So yet again we have another Labour election manifesto that includes Constitutional reform, It shouldn’t be a suprise to anyone, after all they have had elements in all their manifesto’s since 1997 yet there does seam to be a trend in their policies and what actually happends.
in 1997 we had the following pledges
- Reform of the House of Lords
- Modernisation of the House of Commons
- Controls on party funding
- Referendum on voting system for House of Commons
- Freedom of Information Act
- Scottish Parliament
- National Assembly for Wales
- More accountable and democratic local government
- Strategic authority for London
- Regional chambers leading to directly elected regional assemblies in England
- Incorporation of the ECHR into UK law
- Support for the peace process and devolution in Northern Ireland.
In 1998 we got the Human rights act, In 1998 we had the scotland act, the government of wales act and the Northern Ireland act. In 1999 we had a half finsihed (thought to say it was half done is to over do how far it went) House of Lords act (and since then a white paper which achieved only establishing that the next step would be fully elected, that the House of Lords didn’t like this and no time line for this to occur). The freedom of information act 2000 the constitutional reform act of 2005 (which laid out a plan to change to a supreme court and replacing the law lords) and finally the governing of Wales act 2006.
So to give credit to Labour in their first term they did do a few things (and even commissioned a report on electoral reform…and then chose to ignore it and never mention it again). In the 2005 election constitutional reform was distinctly played down with other issues seen as more important, and that might explain the gap untill 2005 before we then saw any further action occur. Now we see many of the same policys re-emerge that have been promised in 1997 and 2005 and yet they have still not been carried out.
Labour cannot be trusted to carry out constitutional reform and if anyone wants any of these changes that will fundermentally change our political make up they need to vote Liberal Democrat.
Not only do we support these changes that Labour have suggested, we actually go further and suggest a truely radical change in the voting system that will dramatically reduce wasted votes and improve connections between Constituents with their representatives In STV system.
The conservatives have suggested that people should “vote for change” and they are right, but voting for conservative is not voting for change, its voting for at best the same and at worse going back to ideas that have been shown to be redundent.
When the Lib Dems proposed the power for constituents to recall MP’s, Conservatives and Labour opposed us.
When Lib Dem’s Proposed tougher measure on other party jobs and lobbyist, Conservatives and Labour opposed us.
When Conservatives complain about the fact that voting for Lib Dems is a wasted vote, they oppose changing the system to repair that and make everyone vote count.
William Hauge when he was PM even fought against reform of the House of Lords and wanted to bring Herditary peries back and he is the current deputy.
Its clear that there is only one party for change and that’s the Lib Dems.
Posted on April 7, 2010
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