Let's face it, Suckerman, with all the brown stuff coming out of the Covid enquiry with regard to Bozo and Risky, it's hard to conclude that Corbyn would have done worse.
Like Elite says, you need to prepare yourself for a massacre in the New Year. The Tories are dead in the water.
Yes, ideally the enquiry will do both, give us the tools to deal with a pandemic in the future, *and* pave the way for criminal prosecutions if necessary.
This country doesn’t really do gross negligence manslaughter, you only have to look at Hillsborough to know that.
There are systems that do give local accountability to an MP. For instance you could have single transferrable vote for constituency MPs and then 'county' MPs based on the support proportions across the county. The set up is a bit Pittesque, but the voting system would be much fairer (either than the current system or Pitt!).
The issue we have with our current system is that a party with only 34% has unfettered power, only restricted by the courts and Lords (for now). A change won't happen anyway, as both main parties stand to lose in a change of voting system.
Recent parliamentarians have shown that contact to local constituencies doesn't matter, it's kind of an optional extra for them
Tory MP Chris Pincher hardly turned up in Tamworth for a year or more after he was exposed for the ***ual assaults, groping men in the Carlton Club
Nadine Dories never turned up in Bedfordshire. And Matt Hancock could just zip off to the jungle for a few weeks without as much a by-your-leave. So much for any link between MPs and their constituents
If we really wanted to keep constituency MPs, smart algorithms could allocated proportionally-elected MPS far more rationally than what party central offices do now.
It shouldn't be a problem, and certainly not an obstacle to having fair representation for what the nation actually wants (as opposed to accepting a 4th choice to stop a 5th)
The 3 MPs mentioned above have / will get their comeuppance on election day. The only reason my Labour-sympathising friend votes Tory in Mansfield is because his MP is outstanding when it comes to supporting constituents when things go awry. Most of those MPs that ignore the people they serve will eventually be called to account. Best of all is when the MP has local history / knowledge / familial links with the constituency. Most voters will shun algorhythms as angrily as footy fans deplore VAR.
I don't think they would, I wonder what proportion of folk, including on NCM, have been in touch with a local MP over the last 5 years...
A fat lot of good the present FPTP system has done/is doing. An occasional letter about a planning application or some other gripe shouldn't be an obstacle to having fairer representation.
There would be lots of solutions anyway - it's not an insurmountable problem if you think beyond the current, failed paradigm
I think there's something to be said for MPs having a constituency link, though (for me) that's nowhere near enough to justify the current FPTP system.
I agree with others that there ought to be scope (and reward or penalty at the ballot box) for level of engagement with the community they represent. There are good and bad constituency MPs and ward councillors of all parties, and the response to the Nadine Dorries' of this world is probably some kind of minimum standards of community engagement leading to the option of a recall petition. There ought to be a way to do this fairly.
I don't know how many people here live in Lillian Greenwood's constituency (Nottingham South), but IIRC she did some good work trying (and I think getting) some answers at the end of the Hardy era, and raising County's plight in Parliament. It's this kind of thing that probably won't happen without a local link of some kind, which doesn't have to be the current system.
I'm a bit suspicious of party list systems where parties can just list candidates and they'll be elected without individual scrutiny. It could be argued that there are constituencies where a performing seal with the right colour rosette would be elected, and I guess that's true. But if someone does something disgraceful, it doesn't seem right to me that they could be named on a party list and sneak in.
The answer might be a mixed system with local MPs plus share-of-vote MPs from a list. It's a tricky one... I've not yet found a system I'm entirely happy with, but I'm very unhappy with the current one.