They talk of radical change. But will it happen?
Gordon Brown talks of radical constitutional change. So does David Cameron. So does Nick Clegg. But is it going to happen?
It was the 19th century radical John Bright who conjured the phrase “Mother of Parliaments”. It’s a cosy, reassuring concept and has often been distorted to suggest Westminster is the “Mother of Parliaments”.
It isn’t because, in fact, Bright was referring to “England… the Mother of Parliaments”. Technically, given the spread of the Westminster system of government through the erstwhile empire, it may well be true – though I don’t quite see why Scotland and Wales were left out of the equation.
The fact is that the Westminster system, as we are discovering, has a collectively serious democratic deficit. We have an unelected head of state, an unelected head of government, and an unelected upper house.
That places a massive burden on the bits that ARE elected. But the system by which MPs are elected ensures that a minority of votes elects a usually significant parliamentary majority for one party (last time round Labour, with little more than a third of the votes).
It also ensures that it is only a minority of the 650+ MPs in which a serious democratic challenge ever occurs.
Hence this “gentlemen’s club” hegemony of which Gordon Brown so suddenly loudly complains. Once elected, who would ever want to change it? You inherit or design rules so arcane that the “club” retains an almost masonic secrecy and unchangeability.
And once inside the club who would leave? Certainly not those for whom the trail leads inexorably to the House of Lords. The Queen’s birthday honours beckon very immediately. I have asked the question before: should there be an moratorium on any more appointments to the Lords? It’s not a bad test of these party leaders’ commitment to reform.
My sense is that the fact that the three party leaders call for constitutional reform, and that two of them (Brown announcing a modest possible conversion as recently as the Andrew Marr Show on BBC yesterday) now embrace the prospect of electoral form, means very little.
A ship of state has been constructed down the years of such complexity and such indestructibility that it is hard to see how anything, short of revolution is likely to change it. And the party leaders certainly won’t be taking that course.