Is 55% too low?

RT @HouseofTwits: RT @leftfootfwd Is 55% too low for a dissolution resolution? http://bit.ly/c03GMU

@paulstpancras Oh despite being a moron I just about managed to read to the end of this article (it was tricky I admit) http://goo.gl/CNdg

Is 55% to little for dissolution motion in parliament 66.6% in Wales and Scotland http://bit.ly/d3Uc7M

RT @leftfootfwd: Is 55% too low for a dissolution resolution? http://bit.ly/c03GMU

@leftfootfwd Is 55% too low for a dissolution resolution? http://bit.ly/c03GMU < dissolution resolution not an opp. confidence motion

RT @HouseofTwits: RT @leftfootfwd Is 55% too low for a dissolution resolution? http://bit.ly/c03GMU

@elmyra http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/05/is-55-too-low/

55% is fine, maybe even low, fixed terms are fine, but five years is rather long compared to other countries http://bit.ly/c03GMU

RT @leftfootfwd: Is 55% too low for a dissolution resolution? http://bit.ly/c03GMU

RT @leftfootfwd Is 55% too low for a dissolution resolution? http://bit.ly/c03GMU

I personally believe 55% is too low, as suggested in this @leftfootfwd piece @TomHarrisMP http://bit.ly/c03GMU

RT @houseoftwits: RT @leftfootfwd Is 55% too low for a dissolution resolution? http://bit.ly/c03GMU

RT @HouseofTwitsLab: RT @leftfootfwd Is 55% too low for a dissolution resolution? http://bit.ly/c03GMU

Informed sense on fixed terms and the 55% threshold RT @leftfootfwd: Is 55% too low for a dissolution resolution? http://bit.ly/c03GMU

What’s this? A sensible article about Fixed Term Parliaments from a Labour blogger. Is this a sign that the red mist is finally clearing?

Joking aside, you are right to question the five year term, which does seem a little long. Not sure about it myself but if it gets us the genuinely reforming parliament which, on paper, we are being promised, I can live with it.

@garryq @BenPBradshaw The 55% is apparently for a motion to dissolve by govt, not a no confidence motion by opposition http://ur1.ca/00opa

RT @paulstpancras: RT @HouseofTwitsLab: RT @leftfootfwd Is 55% too low for a dissolution resolution? http://bit.ly/c03GMU

RT @paulstpancras: RT @HouseofTwitsLab: RT @leftfootfwd Is 55% too low for a dissolution resolution? http://bit.ly/c03GMU #noto55

Is 55% too low?

I would say categorically not. I’d say it’s 4% too high

I would say though that a 3 year fixed term rather than a 5 year one would lend rather more logic to the idea of “un-overturn-able” parliaments

@bengoldacre Maybe not it seems. Dissolution by govt NOT no confidence by opp according to @leftfootfwd Is 55% too low? http://is.gd/c7lqq

5 years will seem long to many. The upside is that it will de-couple general elections from (most, not all) local council elections which is at least good for local democracy.

55% is obviously too low, The abolition of democracy is a small subsection in the Tories manifesto. Acouple of other european parties have been elected by minority and then gone on to abolish voting. I say no more.

55% of 650 MPs is 357.5 MPs. Dreary me. They didn’t think that one through.

To have a fixed term parliament, is a tricky question, do we want politics like the USA where campaigning for the next election starts right after the present election, or do we want a parliament where the government can get on with it without distracton.

Is 55% too low? | Left Foot Forward http://bit.ly/95A5Ff [del.icio.us]

@plegrain Good article on the 55% threshold here http://bit.ly/9Kt7YV – applies to dissolution, not confidence. It's 2/3 in Scot. Parl.

Note that all the "constitutional experts" opposing 55% seem to think it's for Confidence: http://bit.ly/bmaXR3

55% is, as Nils says, too high. I’m with Peter Hennessy: we shouldn’t have this tinkering.

The distinction between a no confidence motion and a dissolution motion is a misleading one. The whole point of 55% is to change the nature of a no confidence motion so that it does not have the effect it had in 1979. And it would deter a no confidence motion.

