Posts Tagged ‘Republican’
Erm, Shut Up!
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on June 19th, 2007
And we have Jeremy Paxman who, for all his critics, does it to every political wing!
ID Cards and Brown
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on May 12th, 2007
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
Why the Queen should not be Head of State
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on October 5th, 2006
This post was not written for the blog.
Just briefly consider the jobs our head of state is currently invited to do: She represents the UK at the European Council of Ministers, she represents the UK when required at the UN and especially at the Security Council and worse, she organises international treaties. In actual fact she delegates those responsibilities to someone who just happens to lead the party that won the most seats. That means that unlike France, the UK has no democratic representation on the Council of Ministers.
As a Eurosceptic I dream of the result were we to elect our Head of State. Would someone who relies on the votes of everyone directly give power away at EU negotiations? I think their power would be more successfully curbed by democracy than it currently is.
Of course if the UK were to take a nasty turn (a la V for Vendetta) then we would hope that at the moment the Queen would be able and willing to dissolve parliament. I doubt it though. Her backbone has been shown to be missing by her agreement to the curtailing of her powers brought about by Maastricht. If there’s any theoretical defence for the Queen being head of state then that is not a valid reason in practise. I would support the Queen remaining “Queen†but as Head of State her inability to make decisions is actually dangerous.
