The New Politics

There is just one thing on this whole Earth on which I agree with Jeremy Corbyn.

One thing.

The behaviour of politicians needs to change.

One only needs glance at articles on google, or petitions given to parliament to see that the public would like to see behaviour in the House of Commons improve. It has been a mission of John Bercow to improve the quality of debate in the chamber during his time as speaker and reduce the... theatrics that we see on a day to day basis.

Jeremy Corbyn however may not be the best man to front this new style of politics when the very people who elected him are pretty horrible themselves. Whilst I do respect the public's right to be upset with their representatives decision I cannot condone coups and plots nor threats against staff or the representative themselves. It demeans free speech and as I've pointed out before, free speech matters.

MPs must be free to vote without fear of intimidation or reprisal. We will not change the attitude of politicians by threatening them. Nor is John Mcdonnell going to make friends with veiled threats at momentum meetings.

Changing politics for the better is a process which will take a lot of time. In 2009 David Cameron famously made certain promises about the behaviour of Conservative MPs, since then we've seen... lapses plenty of times.

Perhaps though the fault for this lies with the way we select candidates. In our party at least CCHQ has a large role to play in the process. They pre-screen candidates, they put them on a national list and they generally speaking help with campaigning.

I don't think that should be the case though. I think all associations should be free to put up their own candidates without involvement from central office at all (well... other than maybe a criminal records check) because that way we might start to see more candidates from diverse backgrounds lining our ranks in the Commons. I said as much to Lord Feldman during the review process and I eagerly look forward to the results of the review because I know that this was proposed by many party members.

Will that clean up politics though? well perhaps not. We have no idea whether those selected would be better behaved in the Commons debates or whether they will be more ethical in their approach to expenses etc but it's a good place to start tryiing to change things and you never know it might be the beginning of change for the better.