Here’s my latest blogpost on this:
http://www.headoflegal.com/2010/05/13/more-on-55/

[...] More… [...]

Hey dudes, anyone worried about the 55% thing, it's NO BIG DEAL, okay? http://bit.ly/55toolow

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/05/is-55-too-low/ in fact left foot forward talks about it quite well

It’s still an undemocratic padlock, whatever the academic disntinction between vote of no confidence and dissolution, and disdvantages the opposition. May as well call it dictatorship.

Carl is right, the no confidence motion changes nature in consequence – in fact the threat of it is gutted as it goes from a “take it to the people” motion to a “can we create a better coalition” motion, which is a very different thing, and at least as dependent on the strength of the opposition as on the weakness of the Government.

And Stephen – it wouldn’t uncouple it from Local Gov elections, which happen somewhere every year, it would just mean different types of elections were affected each cycle.

“Analysis by UCL’s Constitution Unit suggests that fears over the Lib-Con government’s 55 per cent threshold for a successful dissolution resolution.”
Dynamite opening line!

The arbitrary 55% rule is bad enough, but when was it agree that a fixed-term parliament — let alone a five year one — was desirable?

The whole thing is a transparent ploy to keep the doomed Lib-Con coalition in power.

All well and good if it is true that the 55% threshold is only binding on the governing party as suggested in the UCL report but the coalition proposal says nothing of the sort. It simply refers to “dissolution votes”. If this means something knew other than a confidence vote then what is to be the status of a confidence vote? Does it become a “slap on the wrist” vote or does it still mean that a simple majority would force the PM to see the Queen to seek a dissolution.

Perhaps someone from the coalition would care to explain although that assumes that this has been thought through rather than cobbled together on the back of a fag packet.

@bengoldacre Re 55% I found this article and the briefing note linked at the end helpful http://bit.ly/c03GMU

Five years is far too long for a fixed term parliament. It should be 3 or 4 years. The Chartists wanted annual parliaments annually elected. Perhaps we could have a third of MPs elected each year – using a different electoral system each time until we decided which one we liked!

RT @MarkReckons Is 55% too low? | Left Foot Forward http://bit.ly/95A5Ff [del.icio.us]

RT @MarkReckons Is 55% too low? | Left Foot Forward http://bit.ly/95A5Ff [del.icio.us]

The Government should certainly fall if it loses a confidence motion- even by one vote. That’s a fundamental principle of our political system.

I’ve no problem with restricting the PM’s power to call an election at the time of his choosing (i.e. when he thinks he is most likely to win). But I’m not sure how you do that in reality.

It seems to me that a 55% threshold wouldn’t work because the Opposition has a vested interest in an election taking place, which might lead to it becoming the Government. Oppositions of either party spend much of their time calling for an election, so are likely to give the Government the votes it needs for a “supermajority” allowing an early dissolution.

@Scharman,

“does it still mean that a simple majority would force the PM to see the Queen to seek a dissolution.”

A simple majority certainly still topples the government. But parliament – which is elected – gets the opportunity to choose another before dissolution. As I understand it, at the moment, the Queen theoretically gets to ask if anyone else can form a majority instead, and only if it’s not the case does she grant dissolution. All this measure does is allows MPs to overrule that process – transfers powers from the crown to the legislature. The bar being set as low as it is allows MPs to very easily call for dissolution and not allow a new government to be formed.

So yes, if we’re going to do this properly, it should be higher, and four years would have been ideal. It’s generally messy to do it this way, and it should be done as part of a full constitutional review/convention, which was what the Lib Dem manifesto called for. But Labour’s manifesto called for fixed term parliaments too, and where there are fixed parliaments, there have to be additional safeguards on dissolution, so this hasn’t exactly come out of the blue. It’s a campaigning success for all the pro-democracy groups – and a reflection of what already happens in Scotland and Wales – which seems to have surprised literally everyone inside the M25 and/or who doesn’t usually give a toss about politics. Classic case of decisions being made by those who turn up, maybe.

@ConfusedofCroydon

“seems to have surprised literally everyone inside the M25″

No offence

“This is intended to strengthen the hand of the Lib
Dems: Cameron could not call an early election without the consent of his coalition partners, because the Conservatives command only 47 per cent of the votes in the Commons.

