Saturday 8 May 2010

A picture worth a 1000 words


Indeed.

It raises the old question about your preferred style of leadership.

Strong and decisive leadership for dynamism, or a less volatile collegiate and representative form which can account for greater weaknesses.

Me? I think the correct balance between the two for the times will depend on the level of reasoned imagination of all the people involved.

In other words proportionality and relevance: because not all votes are equal, yet neither should they all be the same.

That's why I'm against FPTP, and why I'm against PR lists... at least as the basic mechanism for electing the primary legislature of the country.

So, instead, we must look at the question in the wider context of all the different forums of democracy and begin to understand how they each interconnect.

A House of 'Commons' should be elected by commonality and similarly a House of 'Lords' should be elected from among the groups of peers within every professional estate (which also means the full range of estates must be recognised and represented - bishops and lawyers, admirals and vice-chancellors, business executives and bureaucrats included).

And then, perhaps more radically, more weight should be given to the advice of a proliferating range of representative bodies sanctioned within the constitution of the country.

By way of example, I personally think it would be exciting to use the Mansion House in Whitehall as the formal gathering place for all the Ambassadors and High Commissioners of foreign countries to the UK, where issues with an international dimension could be debated in public rather than making their representations to the foreign secretary and keeping everything behind closed doors.

And by way of contrast with the Speaker, the presiding official of such bodies should be called the Listener.

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