Give Us Back Our Voice

Whilst this plebeian often fantasises about a life absent of governance, he also ponders about potential improvements to the shambolic status quo.  Anyone who has spent five minutes observing our "democratic" system will have come to the realisation that it is nothing more than a minority elected dictatorship.

Besides low voter turns outs (I guess one has to conclude that by not voting you have no preference for the idiot in charge) the major problem with our system, as I see it, is the powerless & pointless positions held by Members of Parliament.

Although we technically tick the box for our local MP in the polling booth, this ceases to matter the moment any party reaches a majority in the commons, or a coalition for that matter.  Once the numbers are in and our new PM is appointed, the role of the MP quickly vanishes to the cabinet legislators & party whips.

This is the crux of my problem, nobody voted Vince Cable, George Osbourne, Kenneth Clarke, Theresa May or any of these other cronies to be supreme policy makers of their country.  They were voted for in their constituencies, sure, but so were 650 other MPs whom now essentially sit and hum the party tune, occasionally popping up to question the PM on Wednesdays.  This is a problem caused by using Statutory Instruments (delegated legislation) rather than Acts of Parliament (primary legislation), power is pushed further away from the voter and into back room conferences & under the table deals, all in the name of saving time.

To reverse this horribly undemocratic state we must do away with the cabinet, individual MPs should submit bills for discussion regardless of who the majority party are.  The power to draft/pass laws should be in the hands of every MP, not a privileged few who happen to be best mates with the PM.  This could probably be extended to doing away with the PM altogether, instead using an arbitrary speaker (MPs name from a hat?) who communicates the position of the house on individual issues, rather than having a party leader speak on behalf of the entire country.

This of course puts a spanner in the works for lots of government policies, budget allocation would be more difficult (the exact redistribution figures for supporting the lazy would no doubt be a hotly contested issue), economic meddling would slow down;  in fact policy authors might actually have to balance the budget in order to convince enough MPs that policy X is affordable & beneficial enough to actually warrant voting for.  They might also realise that small details are more efficiently dealt with by local councils rather than by lengthy discussions in the commons, aka localism.

My god, this might actually go someway to restoring democracy, handing power back down the pyramid whilst simultaneously diluting the compulsive cock-ups of the ruling elite.  Eureka?