A ‘new’ politics #7
Under Tony Blair Labour dramatically changed the way Westminster did business just by shifting around the parliamentary timetable.
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The net effect was that the Prime Minister, and MPs needed to spend less time in Parliament.
Gordon Brown is carrying on with these reforms – perhaps surprisingly since he has said that he wants to place parliament at the centre of the national debate. Almost all fixed points in the diary have been moved to the beginning of the week.
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Far from being held to account more frequently by parliament, the new timetable actually seems to free up the government to behave more like a Presidential administration.
Smooth. An orderly transition of power, I think you could call it. Bloodless, you might say.
Posted on September 12th, 2007 at 3:59pm under A 'new' politics, Affronts to democracy, Brown
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• 1 Comment |
It’s interesting really, when you compare things like this to the self-serving rhetoric in the recent Green Paper from the MOJ – The Governance of Britain – which bemoans the fact that people no longer trust politics and politicians and don’t feel involved – then conclude that the solution is the reform of the system to strengthen Parliament and increase the accountability of the Executive.