Clegg’s Vague Brand of Democracy
Talking about a new political system is a bit rich when Nick Clegg has recently sacked members of his front bench for honouring a manifesto pledge. Nonetheless, the hapless LibDem front-man has promised not to feed into Tory and Labour governments but to seek a “new political system”. This is disappointing on two fronts. Firstly, he could not quite bring himself to suggest that he thinks the LibDems might ever win an election. Secondly, he failed to expand upon what he meant by a “new political system”.
Clegg, an advocate of PR, has essentially ruled out any kind of formal front bench-sharing scheme with either of the main parties. For a PR supporter, coalitions and power-sharing are the order of the day: one can only imagine why Clegg has decided to shun the possibility of co-operation within the FPTP Westminster system.
The very obvious question, therefore, is what kind of political system does Clegg think we need? He said he wanted to “redesign” the nature of the political system, but was unable to present any idea about what the new design would look like. If he supports PR, then power-sharing should not be so awkward for him. If he has suddenly taken to the idea of accountability, preferring governments to be single-party, allowing the electorate to oust them, then he would reverse his dangerous love-in with the political European Union. If he has opted to give a lightweight speech on a subject that nobody cares about in order to deflect attention from his hilariously poor leadership on the Constitution, however, he would be best off not trying to answer these questions.
Well, that’s that then.
Posted in: Domestic Politics, Electoral Reform, LibDems
ARGH, why are they all IDIOTS??!