact that it is often uncritical and utterly sycophantic towards the Conservative party, it does, from time to time, throw up the occasional interesting nugget.

Tim Montgomerie, in a piece entitled ‘Ken Clarke: Tories will get more pro-European in office’, has highlighted a few interesting comments made by Mr Clarke at a recent conference:

I think the need to be working with Obama will influence my party on Europe. It is still firmly Eurosceptic but it’s now moderate, harmless Eurosceptism. It’s a bit silly sometimes, like which group do you join in the European parliament, but full-blooded stuff like renegotiating the treaty of accession is as dead as a dodo. We’ve got lots of ideas on European policy on energy, security, relations with Russia, climate change, all that kind of thing [but] somebody like me is far more relaxed about all that [and if the Tories] get into office the pressure of the American alliance will make them more European.

Now, let us be reminded of what Mr Peter Hitchens perceptively observed about euroscepticism:

The word ‘Eurosceptic’ means ‘a person who adopts anti-EU rhetoric in opposition, and then surrenders to the EU in government’. This is inevitable. You cannot be in the EU and not run by it, any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. If you don’t like being run by it, you must leave, as all serious students of the subject long ago realised.

Ken Clarke and Peter Hitchens will be proven right, in time. I also suppose this just confirms what I was saying yesterday really, doesn’t it?

Same Old Same Old

I suppose that there’s a lot that could be said about Ken Clarke’s return to the frontbenches and the Shadow Cabinet – but I would have thought that by now we would know most of it already.

We know well that Mr Clarke is quite stringent in his pro-EU views. (Incidentally, at least they are principled, even if I disagree with them, which is better than can be said of many other MPs and young wannabes that spring to mind). We also know that he took to the stage with Michael Heseltine, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in 1997 to promote the Euro currency, and we know very well that he has been critical of David Cameron during his tenure as Conservative leader.

But, really, does any of this actually matter? Why is so much being made of Mr Clarke’s views on the European Union? What cause for disagreement, beyond rhetoric (which is so often meaningless these days), have Mr Clarke and Mr Cameron had so far? There is only a promise to take Conservative MEPs out the EPP-ED, which mysteriously failed to materialise, and a grudging commitment for a post ratification referendum on the Lisbon Treaty – but only if the General Election is held early, which it won’t be – that stands between them.

In fact, one wonders whether the Conservative party even has a policy on Britain’s relationship with the European Union which Mr Clarke could speak out against and break. I can’t think of one.

So, far from causing in-fighting within the parliamentary party, Ken Clarke’s re-emergence from the cold will simply mark another day of business as usual in the life of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition. Under Cameron’s leadership the anti-EU cause has not been furthered – there’s little chance that it will be.

Euroscepticism doesn’t mean anything anymore anyway – it is simply a phrase used by those in opposition who adopt anti-EU rhetoric, but when in government willingly surrender to the EU. It is inevitable. But then sadly I think we knew that already.

Losing Faith

Charlotte Leslie, the aspiring Conservative MP for Bristol North West has recently moved from her previous blog on the Guardian’s Comment is free website and now has a new blog at the Daily Mail.

In her third post entitled ‘A mace-wielding stand for democracy?’ she alludes to the increasingly undemocratic system in Britain over which, domestically at least, our Labour Government presides, and how she has had direct experience of the electorate losing faith with the political system.

In her article Charlotte decides to pick up on the quangocracy that our largely useless, Labour-led Westminster administration has helped create, saying:

Under New Labour, the ‘machine’ of politics has ballooned, and it has meant that it has become more and more difficult for the public to influence what goes on in politics.

While it is true that the Labour Government have dramatically increased spending and employment in public services and state institutions, and handed over political power to unaccountable quangos, this current state of affairs cannot be entirely attributed to the Labour party. British political history did not begin in 1997.

For example, it was under the Conservative party that local government was reorganised and ‘reformed’ in 1973 and vast powers were taken away from democratically elected councillors and given to an immense array of unelected and often unaccountable chief executives and town hall bureaucrats.

It was also under the Conservatives that this country was taken into the European Economic Community, which later developed into the European Union – an organisation that has become one of the greatest threats to liberty and democracy facing Britain since the Second World War.

What’s more, previous Conservative Governments, including those of Margaret Thatcher and John Major did very little to decrease the size of the civil service or the state, and more often than not allowed it to continue expanding.

Still, despite not choosing to acknowledge these points in her article, Charlotte moves on to make an observation of interest, commenting that:

Labour have built a quangocracy of unelected bodies which rule our communities and make decisions for us, and in silent and stealthy ways, parliamentary procedure has been tweaked and changed to dis-empower the democratic parliament and empower the Government.

Now, exchange the word ‘Labour’ for ‘the EU and previous Labour and Conservative administrations’ and you have a far more accurate description of what has really been taking place in Britain and Europe over the past three decades.

So, when Charlotte ends her article by remarking that the only way politicians can begin to restore the faith lost in our political system is by being prepared to speak out and act, then I suggest that now is as good a time as any for the Conservative party to do just that.

David Cameron really needs to stop fiddling around at the edges of the debate and instead speak out strongly against the malign influence the European Union’s undemocratic institutions have over our system of government and the British people. He and the likes of Charlotte Leslie need to acknowledge these facts and promise that if they formed a government they would restore local accountability, sovereignty and parliamentary democracy – not just abolish a few quangos and hope that is enough.

There are literally millions of people out there yearning for the Conservatives to make such a bold statement of intent – but despite that, (and you may call me a cynic) I somehow don’t see them being made any time soon.