New Politics?

Last week on the first session in Parliament David Blunkett said:

Despite this, it would appear that major constitutional announcements about the House, the voting system and the House of Lords; on spending cuts; and on how the House might rid itself of a Government that no longer had its confidence – all three appear to have been made prior to Parliament convening next week.


We look to the Speaker to defend our interest as backbenchers. But we look forward most of all to him reasserting the ideas promoted before the election – that we should not be engaged in fixes, not have the old caballing; that we should have open, honest, forthright debate and that parliamentarians should genuinely be able to hold this new coalition to account.

In other words, Blunkett was saying that Parliament should be informed first.

So what do we find today? We find that the entire legislature programme for the next Parliament has been leaked to the press. A leak, of course, is an unplanned announcement. Exactly the sort of thing that Blunkett was warning about. I wonder if Mr Speaker will ask questions of the ConDem government and get them to assure us that theirs will not be a government of "leaks".