I believe that we should have an elected head of state, I have done for a while. That Head of State would then be accountable to us, the people who elect him. Ken Livingstone, for all his failures, has a much stronger claim to a mandate than any Prime Minister.
I consider, though, the case of John Major between 1990 and 1992 and Gordon Brown from now until the next election, as particular strong arguments in my favour. While defenders of our system claim we elect a local MP to Parliament the truth, as we all know, is that the personality of the leader is the way many people make their decision.
Tony Blair promised to stay leader for the whole term during the election and yet we are now saddled with an effective Head of State (he has the right to sign treaties etc) who no-one except those in his constituency elected.
But how much more serious is the problem now? We’ll have a Prime Minister who is not democratically accountable to his constituents for 75% of the decisions the British government makes. That 75% has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament for his constituents so for health, education, transport and so many other policies his beliefs and espousals would have no bearing on those who were voting for him. These policies would only effect England, and to some extent Wales.
So Gordon Brown is in a precarious position for two reasons: He has never been elected as a Head of State and yet that is what he is (de facto). He has never been elected to decide policy on devolved issues by anyone and yet it is those policies that he will spend most of his time upon.
The answers are two-fold: An English Parliament to solve the first and an elected Head of State to solve the second.
The Government yesterday showed breathtaking contempt for the law and the public as it attempted to bury the bad news of spiralling costs of the ID cards project on the day that Tony Blair announced his resignation.
The announcement was slipped out more than a month past the legally binding deadline when the Government should have issued the new figures – not surprising given that it revealed that costs have risen by a whopping £640m in the last six months.
More details of the announcement, and the Liberal Democrat response, can be found here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6642339.stm
http://www.libdems.org.uk/news/government-has-broken-law-to-bury-bad-news-on-id-cards-clegg.htmlEven the most hardened supporters of ID cards must now accept that public resistance to such a wasteful, intrusive and unnecessary project is set to harden significantly as the excessive cost to taxpayers becomes more apparent.
Yours,
Nick Clegg MP
Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary
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