How could Cameron call an early election if the threshold was 50%, if he only has 47% of the votes?

Hazel seems to be right. Which would make the likes of Denis Macshane (who claimed Callaghan would have survived at 55 per cent) wrong. V.good point.

This seems to me to be too sanguine. The 55% appears very convenient, and I have not seen a clear answer to the question of what happens in the event of a no confidence vote.

Under these proposals, in 1979,
(1) could Jim Callaghan have advised the Queen that Michael Foot had now reached a supply and confidence arrangement with the SNP and SDLP so Labour could stay in office after losing a confidence vote. It seems to me that they would allow that. It would make a major difference to the impact of a confidence motion if that is the case.
(2) If that was not possible, and Callaghan advised the Queen to send for Margaret Thatcher, would Thatcher have been unable to call an election without Labour support?

Can supporters of the proposal clarify whether they believe this to be the case? There are arguments for and against this.

There are a whole range of ways to run fixed term Parliaments as the rule or the norm. But these can allow for dissolution in the case of no confidence. (That happens after a time delay in Scotland, I think 28 days), so there is a 50% no confidence route to a dissolution as well as an ability to trigger it with a higher threshold.

No confidence is very exceptional – we had two such votes half a century apart. It is perfectly possible (especially while we have Fptp or AV) to combine fixed terms as the norm without the impact on no confidence, even if that might be a softer form of fixed terms than some want. (That would have given a fixed term in almost every Parliament). It is a political decision whether to do that or not – so I do am not persuaded that this policy is a necessary consequence of fixed terms, nor with the idea that there has been no partisan motivation from the Tories in agreeing it on this basis.

The idea this protects the LibDems from the Tories …. maybe. It is very clear it does the opposite:

Today, if the LibDems walk out, the non-Tory parties can get an election if they want to insist on one.

If passed, the Tories on their own on 47% have a veto on a dissolution. They would appear to have a veto on the timing of a dissolution if a Labour leader of the Opposition was called in as PM of a minority coalition, and wanted a dissolution.

Alix

“The Queen gets to ask if anyone” … the politically crucial point of our current arrangements is surely that the Queen gets to ask the outgoing PM for their advice on who might be given the opportunity, and can not under our current conventions call for somebody except through such advce from the PM.

If the fixed terms legislation and/or amended hung Parliament conventions/rules were to, for example, insist that if there was No Confidence carried that the Leader of the Opposition would be given a chance to try to form a government on the resignation of a PM, then the supermajority on dissolution could be a more plausible argument, though that depends on views on the new constraint of action on a new minority PM.

Sunder:

I think that your (1) is true assuming we retain the view that the Queen must accept advice from the outgoing PM. (2) is certainly true, I don’t think the plain words of the proposal can be read any other way.

I also agree that it’s a bad policy.

@beltain35 Also: http://bit.ly/clmKjE / http://bit.ly/9Kt7YV

I thought that changes to parliament should be endorsed by ballot/referendum of the voting populace this move smacks of dictatorship to me

Left Foot Forward has links to UCL Constituency Unit briefing on why #noto55 is wrong http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/05/is-55-too-low/

RT @frabcus: Left Foot Forward has links to UCL Constituency Unit briefing on why #noto55 is wrong http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/05/is-55-too-low/

RT @frabcus: Left Foot Forward has links to UCL Constituency Unit briefing on why #noto55 is wrong http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/05/is-55-too-low/

Left Foot Forward has links to UCL Constituency Unit briefing on why #noto55 is wrong http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/05/is-55-too-low/

“It’s a campaigning success for all the pro-democracy groups – and a reflection of what already happens in Scotland and Wales – which seems to have surprised literally everyone inside the M25 and/or who doesn’t usually give a toss about politics. Classic case of decisions being made by those who turn up, maybe.”

Yes, we simply must endeavour to be more like Scotland and Wales, with their long and proud history of effective democratic politics.

Coalition governments are about as undemocratic as it gets.

