Clegg's hundred day plan

Rhoda Klapp

They have left the public behind. The public, if people I meet are any indication, want heads to roll. On all sides. I'm wondering why the focus of the TV is on Kirkbride, to the exclusion of any other. Because she's a tory? Do Labour expect to conduct secret hearings and pronounce MPs innocent? Fat chance.

The reform efforts are too soon, and likely to be a red herring. It takes a lot of thought to change constitutional issues, especially when most of the suggestions we see appear to be for immediate electoral advantage, no thought of how it might work in the long term.

I'm wondering whether we ought to decimate the House. Take all the dodgy MPs (leave out any non-troughers) and kick out ten percent, chosen by lot. That should concentrate the minds of the others. Somebody has to be punished, and we can't lose too many in one go because four hundred by-elections at once wouldn't be right. Forty is OK though.

drakes drum

Very populist. Very Lib Dem.

But it is the issue of funding of political parties that he wants settled. He does not mention it in the article as such but this is what he wants.

I tell you this. IF He and other politicians believe that taxpayers will agree to one penny of their taxes going to political parties they had better think again.

I believe the anger will be greater than what we are experiencing now.

Such funding cannot and could not be confined to the Labour,Tory and Lib Dems. It would have to go to Sinn Fein / BNP / Socialist Workers/ The Green Party!! God help us.

If you think the people will accept that then Mr Clegg you do come from Saturn.

Publius

There is nothing wrong with the electoral system so it doesn't need a fix, quick or otherwise.

Liz Brown

There must be a General Election before any reforms are put in place and the GE should be held i Sept/Oct by which time we may all have calmed down and become a tad more reflective. Knee jerk reactions always end in disaster

Fernando

Piecemeal reform is often quick and easy. A good way to prevent anything happening is to make it part of a really big project, requiring major, wholesale, fundamental redesign. This is so controversial and so vast that nothing gets done. Clegg’s scheme falls into this category.
What is needed at the moment is a reform of the expenses system. Conflating it with reform of the House of Lords, party funding and the electoral system will just delay the whole process. Apart from which, cobbling a new constitution together in a 100 days is hardly a serious way to run the country that gave Parliamentary democracy to the world, especially if the cobblers are the very people currently tarnished by scandal.

David

He wants to commit the most sweeping constitutional changes in just 100 days? He's having a laugh, right?

Forlornehope

The type of change Clegg is arguing for requires calm consideration. The idea that the British constitution can be fixed in a 100 day blast is worthy of Tony Blair at his worst.

JONNY

Mr Cleggover must come to understand that reforming the British Constitution is more than a One Night Stand. Or a Hundred Day gimmick.

Bob Dixon

First:The General Election.
Second:Referendom on staying in Europe.This result determines what powers Parliament needs & how many MP's are required.

GIN

As ever the Lib-Dems are the permanant opportunists of British politics. They can see they have the best chance of PR for decades out of this scandal. They know the Tories will probably win the next election under FPTP, so this expenses scandal is a gift to Clegg to try and get Labour to implement PR before the election - Even though Labout have an unelected Prime Minister and no popular mandate from anyone to be doing radical constitutional reform. Nothing very liberal or demorcratic about this stitch up, is there?

Yorkshireman

Will the Lib Dems pay back the £2.4m from a convicted fraudster?.

How do Clegg's lies about a referendum on Lisbon boost trust in the political process.

Go away Nick, there is no point to your existence.

Gareth

The last people that should be sorting out this mess are the political class, and worse if they aim to do it in a hurry. They will collude to make it all in their interests not ours.

Judy

The public isn't clamouring for changes in the constitution or representation system. It's clamouring for an end to dishonest expenses scamming and for swift action to get rid of MPs who've cheated or bent the rules to get taxpayers' money for things which weren't wholly, necessarily and exclusively for the perfomance of their work as MPs.

Clegg, Cameron and Brown do not impress with their eagerness to suggest constitutional reforms whilst supporting and/or condoning some of the worst offenders in their own entourages.

The voters are not fooled.

Nicholas

I wish they would drop this "100 days" crap.

After 7 days British chronology is measured in weeks, months and years.

Mark Williams

Mr Clegg has an issue with corruption in the House of Lords so he wants to abolish it. Life would have simply been so much simpler if the Lib Dems had not proposed a peerage for Lord Rennard.

