4 research outputs found
Electoral Quotas: Should the UK learn from the rest of the world?
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown would surely love his political legacy to include a significant contribution to constitutional reform. Certainly he inherited, on succeeding Tony Blair in 2007, a substantial agenda of unfinished constitutional business: devolution, House of Lords reform, the electoral system, a bill of rights, a written constitution. Two years on, though, major progress on any of these âbigâ topics seems most unlikely before a probable 2010 General Election. Which might mean a rather modest constitutional legacy, based mainly on bringing some prerogative powers under MPsâ scrutiny and control, and, in other comparatively minor ways, boosting the role of Parliament. One such low profile, though not unimportant, initiative is Brownâs revival of the Speakerâs Conference, a constitutional device that many supposed had become extinct with the creation in 2000 of the Electoral Commission