Personally I’d favour something along the lines of 3 years unless it was the first term of a government, in which case it was 5 years. It always takes a while for a government to get going, and for the new policies to take effect, whereas they tend to run out of steam after 8+ years.

[...] VIII – Left Foot Forward has a briefing note from UCL. More too from @loveandgarbage – a Scottish lawyer, it seems [...]

The wording of this proposal is not clear and is confusing everyone, including eminent academics. The intention may be 51% for no confidence and 55% for consensual decision to dissolve, but this does not say that. It’s something that will definitely need to be clarified when drafting the legislation. The courts are full of cases where the law appears to say one thing but someone else has a different interpretation. Hence lawyers, particularly barristers, make a lot of money analysing and or but.

@Kevin:

“I thought that changes to parliament should be endorsed by ballot/referendum of the voting populace this move smacks of dictatorship to me”

Dictatorship is a bit of an exaggeration. No previous change to parliament has ever been put to a referendum. The only way to ensure referendums is to have a written constitution. Oddly the Tories, who believe in referendums when it suits them, are totally opposed to a written constitution.

As I said at the end of longer discussion on Liberal Conspiracy, if Labour had done this, we would already have the Daily Mail and Telegraph calling it a Hugo Chavez move. The raging against Labour Chavista would be ramped up by cartoons and endless articles.
Constitutional change requires a mandate from the electorate. Therefore, at the least, it needs wide and deep discussion in the election campaign so that democracy is served well.
Labour(upfront) and LibDem(three levels down) mentioned fixed term parliaments–but that was it: no detail, no substantive discussion. Nothing in any debate Iheard, any leaflet I received.
The justifications that people (especially LDs) are now putting forward are shoddy politics: specific to this coalition situation. That is not why you institute constitutional change.
There are legitimate arguments to be made for fixed terms. We just did not hear a word about this in the campaign.

The programme for government states:

“legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.”

This isn’t stating that it will take 55% to pass a vote of no confidence and such a change would be highly unlikely.

There seems to be some confusion in that some commenters think that a vote of no confidence automatically leads to a dissolution. As I understand it a vote of no confidence means that either (1) the PM must resign or (2) he must dissolve parliament. So I take it that in future the PM will no longer automatically have the second option.

It’s not clear to me what would happen if the PM resigned but refused to advise the Queen on a successor. She would probably have to get politically involved and invite someone to form a government. I very much doubt that the new legislation is going to codify the complex conventions around choosing a Prime Minister (that would be quite a radical step) so we will probably have to wait and see what new conventions are created under the new system over time.

@Elaine

Just out of curiosity, do you support a written constitution? Because I think it is wishful thinking to expect politicians to engage in “wide and deep discussion” or to have a referendum unless they are obliged to do so by a constitution.

I fully support the principle of fixed-turm parliaments, but think this particular move is politically motivated.

Why 55%? Why not just simple majority?

I mean, in a fragile situation like this, if the Lib Dems walk away we could end up with a long period of stalemate.

So, fixed-term parliaments yes, but I think they should be for 4 years, and motions of confidence, no confidence or mutual disolution should be decided by simple majority.

Modicum
I sway towards a written constitution, but am quite open-minded on this issue.

I think you can still make the argument about the democratic legitimacy of constitutional change without arguing for a written constitution.

(BTW I was already aware of arrangements in Wales, Scotland and other parliamentary democracies.)

I don’t think this issue requires a referendum in and of itself, but it is not trivial.

It should have been very clearly flagged, with different options and specific optons outlined, and been made part of the debate on political reform during the election campaign. One sentence ‘about fixed parliaments’ in a manifesto is insufficient. I think your (Modicum’s) observations render my argument more powerful.

My point about the Mail and Telegraph is not that it would be a legitimate critique – rather about media bias.

This seems crackers.

Technically you could have 51% consistently voting down everything apart from repeated motions of no confidence, but fall short of the 55% needed for dissolution.

I fail to see what is wrong with the current system where a motion of no confidence of repeatedly voting down the government effectively forces the PM into dissolving parliament. (I also fail to see the attraction of fixed term parliaments full stop.)

“If passed, the Tories on their own on 47% have a veto on a dissolution.”