Denis Cooper

I know that Clegg is a liar - he demonstrated that over the Lisbon Treaty - so I don't give much weight to anything he says.

A fantastic leaflet, "NOT LIBERAL - NOT DEMOCRATS", available from the Democracy Movement here:

http://www.democracymovement.org.uk/leaflets/

exposes the self-styled "Liberal Democrats" for what they are.

With a few honourable exceptions, who should bite on the bullet and leave that rotten party to fester in its own hypocritical, sanctimonious, treachery.

Verity

David, we are talking about the Heir to Blair here. Tony Blair decimated the ancient, efficient because it worked, House of Lords on the back of an envelope.

But Nicholas, when a British politician is in doubt (or fear), they always adopt American political usage. They think it makes them sound strong and important. No other country does this. Just needy Britain.

ERP

Clegg is hopeless and infantile

logdon

Opportunist indeed. I watched Sarah Teather on QT soon after the story broke, milking it for all she was worth and doing the annoying thing she does best. Big eyed. Earnest. Wet. And not much else.

If she is their heavy hitter, rolled out as the voice of the liberals how bad must the rest be?

Mind you that was before the saintly Ming was outed.

All Clegg is after is the PR which is his passport to power.

Have none of them realised that this chicanery is precisely what we want to root out?

The ones who are savvy about politics can see right through this wheeze. The rest are still too angry to care. Either way Clegg is a distraction from the main issue which is personal culpability.

Until more MP's are sacked, are investigated by the Police, or both this is unfinished business and public cynicism and rage will continue.

Then back to the same old same old of being completely ignored?

Dorothy Wilson

Before we rush into wholesale changes that could well wash the baby out with the bath water we need to put back all those checks and balances that Blair removed. The return of collective responsibility at Cabinet level, an impartial civil service and a mature and impartial Speaker would be a start.

Alex

Has anyone actually READ Clegg's article? Lots of very sensible suggestions which have been floated and discussed many times before. They aren't impulsive gestures, they've been on the Lib Dem manifesto for years.

The point about '100 days' is that if we do not strike when the iron is hot some other story will distract the press and we'll lose this once-a-lifetime chance to reform Westminster. Little less cynicism please. Electoral reform, who could argue against that? Let's do it.

GIN

Alex, don't you mean if we don't strike while the irons hot, the Lib-Dems will lose their once in a life time opportunity to hold the balance of power at every single general election and we'll never be able to get rid of them? ;)

Theres probably not anything wrong with the Lib-Dems being out for themselves with the introduction of PR, they have a vested interest in being in permanant government, obviously. Its just the piety of the Lib-Dems I can't stand. They are out to boost themselves, lets not dress it up any way.

Harold Carter

It's a serious mistake to legislate in a hurry. Remember the Dangerous Dogs Act? Even more so, to try to produce a new constitution in a panic, in response to what is not in fact a constitutional issue. That is not to say that constitutional reform is unnecessary. But it is essential to have a sober and measured process.

Nick Kaplan

Alex;

I would argue against electoral reform. FPTP is, to adapt Churchill, the worst system, apart from all the others we've tried.

Any kind of proportional system takes power out of the hands of the public and puts it in the hands of MPs. The only amendments that need to be made are changes to the size of constituencies.

As for other reforms I agree with Clegg’s idea that constituents should be able to remove sitting MPs. Other than that I don't think he has made a single valuable suggestion. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the constitution, the problem is with the corrupt MPs working inside it. The solution to that is to build the equivalence of halls of residence outside parliament so there is no need for second homes. End all expenses (except those needed to run an office); that’s what a salary is for. And finally slash MPs salaries by 50% so that we get people interested in public service rather than making money. It is the current bunch of career politicians that is the problem, not the system itself

Susan Hill

Bless

Nicholas

"It's a serious mistake to legislate in a hurry. Remember the Dangerous Dogs Act?"

And all the other dismal Acts of stupidity. There has been nothing but legislation in a hurry for decades, together with legislation by tabloid hysteria, legislation by victim, legislation by sending a clear message, legislation by worst case example and legislation by political correctness.

Less legislation and more common sense would be welcome but there are too many wimmen and big girls blouses in parliament for that.