In this election, neither Labour nor the Tories are particularly interested in serious constitutional reform. By contrast, there’s one smaller opposition party that makes it quite clear in its manifesto that it does believe in serious democratic change to make government radically responsive to what voters want.
That party is Reform. True, there’s a lot in its manifesto, launched today, to make you cautious: for instance, its elements of rehashed free-market Thatcherism, not to mention its fairly sketchy funding projections. But a number of its constitutional proposals make for interesting reading. Some ideas are predictable, such as replacing the ECHR with a British Bill of Rights, or changing the voting system to prevent abuse of postal votes. But some of the others are much more significant.
The fairly raw democracy which Reform’s manifesto promotes has a great deal going for it
One concerns the House of Lords. The line is blunt: the House must be made much smaller, and political appointments to it must stop. While details are sketchy, Reform is on to something here. An unintended consequence of the introduction of life peerages in 1958 and Tony Blair’s all-but-exclusion of hereditary peers has been the foundation of a lethargic club of political has-beens, quangocrats and worthies seen by a........