A veto that will only mean anything if the no confidence was against the Lib/Con coalition. In which case…what’s the problem, as that is precisely the sort of thing you should expect in a FIXED TERM parliament. People are talking about this as if it’s the Tories being protected…it’s not, it’s the fixed nature of parliament that is being held up to allow a different potential government to be formed out of the people’s choice of MPs.

@GeorginaRannard there's also a lively debate here on left foot forward http://bit.ly/d3Uc7M some suggesting 55% is too low.

@tom_watson Seen these in the comments? http://bit.ly/du6z3a http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/05/is-55-too-low/ May be some confusion…

Is #noto55 wrong? 55% is threshold for dissolution, not confidence. Confidence stays at 50%+1. http://bit.ly/bCX5as http://bit.ly/cbQ1ez

@leongreen So how do you explain the 66% rule that Labour introduced in Scotland? SRSLY, Will Straw's right http://bit.ly/95A5Ff

@pickwick We discussed it on here, I thought @loveandgarbage was going to. However, http://bit.ly/95A5Ff does the job. By Jack Straw's son

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/05/is-55-too-low/

@RichardAngell I'd set it at 2/3s for dissolution and keep 50% for confidence as in Scotland and Wales http://bit.ly/9Kt7YV

[...] from a simple majority of 50% of MPs + 1 to a weighted majority of 55% of all MPs, an issue Left Foot Forward debated yesterday. Charles Walker, MP for Broxbourne, said: “It is for Parliament to decide [...]

Sunder Katwala has posted on this at NextLeft. http://www.nextleft.org/2010/05/libdems-destroy-defence-of-55-rule.html
Rennard’s and Stunnel’s justifications expose the shoddy politics of this. AS

I said above, you do not enact constitutional change to meet a particular situation, and certainly not as a crude party political fix. Of course, (I think and, at least now) it cannot be binding on future Parliaments, so it has a very dubious status as constitutional change, but is a clear change to the constitution — even if a temporary one.

The fact that fixed term parliaments widely exist (and are the historical trend) and that higher thresholds exist elsewhere (whether in Scotland or elsewhere) is utterly irrelevant to the ‘legitimacy’ of this move. These are valid points to raise and assess when you campaign for constitutional change.

Re Henrique’s point: “It’s a campaigning success for all the pro-democracy groups” — No it isn’t. Aside from political nerds(like me), you would be very hard-pressed to find anyone who has seriously considered this. If you look at all the political reform campaigning groups’ websites (aside from the exclusively LD(oh -okay one Tory) Campaign for Fixed Parliaments, the fixed term proposal is very low down in a search, and I certainly cannot find any proposals for 55% threshold in UK parliament.

For all those ‘pragmatists’ who say it cannot work in practice. Of course, no government can survive ‘politically’ all its legislation being voted down, but why give (in this context-specific) the Tories a ‘constitutional’ lifeline?

If this is a marker of serious political ‘reform’ or a ‘new politics,’ it is a very shoddy beginning. It is shabby ‘politricking.’

Don’t worry, be happy.

But if the governing party / parties were to vote to dissolve parliament, they would also be voting against their PM.

“Speaking on a visit to the Scottish Parliament, Mr Cameron said there needed to be a “mechanism” to dissolve Parliament and the procedure he was proposing would help to secure a “strong and stable government” over the next five years.”

This is perhaps telling. Cameron sees it as supporting the stability of his government, not of the parliament, which his surely what the 55% rule advocates are saying?

Is 55% too low? Yes, says Will Straw – http://bit.ly/d3Uc7M

RT @ed_clayton: Is 55% too low? Yes, says Will Straw – http://bit.ly/d3Uc7M

[...] Left Foot Forward [...]

What an excellent post by Elaine above. There a couple of things about all of this which I think are interesting. This strikes me as being one of the more significant items in the coalition agreement, yet there is still a lack of clarity and a great deal of ambiguity about what is written down in the document. The agreement was therefore undertaken in the absence of information of considerable importance. “It will be alright on the night” doesn’t seem to be the strongest argument for a change of this sort, and one starts to wonder how well informed the remainder of the agreement is.

