Political Reform is long overdue.

The Liberal Democrats demonstration of why our parliamentary democracy is so weak.

When the tuition fees bill passed something happened to me, it was the moment I finally lost faith in parliamentary politics. Parties can do whatever they like, without a mandate and without consequence to themselves.

Throughout the Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown years many people felt frustration at the way the political system has worked, parliament has a very top-down approach. I used to appreciate many aspects of the system, but I’ve been enlightened to its largest flaws.

Today Chris Huhne talked about how the Liberal Democrats were going to be unpopular for a while but it’ll all be fine by 2015, something I found profoundly worrying. It’s the idea that a party can completely U-turn and then run in the opposite direction within weeks of being elected and then shrugs its shoulders and says “the public will forget”. I understand that unpopular decisions are made in any government and that we have to way up the governments decisions as a whole, but the Liberal Democrat outright betrayal of a clear and decisive election promise which had signatures and photo calls backed with a campaign of “no more broken promises” should never of happened.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not a rant about the Liberal Democrats; on the whole most of their supporters had/have their hearts in the right place, but our parliamentary system has given rise to the idea that a party’s leadership can ignore its supporters. Today, if you talk to many Labour party activists they’ll say the same as many lib dem activists do now; they stay in the hope of changing the party.

One of the reasons I’m against proportional representation in its purest forms is that candidate lists actually promote top-down politics as those at the top of the party are untouchable and unaccountable to most of the population. This is a weakness of the current system also; Nick Clegg has caused such anger in his seat that on bonfire night they were burning effigies of him, yet the local populace can do nothing to force a by-election.

So what can be done? How can we change politics for the better?

Recently I’ve paid a fair amount of attention to Australian politics, they already have AV, an elected upper house and they have three year terms; all things that I'm fully in support of but this isn't enough as they have developed similar problems to ourselves. Reforms like Right to Recall and Regional Assemblies are areas of debate that we must engage in and do so maturely, the punch and judy politics of the commons must end and part of that must be the end of brand politics.

This government have talked about boundary changes and producing a referendum on AV, this isn’t nearly far enough to bring in the ‘new politics’, and unfortunately has destroyed any advantages of either because this government and the opposition are failing to enter proper debate. If this continues we are in danger of destroying rationality in politics.