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Queen's speech II: A tin ear on political reform

Editorial
The Guardian, Thursday 19 November 2009

Five interesting speeches were given in parliament yesterday. Four of them – those by the Queen herself, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Charles Clarke – all had something to say about the need for political and constitutional reform in the United Kingdom. Only one of them had nothing to say at all about these subjects. The exception, depressingly, was Gordon Brown.

No politician who is truly in touch with the concerns of the British electorate can be in doubt that the two biggest political issues in the public mind today remain Britain's broken banks and Britain's broken politics. Mr Brown is happy to talk about the former, and rightly so. But he seems to have no grasp of the scale and importance of public disaffection with MPs and the political system. On all this he still seems consistently and woefully off the pace.

Sure, Mr Brown can sometimes say a few of the right things on reforming politics when he has to. At the Labour conference this autumn, he promised to give voters the right to recall a corrupt MP. He committed himself to a referendum on the alternative vote system in parliamentary elections. And he pledged to make the House of Lords accountable and democratic.

These pledges were fine as far as they went, which was not very far. But at least Mr Brown made them. Seven weeks on, however, he seems to have lost whatever interest in reform he may briefly have felt it necessary to affect earlier in the year. True, the Queen's speech contained a pledge to take the carried-over constitutional reform bill on to the statute book and to publish draft – but only draft – plans for further Lords reform. But neither the Queen's speech nor the prime minister's contained anything with any sense of urgency. Mr Brown said not one word that responded directly to the expenses crisis, or to the wider arguments about political reform that were triggered by it. No one listening to the prime minister would have had a clue there has ever been a problem. Nothing on expenses. Nothing on political funding. Nothing on strengthening the power of MPs. Nothing on the electoral system. Compared with Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Clarke, Mr Brown has a tin ear about reform.

Over its 12 years in office, Labour has a substantial if piecemeal record on political and constitutional reform. This week, though, was a missed opportunity. The Westminster system badly needs mending. There is also an appetite for wider proactive change – as yesterday's Welsh devolution reform proposals illustrated. Parliament has a duty – and a self-interest – to respond. With only months to the election, no one expects Mr Brown to launch a constitutional big bang. But we need something much better than yesterday's feeble whimper.