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Duncan O'Leary

photo of Duncan O'Leary

Duncan works on projects looking at public services, skills and work.

Posted by Duncan O'Leary at 3:06pm on Monday, 13th December 2004

Apparently polling has demonstrated some support for the idea, but is it really going to achieve greater trust or belief in politics? Although I can’t find the evidence for it (well, not it England anyway), I wouldn’t mind betting that people trust and value their local MP far more than they do politicians or the government in general - this has certainly been the case with other institutions suffering from a lack of democratic legitimacy. If it does apply, then is making MPs more distant within the same system a sensible way forward?

In the short-term an act of self-sacrifice might score a few points with the general public but it seems unlikely that this will have any lasting effect. Similarly, making MPs less of a financial burden may play well given the recent controversy over the cost of their expenses, but also doesn’t look like the best way of restoring trust and engagement in the political process.

There may well be a case for re-drafting some the constituency boundaries (which in fairness is also mentioned in the report), but surely some more systematic changes need to be made in the way the Westminster Village relates the outside world. Any suggestions…?

Comments

1
This enrages me. In our work on elections this year I was struck by just how outrageously stingy we are when it comes to democracy anyway - not putting our money where our mouth is when it comes to things like polling stations etc. the miniscule - absolutely miniscule - savings that would be delivered by reducing the number of MPs would be nothing compared to the reduction in human scale that would inevitably result. as foreign correspondent peter macleod's missives from his tour of constituency offices suggest, we arguably spend too little on our representatives not too much. if the tories are serious about convincing people they believe in smaller government, they need to start building a compelling case for why we need to spend less public money on the big ticket items like health, education, defence and policing. so far, they have provided the numbers but not the narrative, a chronic failure to learn from labour's success a few years ago in the other direction. thus oliver letwin's potentially very reasonable aspiration to cut public spending by however many billion pounds a year is only made real and tangible in people's minds by labour's scaremongering about the thosands of doctors, nurses, teachers and police officers this would mean losing. at some point they are going to need to start saying what they would give up and why, instead of trying to hold this aspiration for small government at the same time as hefty commitments to matching labour's spending. instead of silly gestures that only serve to undermine what little faith people still retain in the capacity of politics, and politicians, to achieve what they say they are going to, the tories should be concentrating on telling a story about the kind of society they want to create when, or perhaps if, they ever get back into power. i wonder if there is a bigger issue at work here, which is that the tories (especially under howard) are still stuck in thatcherite, "rolling back the frontiers of the state" mode at the same time as the most successful right-wing party - Bush's republicans - is busily reinventing itself as the pioneers of a new and distinctly right-wing version of big government. in an age when security, in its various guises, is so important to citizens, I wonder whether the tories don't need a more grown-up account of what they believe government is for that goes beyond simply the aspiration to have less of it.
Posted by Paul Skidmore  at 4:16pm on Monday, 13th December 2004

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