The argument that 55% is too low seems to me to be mind-bogglingly feeble. It admits that the actual figure is arbitrary (but not, of course, random!) so why not 66%? If 66%, why not 77% or 88% or indeed 100%? We could then send them all home and save a fortune in salary and expenses plus using the Palace of Westminster as a hotel.

yet there is no evidence of a presentation The agreement was therefore undertaken in the absence of information which you seem to recognise as being critically important. “It will be alright on the night” doesn’t seem to be the strongest argument for a change of this sort.

Apologies for the finger-trouble in my previous post. The last paragraph should of course have been deleted!

To all the Labour supporting commentors on here, what do you say about the Scottish situation which was imposed by a Labour governemnt. In Scotland the rule is 66% not 55% as it would be in the UK. Typical hypocrisy.

The rule is for the dissolution of parliament and allows MPs to vote for it. Currently only the PM can do this. So its a good thing and puts the power into the hands of the MPs to decide.

A vote of no confidence still only requires a 50% +1 vote. However losing a vote of confidence doesn’t by default to a dissolution. The losing government would have to try and sort out a majority coalition or minority goverment and if it couldn’t do that would MPs be able to vote for a dissolution.

Had you done the briefest research on this issue rather than post a partisan insult you would have discovered that there is a significant difference in that the Scottish legislation includes a automatic timeout. While you correctly observe that after a vote of no confidence being carried a “losing government would have to try and sort out a majority coalition or minority government and if it couldn’t do that would MPs be able to vote for a dissolution” you unfortunately fail to notice that the said MPs would only succeed on a 55% vote. What if they can’t reach that proportion.

What this means is that if Cameron loses a vote of confidence he cannot call an election unless he gets 55% of MPs to agree to that so someone else takes over. So the government can change without a new election as it did in 1924 when King George appointed Ramsay MacDonald as PM after Baldwin lost a vote of confidence.

@Roy Burns
It’s disingenuous at best to claim that the Scottish legislation has a time-out clause but the Lib-Con legislation doesn’t. We don’t know what the legislation will or won’t contain. All we have so far is the briefest of outlines with zero details. If the actual full proposal doesn’t contain a time-out clause, I’ll eat my voting card.

..and as I posted above Paul, that is also of concern to me. The implication is that the coalition agreement was concluded while important issues remained unspecified.

Yes. It’s completely unacceptable that they didn’t write five years worth of legislation in full, in that handful of of days between the election and taking office.

Perhaps you need to research the process of coalition formation in those polities where it is common. You touch on, but miss, the point: drawing up a coalition agreement is too complex and important to be done in three days, particularly when the manifesto and campaign defined positions of the parties involved were so antithetical. The agreement (draft agreement?) was put into effect even before the last leg of the LibDem triple lock was in place I believe. LibDem membership are meeting today. Railroading perhaps?

Dictators, that’s what Cameron and Clegg are. This is a dictatorial move and is not liberal and is not democratic!

They want to force the locks on the new bedroom they are sharing, so no one can throw them out, even they start fighting.

this is like getting married without having the option to divorce.

I feel stronger than ever that the anti-55%-ers have very much misread the electorate on certain key things. First and foremost is this idea of “wanting more democracy”, which I think is a very typical example of a concept which has its roots in popular sentiment, but which is twisted by those in “the Village” into something which suits them and their agenda.

Simply put, I don’t think any member of the public has any desire whatsoever to spend more time and the ballot box under any form. This includes General and local elections of course; but I think also applies to referenda, recalls, primaries or any other form of choice which involves going to cast a piece of paper for one side or another. The Great British public are cynical, caustic and lazy, even if they are perhaps more educated than we sometimes give them credit for. They see elections as very little other than a chance for politicians to preen and self-publicise. Of course, once in a while they enjoy the chance to throw out a government and change it for another that might offer something different; but overall, even most of the “in between” elections are totally unnecessary and a waste of time and money – witness 2001, 1987 and so on. Of course I am not arguing for ending the 5 year term limits but what I am arguing for is that the starting point of considering all this is that the public regard electioneering as an appalling spectacle in almost every case, and increasingly with the demise of partisan allegiances, even any overt partisanship or tribalism is marked down. This is the world we live in.

