Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Parliamentary Reform- A Proposal.

Step One- The party whips should no longer be appointed by the party leaders, but instead elected annually by the party's MPs.

Step Two to appear at a later date.
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5 comments:

Gregg said...

Get rid of whips and just club them all to death, a bit like a seal cull.

5:36 PM, May 20, 2009
Matthew said...

What is the idea behind this? What would it change? Don't whips gain most of their power from their government position in any case?

If you want more independently-minded MPs you need to give them sources of power outside the executive, such as in the US Congress. But then the whole system is going to be very different, isn't it?

5:51 PM, May 20, 2009
Ross said...

"What is the idea behind this? What would it change? "If the whips are accountable to the MPs rather than the leadership then they can't force them into becoming lobby fodder, it won't specifically change the expenses culture.

7:09 PM, May 20, 2009
Matthew said...

But that's the bit I think is strange. What the whips be doing then if they were parliamentarily appointed? The government will still have the desire to force MPs to vote how they want, and it'll still have most of the tools (such as patronage).

9:31 AM, May 21, 2009
Ross said...

"The government will still have the desire to force MPs to vote how they want, and it'll still have most of the tools (such as patronage"I see, so even if the government didn't formally control the whips and have the power to withdraw the whip, they would still be able to apply pressure to their MPs.

Yeah you're right, back to the drawing board..

3:16 PM, May 21, 2009

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