Cameron Takes a big risk
On Monday, David Cameron set his vision for a decentralised political system. He talked of allowing local people to decide what happens in their local area, He talked of having more of a bottom up approach to national politics and he talked about giving people the power to recall their MP should they believe them to not be carrying out their role properly. But perhaps the most significant of the suggestions, if not on paper then definately in consequence was the idea to allow people to petition to get ideas voiced in Parliament.
He said that if a petition reached 100,000 signatures then it would be debated in parliament, but if it reached 1,000,000 signatures (as some have) there would be a bill tabled in Parliament. On the face of it this sounds like an excellent idea. People who can gather enough support for a particular issue might be able to see it reach parliament even if there isn’t support for it from within parliament. Now, here lies the first problem. If there is no interest or very little interest within parliament, then there is no way it will recieved a proper hearing as most will not bother to turn up for the debate. Further, if the petition reached bill stage and there wasn’t much interest, particularly from a majority government then a simple whip would be imposed and the bill would never get past it’s first reading.
The second problem is potentially a bigger one. Over 100,000 people signed the ‘resign’ petition on the number 10 website so under Dave’s imitative, it would recieved a debate in parliament. This in itself would be damaging to the government and indeed could lead to a vote of no confidence in the government. Put simply, it is a recipe for a government’s own downfall to allow people to have the power to push for a government to resign. Imagaine if that resign petition reaches 1,000,000 signatures and thus a ‘resign’ bill is written and debated. The situation would become crippling as valuable parliamentary time would be filled up with nonsense bills that would eventually destabilise the political system.
Thus on the face of it these measures look good and indeed aren’t bad suggestions, but by allowing people such power Cameron is providing an arrow with which he can be quite easily shot should a competent campaigner with media contacts who doesn’t like Cameron wish so.
Remeber the human rights act and how great that was, then fast forward to 2005 where it comes back to bite Labour over detaining suspected terrorists. I hope this is not Camerons ‘HRA’ moment, but only time can and will tell on that front.