What the public want is two things: firstly, an “adult” attitude where MPs deal with the hand they are dealt, and go away and bloody well just “get on with it”. After the election, no-one wants to hear any more from politicians for a long, long time about what they are doing, what they have done, what the other lot are doing or anything else – unless a crisis happens. Secondly, what they would like (and this is one offshoot of the expenses scandal but actually started long before that) is transparency and clarity, if not ‘accountability’, to be able to access information about what is happening if they want, even if they know they will not want to access it themselves. They want to be blindly happy in the knowledge that someone else, perhaps the press whose papers they don’t buy anymore, is keeping the government ‘accountable’. But they do not want to be involved in this process themselves.

Yet hilarious the political classes seem to have interpreted this in an entirely different way, and some are putting forward the idea that what people what is more time spent at the ballot box; more time listening to politicians talk about themselves or about issues such as the constitution or indeed parliamentary reform, which no-one cares about; more time in the media attacking each other as though somehow talking about things is the accountability that people want from MPs who are paid to consider and pass legislation. People do not want politics, that is the sad fact of today. I agree that politicians are seen to be irrelevant due to the lack of major achievements but having said that, the answer is not to try and flog a dead horse and get them involved. It is to win on a manifesto which promises change and delivers it in a real, tangible manner. The answer to irrelevance is not more frequent elections, given that half of the ones we have already fought are extraneous. The idea that a reduction in the number of elections historically is proof that these reforms are bad is so detached from reality that I cannot even begin to express my opposition to it. People want less ‘democracy’.

Coming back to the parliamentary reform details, I therefore continue to support Supermajorities for dissolution of Parliament and indeed feel that at 55%, it just does not go far enough. A good two-thirds should be required because what you want is for anyone suggesting they want an early election, to go away, take a couple of aspirin and really ask themselves what the devil they are doing. Hung parliaments may or may not be here to stay; but the fact is that the public will have no sympathy whatsoever for a group of parliamentarians who seem not to be able to progress things just because they can’t get on and are too tribal to work together in parliament to pass legislation or get a budget through. They do not want to have the huge and useless imposition of another election thrust upon them just because politicians can’t be bothered to find the compromise necessary to make government work. In some cases of course it might really be necessary: but in those cases you really need a consensus from the whole of parliament, and not just a bare slender majority, to have the moral authority to ask the public for their forgiveness in demanding it. A split house really is not good enough and the public will be angry – very much so – at an election happening just because one half of the House want it.

[...] for a two-thirds majority, as in Holyrood, it remains possible for a future prime minister with 55 per cent of seats in the Commons to do precisely what Mr Clegg abhors: namely to “play politics” by [...]

[...] for a two-thirds majority, as in Holyrood, it remains possible for a future prime minister with 55 per cent of seats in the Commons to do precisely what Mr Clegg abhors: namely to “play politics” by “cynically [...]

@ Baig – I don;t think you can call Cameron and Clegg dictators. Didn’t we learn our lesson with Blair and the disgraceful act of getting rid of him under the circumstances that Brown devised and planned for years.

James Stewart
From: OnlineShareTading.com

It’s all an Illusion! The entire political process has become nothing but a pawn to the corporations. The Queen, the Vatican, and DC… Ugg!

“It’s all an Illusion! The entire political process has become nothing but a pawn to the corporations. The Queen, the Vatican, and DC… Ugg!”

+1 It’s really sad that things have gotten to this point. Literally everything is owned and run by big business.

-Dan @ Sea Eagle Boats

I agree with you Dan, everything today is literally all about big corporations affecting the decisions of political leaders on all countries.

To have a fixed term parliament, is a tricky question, do we want politics like the USA where campaigning for the next election starts right after the present election, or do we want a parliament where the government can get on with it without distracton.The distinction between a no confidence motion and a dissolution motion is a misleading one. The whole point of 55% is to change the nature of a no confidence motion so that it does not have the effect it had in 1979.Anyways, thanks for sharing this.