Nick Clegg: “cancel Queen’s speech”

Writing in the Independent today (and reported widely elsewhere) Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, looks ahead to the national embarrassment that will be Wednesday’s State Opening of Parliament:

After the expenses scandal, this Parliament has destroyed its own legitimacy. Not in living memory has confidence in politicians, trust in the system, or faith in the Government’s capacity to change things been as low as it is today. People are no longer willing to respect the will of this failed Parliament. This Parliament has forfeited the right to do anything but focus on political reform.

He wants the queen’s speech to be cancelled and, instead, used to deliver “an action plan to save Britain’s democracy”. The key points, he says, should include:

• reform of the system of party whips;
• fixed term parliaments;
• reform of funding for political parties;
• codes of conduct for all parliamentary candidates;
• a fully-elected second chamber;
• a referendum on electoral reform.

The queen’s speech, he suggests, should prepare the way for the next government beyond the 2010 general election: “when you move out of a house, you clean it for the people moving in.”

Just heard that Nick Clegg wants to scrap the Queen’s speech. If he’s prepared to go one stage further he’s got my vote.

@theskink

But worthy as his proposals are, sweeping the floor is pointless if the ground beneath your feet is subsiding.  Britain is one of only three countries that still does not have  its powers of government set out in a codified manner.  For the political and constitutional changes that Clegg calls for to be effective, they must be built on the foundations of a written constitution that enshrines sovereignty in the people, not in the figurehead of an unelected monarch.

As long as government remains something done to the people, rather than by and for the people, parliament will continue to lack the legitimacy and respect that Clegg correctly identifies as having been lost.

The “elephant in the room” of constitutional reform will be all too clearly visible on Wednesday morning, sitting on the velvet-covered bench in the House of Lords.  As the queen outlines the government’s next legislative programme, it is “my” government whose words she will be mouthing, not our government.