Tag: Political process

Statesmanship and low politics

Obviously, in the twenty-first century it would be better to say “statespersonship”. But that’s a bit unwieldy. And it’s not yet a thing. So I hope you’ll let me off. I’ve been reflecting on this issue a lot over the last few days. It was triggered by last […]

Chaos in all directions

What do we want from a government? Not in terms of the substance of policy but in the way it goes about its business. At a minimum we might reasonably expect competence. And we’d want it to play by the rules. We’d want a government to follow due […]

Caring diddlysquat about democracy

[Originally posted at Dale&Co, 27/09/11] One of the less pleasant characteristics of the Coalition government is its cavalier attitude towards transparency, accountability and Parliamentary process. This is part of a more general impoverishment of democratic practice. We hear reports of serious, but relatively small scale, issues such as […]

Harsh but fair? Marquand on the Liberal Democrat leadership

David Marquand reviews Vernon Bogdanor’s new book The Coalition and the Constitution in today’s Guardian. Bogdanor is clearly not impressed with the Coalition’s mandate to pursue its radical agenda. And Marquand agrees. He is particularly scathing on the process by which the Coalition agreement was established as the […]

Sense prevails on public services?

[Originally posted on Liberal Democrat Voice, 08/05/11] The reports this week were that the Government is planning to scale back its proposals for outsourcing public services. A significant policy shift means that the delayed Open Public Services White paper will not feature proposals for “wholesale outsourcing” to the […]

Where next on electoral reform?

There are already plenty of post-mortems on the AV referendum result. I don’t propose to add much to that growing body of discussion. In fact, Mark Thompson has already said most of what I would want to say on the topic. And he’s said it better. Not for […]

Pressing on with NHS Reform – a less than rational process

The central question in the current debate over the Government’s NHS reforms is whether the “listening” exercise taking place during the recently discovered “natural pause” in the legislative process is genuine or symbolic. Concerns that the exercise is cosmetic will only be fuelled by an article in yesterday’s […]

Liberal Democrat alternative realities

Quite a few bloggers have now offered a perspective on the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference. Some significant positive developments occurred. The amendments to the conference motion on NHS reform have attracted most attention. The support for the emergency motion on banking reform was equally emphatic. They both represent […]