A Robust Constitution

Recall elections are a Lib Dems' charter for nuisance. So are proposals to make it possible for online petitioners to put their real or their "humorously" pretended hobbyhorses onto the parliamentary agenda. And what if there were no simply MP or Peer willing to sponsor the Bill in question? The Alternative Vote answers no question that anyone would ever ask, and the scheme for what the illiterate BBC insistently calls "an elected House of Lords" is a scheme for regional party lists.

None of this has anything to do with the expenses scandal, any more than identity cards, or prolonged detention without charge, has anything to do with terrorism. For that, we need to require all political funding to be by resolution of membership organisations, as well as parliamentarians' staff to be appointed from lists maintained by such organisations in return for payment of at least half of those staff's salaries, thereby requiring politicians and parliamentarians to have links to wider civil society.

The problem with the Alternative Vote, and which also applies to STV for multimember constituencies, is that people with lots of second or subsequent preferences but very few firsts are eliminated in the first round, even though rather a lot of people voted for them. The electoral reform that we really need is the vigorous contesting of every seat by every party on behalf of a candidate in every case capable of being that constituency's MP. That the existing parties do not do this proves that they cannot do it, that they simply have not sufficient people of sufficient calibre. We also need party candidates to be selected by submitting that party's internally, but locally, determined shortlist of two to a binding ballot of all registered voters in the constituency, just as Party Leaders should be elected by submitting the internally determined shortlist of two to a binding ballot of all registered voters in the United Kingdom. There would be nothing to stop unsuccessful candidates for selection from seeking election as Independents.

If party candidates were selected by that procedure, and if we must tamper yet further with what is by some distance the more interesting and effective House of Parliament, then each of the 99 units that are the English ceremonial counties, the Scottish lieutenancy areas, the Welsh preserved counties and the Northern Irish counties should elect the same number of Senators. Four? Five? Six? How big do we want the Senate to be? For the sake of argument, let's say six per county. Each of us would vote for one candidate, and the top six would be declared elected at the end. Another six, who would have to be Crossbenchers, would be elected in the same way by the country as a whole. Certain newspaper columnists and others could be told to put up or shut up. They would in any case be glad to put up.

Unlike for the Commons, there should be a residency requirement: candidates for the Senate should have to have been registered voters in the county (or, perhaps, one immediately adjacent) throughout the previous 10 years. While Ministers should have to appear regularly before the Senate in order to answer its questions, Senators should be banned from being Ministers. It would thus be possible to build a career specifically as a legislator. And we might even ban parties that contest Commons elections from contesting Senate ones. This would allow new formations to emerge, and locate them within the parliamentary process.

The parties, whether for the Commons or for the Senate, should also submit to such a national ballot the 10 policies proposed by the most of each party's branches, with each voter entitled to vote for up to two, and with the top seven guaranteed inclusion in the subsequent General Election manifesto. Furthermore, we need a ballot line system, such that voters would be able to indicate that they were voting for a given candidate specifically as endorsed by a smaller party or other campaigning organisation, with the number of votes by ballot line recorded and published separately.

And as for a written Constitution, it would by definition cede yet further power from elected parliamentarians to unelected judges. The Attlee Government would have been severely hampered, or even completely neutered, by any written Constitution. Never mind one written on the back of a Rizla, or in the margins of some Trotskyist rag, thirty or forty years ago. Economic and social rights would have been, and would be, restricted by their constitutional definition at an arbitrary point in time. If there is any good in a proposed written Constitution, then work towards that good within the existing arrangements. But no matter what, vote against the thing itself, should this referendum ever come to be held.