Tag Archives: government

Richard Wood

Cameron’s return: the ministerial appointments process needs reform

By Richard Wood | Wed 15th November 2023 - 11:55 am

This Monday the country awoke to the news that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had finally sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman. This was followed by the arrival of none other than former Prime Minister David Cameron at Downing Street, sparking rumours of a return to government.

Cameron’s place in Sunak’s faltering administration was soon confirmed, making him the first former Prime Minister to return to government since Alec Douglas-Home served as foreign secretary (1970 to 1974).

The top line here is that the current crop of Conservative MPs have been ignored in favour of someone outside of parliament, resorting to a former prime minister. Cameron’s appointment shows the dearth of talent within the Conservative parliamentary ranks and further exposes a government running out of steam. With Sunak on track to leave Downing Street next year, this is a left-field gamble by a struggling PM. It also has the bonus for the government of deflecting attention from Suella Braverman’s appalling record, which would have been this week’s focus otherwise.

However, Cameron’s appointment also raises an interesting question about the mechanics of our democracy. Currently, ministers can only be appointed from the House of Commons and House of Lords. In the case of David Cameron, he has been appointed to the House of Lords purely in order to serve in cabinet.

We need to reform Parliament – Proportional Representation for the Commons and a democratic upper chamber – but there’s also a strong case for reforming the process for appointing ministers who do not serve in the House of Commons. The only way to do this now is to give someone a life peerage or stand down an MP and force a by-election. That’s an absurd way to run a country. Let this sink in: David Cameron has been made a legislator for the rest of his life as a result of this appointment by Sunak.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 4 Comments
Lord Roger Roberts

Lord Roger Roberts writes…The demand is for statesmen rather than politicians…..

By Lord Roger Roberts | Sun 2nd August 2020 - 8:55 am

“We must all hang together, else we shall all hang separately” the words of Benjamin Franklyn on signing the declaration of Independence are as relevant today as they were back in 1776

When a future generation weighs the historical importance of the early twenty first century they might remember another quote – that the politician looks to the next election whilst the statesman looks to the next generation. We’re very short of statesmen but have an abundance of politicians!

Here in the UK, whatever the cost it’s 2024 and the election planned for that year that counts. Our government chose to continue with the withdrawal from the European Union even though circumstances in 2020 were vastly different from those of the referendum. The tiny majority that voted for us to leave had neither a virus nor probable economic depression to contend with and there were suspicions of a misleading leave campaign. Where did that £350 million a day for the NHS disappear to? And where are the crowds from Turkey hiding?

The messages of the politicians have led us into deep trouble and who knows where the end will finally be? People don’t trust hardly a word spoken by politicians and any promises Mr Johnson makes are treated with disbelief’ Whoever is Lib Dem leader has the massive task of rebuilding trust in the government of the United Kingdom and the new Labour leader is already facing mounting criticism within his own party. If we rebuild trust we might be on the way to shaping new statesmen and women.

But we must “hang together” globally. In the past few months we are seeing a better understanding between people of different backgrounds and respect for every person wherever they might be.

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 15 Comments
Lord William Wallace

“To govern is to choose”

By Lord William Wallace | Mon 11th February 2019 - 12:42 pm

One of the first aphorisms I learned when studying history and politics was: ‘To govern is to choose’. It was Pierre Mendes-France’s maxim when Premier of France in 1954-5, cutting through the morass of postponed decisions left by weak coalition governments and negotiating the withdrawal of French troops form Indo-China. Good government means taking decisions, even when they are hard decisions.

Which underlines how appallingly incompetent Britain’s current government is. It has raised the art of postponing decisions to an art form. If it could postpone presenting Parliament with a clear choice on Brexit until the afternoon of March 29th, it …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 25 Comments
David Chadwick

Leaving London

By David Chadwick | Mon 21st January 2019 - 9:12 am

Britain is one of the most overcentralized countries in the Western world. Our political and financial institutions are concentrated in London, perpetuating regional inequality and overburdening the capital’s underfunded public services.

London might be open but it’s also full: strangers share bedrooms; commuters collapse on crowded trains, gentrification ravages local communities, savings accounts stay empty and the Westminster bubble remains as tight and cosy as ever.

