Best Of

Year Zeroism from Starmer:

https://x.com/Peston/status/1983231551623016824

According to the official readout of today’s cabinet meeting, the chief secretary to the prime minister told ministers this: “We have to build a new state and shut down the legacy state, with digital ID making people's experience of that new state fundamentally much better.” Blimey

Sounds very dystopian.

It sounds like something that if you are going to do you need years and years of careful planning and the whole organisation on board with such a radical change....all the evidence points to...erhhh....

Have they started talking about The Blob, again?

Meanwhile, the first local government reorganisation is out, with Surrey split into East and West.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/surrey-local-government-reorganisation

The massacre of English counties continues and is being undertaken for the most short term cost reasons. It is a policy that is going to be unpopular and will ultimately fail. Local government is now yet another point of the list for major constitutional reform. which now includes the second chamber, powers of the House of Commons, the national parliaments, the voting system, the powers of the crown prerogative and indeed the monarchy itself. Its going to take more than a few guys meeting in Philadelphia for three weeks to sort this mess out.

The ghost of Lord Redcliffe-Maud waves hello.



(See, he even looked like a ghost at the time.)

The basic principle- work the large towns and small cities that people actually look towards, and plan unitary councils on the basis of those plus their hinterlands- was sorted before I was born.

My solution to all this would have been to lock all England's council leaders in a room at 11am with no food, and tell them that lunch would be served once they had agreed a map. It would have been sorted by lunchtime, and the map would have been similar to Lord R-M's.

Am I alone in not caring less whether the cabinet are in the commons or not? Personally I’d rather a bigger distinction between the Executive and Legislature. And I also think parliamentary constituents can be short changed when their MP is distracted by issues at Cabinet. And of course, being an MP is a total sh1thouse job and attracts distinctly mid talent. We should aspire for our government to be drawn from a better quality pool than the den of thieves that is the Commons.

So, there is one rather significant issue that comes from having the Executive appointed by the Prime Minister, rather than as Members of Parliament:

Candidates for the role of Prime Minister would not have significant executive experience to draw upon when running for the role. MPs would not be able to tell which of their colleagues had actual decent organizational ability, because it would never be tested.

The same would be true of voters: all they would know would be which MP was best at asking silly gotcha questions whenever appointed ministers were summoned to testify before Parliament.

So, on balance, I think it would be a negative rather than a positive, because it would limit the ability of both ordinary voters and MPs to judge officials based on performance.

Who says the PM needs to be an MP?

Well, then you're proposing we move to a Presidential system, which is rather a more radical reform. Or do the MPs choose the PM, who then chooses the Executive? If so, how do people know who they're voting for to be PM?

Year Zeroism from Starmer:

https://x.com/Peston/status/1983231551623016824

According to the official readout of today’s cabinet meeting, the chief secretary to the prime minister told ministers this: “We have to build a new state and shut down the legacy state, with digital ID making people's experience of that new state fundamentally much better.” Blimey

Sounds very dystopian.

It sounds like something that if you are going to do you need years and years of careful planning and the whole organisation on board with such a radical change....all the evidence points to...erhhh....

Have they started talking about The Blob, again?

Mr Blobby for PM, I say.

MP for Crinkley Bottom.