This week’s quiz questions. 1. How many current members of the House of Lords have held the post of Secretary of State for Education? Who are they? 2. I have edited a major newspaper. I have chaired the Arts Council of Great Britain. I have been on the BBC Board of Governors. Who am I?…
I see we may be in for a form of reality politics. A number of celebrities (Esther Rantzen, Terry Waite, Simon Heffer) have suggested they may put themselves forward to fight seats as independents. The difficulty with having independent MPs is that there is no collective accountability to the electors. There is also often the problem…
I was speaking today at a seminar, organised by the Magna Carta Institute of Brunel University, on the European Parliament elections. What is notable about the elections is the extent to which they attract relatively little attention (nothing on them that I could see in this morning’s Times or Daily Telegraph) and what attention they…
David Cameron has produced a substantial reform agenda for Parliament. It appeared in The Guardian this morning and was delivered in a speech today at the Open University. His recommendations cover three basic relationships: those of Government to Parliament, Parliament to the people, and the centre to the locality. There is a lot in his speech,…
This week’s quiz questions. 1. Baroness Ashton of Upholland is serving as a European Commissioner. Which other members of the House of Lords have preceded her as members of the Commission? 2. Who was the first female convenor of the cross-bench peers?
