Brown Commands a Troughing Rabble in the House, Not a Majority

Fear that New Labour's regime would attempt to prolong the life of this Parliament beyond the usual five year maximum term is allayed now. The behaviour of its Speaker in co-ordinating the prevention of enquiry into abuse of expenses, (and concern over how expenses abuse was part of the Labour party's disipline system with whips encouraging the claiming of all possible expenses, needed for the discharge of parliamentary duties or not, with any excess to be handed over to the Party), has ended any argument that this Parliament, with this membership, can continue.

No matter what further disaster engulfs the United Kingdom, its financial system collapsed, its real economy collapsing, millions out of work, at war in hopeless circumstances, its living standards degraded, the individual members of this Parliament have individually disgraced themselves. And the preferred New Labour Project governance - their Country of the Nations and the Regions, integrated into a federated European Union governance, is not in place. The regions have no elected assemblies, the nations have used devolution to assert independence aims and remove New Labour from power within their borders.

This Parliament must be replaced as quickly as possible because its individual members are no longer acceptable representatives, not because the governing party has lost its majority, which is the more usual reason for dissolution and a general election. But in the long history of our democracy even this kind of dissolution, for widespread and individualised corruption, has precedents. The most famous being after Cromwell's outburst, but occurring too throughout the 19th century.

So our Parliament must be renewed under our own familiar system and practices. These are not of themselves defective. Like the rules governing the claiming of expenses, they are more like guidelines and highly flexible. It could be argued these flexible organic systems are the best of systems. If all of those using our democratic parliamentary system - electors and elected - can live up to its demands for probity and service to its goals, it is indeed the best of systems. New Labour's goals were to replace it, openly at first; but when their plans were rejected at the first democratic test, when elected regional assemblies were rejected, they sought to replace it by stealth and then by force, and by corruption.

There is no point in holding out any longer, nothing further can be done, no policies introduced, no discourse between the people and their elected government undertaken to choose the best course to deal with our dreadful difficulties. Not until these venal men and women have been removed from their places and we vote in those who are committed to honourable public service under our conventions and our democracy.

The convention, under our rules, is that the monarch agrees to a dissolution, and dissolves the parliament. As we are suffering a massive abuse of the system by all parts of both Houses, but particularly the Lower House, led by its Speaker, the Head of State is going to have to be flexible within convention. She can do convention beautifully, so next time she sees her Prime Minister, who commands not so much a majority in the Lower House as an immoral unrepresentative rabble, it might be best to give him a dissolution whether he actually says the words or not. And say he did.