There seems to be no end in sight to London-centrism. Jobs flow to London without serious consideration being paid to whether or not they might be better off elsewhere. For example, in 2015 George Osborne decided …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 17 Comments
Adam Corlett

Should we move our government to Manchester?

By Adam Corlett | Wed 30th August 2017 - 11:55 am

Embed from Getty Images

Big Ben has been silenced. At some point in the next 6 years, MPs and Lords must leave the Palace of Westminster too, with renovation needed in the face of ‘impending crisis’. A lot has been written about where parliament might go temporarily, with some even suggesting a few years out of London. But we need to be more ambitious than a mere temporary move of parliamentarians.

We should permanently move both parliament and ‘Whitehall’ to Manchester. Undoubtedly, political parties, think tanks, charities, much of the printed and broadcast press, quangos, embassies and lobbyists would eventually follow, as well as other corporate offices: with further knock-on effects through the spending power of these 10s or even 100s of thousands of jobs.

Politicians talk a lot about ‘rebalancing’ the UK but this is one way – perhaps the only way – in which the state can actually do it at the stroke of a pen. For those currently working in or around parliament and central government – including journalists (and myself) – it would be painfully disruptive. But for most voters in the South East an easing of population pressure should be welcome. As Jeremy Cliffe at The Economist writes:

Moving government out of London would free up housing, transport and office capacity that the current capital badly needs. … Meanwhile that city would of course remain Britain’s economic centre and gateway to the world; a Barcelona to Manchester’s Madrid; a Glasgow to Manchester’s Edinburgh; a New York to Manchester’s Washington. The city on the Thames is surely dynamic enough to absorb the change without breaking a sweat.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 54 Comments
Andrew George

Coalition-Lite – a better way of doing coalition government?

By Andrew George | Sun 5th October 2014 - 1:03 pm

Shortly before midnight on 11th May 2010, just five days after the General Election, Liberal Democrat MPs and Party chiefs voted to enter Coalition Government with the Conservatives and to support the difficult but inescapable compromise Coalition Programme for Government.

This was a sobering moment. No jubilation. Just a recognition that we had to make this work; and determined that, contrary to past history and evidence from elsewhere, it wouldn’t inflict terminal damage on the Party.

This was, of course, a “least worst” option. The public finances were in a mess; the economy in danger of catastrophic decline. The last thing the country needed was the routine tribalism of the Westminster Village. No party had a majority. The country needed stable government. We did what had to be done.

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Posted in Op-eds and Parliament | Also tagged and | 21 Comments

Opinion: Government is at its best when it’s boring

By Andy Boddington | Fri 23rd August 2013 - 3:03 pm

If Alistair Darling had ever walked into the pub when I was pulling pints, I would have thrown him out on his ear for introducing the now deceased beer escalator.

Now I find myself applauding him. What he said today about High Speed 2 and transport policy was probably bad politics, but it is exceedingly good government.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 25 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Liblink: Duncan Brack on how to get green policies implemented in Government

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 21st March 2012 - 9:28 am

Until recently, Duncan Brack was Chris Huhne’s Special Adviser in the Department of Energy and Climate Change. He has written for the Green Alliance blog about the challenges of putting green policies into practice. As well as insight into the practical realities of Government, he has some interesting points to make about the importance of policy making within political parties and how it might need to change in the future:

The coalition agreement hammered out by Liberal Democrat and Conservative negotiators over five days of talks in May 2010 (with details added over the following two weeks) became, at least in

…

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Posted in LibLink and News | Also tagged , , , and | Leave a comment
Alex Foster

Coalition ahoy

By Alex Foster | Tue 11th May 2010 - 11:57 pm

News trickling in that the Conservatives have offered the Liberal Democrats a coalition. The Lib Dem parliamentary party and Federal Executives, without whom a coalition cannot be ratified, are currently meeting to consider it.

There’s even talk of an emergency Special Conference this weekend which will mean conference representatives across the country pricking their ears up.

But the rolling news media are considering it a done deal already.

Amongst the headlines are that Nick Clegg will serve as Deputy Prime Minister, Danny Alexander as Secretary of State for Scotland, along with three other Lib Dems in the cabinet and a further …

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Posted in General Election | Also tagged , , , and | 98 Comments
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