Gordon's first PMs Question Time

Yesterday was Gordon Brown, the new Uk Premier's first PMs Question Time. He Waffled on a lot for the political greenhouse that is Westminster - but he said very little that would actually engage the electorate - Disappointing.

He has used his first Commons statement as Prime Minister to talk about earth shaking stuff like:

Giving up the power to appoint bishops - That’ll make a big difference to my daily life.
Giving up the power to declare war – Parliament, a committee, or the PM. Again big deal, It won’t be up to me – probably looks good on paper though.
Elections at the weekend – are you kidding! We all have better things to do with our weekends without having to fit in staying local to vote: Leave them on Thursdays.

One suspects it he fondly imagines forcing us to vote on a weekend may increase turn out, or his vote, he is sadly deluded. Still it is daringly French isn’t it?

Maybe he is dimly aware that a lot of the electorate has gone one or two issue and don’t necessarily vote on party lines any more.

He is not keen on addressing the issue of Scottish MPs being able to vote on English matters, but English MPs not being able to vote on Scottish matters. Well he wouldn’t be would he ‘cos that would include him wouldn’t it?

He avoids the really important though - He is obviously really not at all keen on a referendum on the EU constitutional Treaty. He might have scored some brownie ;-) points with the electorate if he had the intestinal fortitude to call for one. That’s a cross party single issue (democratic principles) people a who are interested are unlikely to forget.

David Cameron, ironically echoing Tony Blaire’s “Let the people have the final say” (Or was that “The cheque’s in the post” or “Of course I love you”, I get confused) challenged the new PM saying of the Treaty "It should be put to the people,".

Brown, in a typically irrelevant to the rest of the country, Westminster type response, pointed out that only Ireland so far was having a referendum (conveniently ignoring the fact that most of the ‘treaty’ was so good it had already been thrown out once already by the French and Dutch) and anyway – Nur-nur-nur-nur-na - the last Conservative government didn’t have a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, or any other treaties, so there!

Now Gordon. We all know that MPs and Parliament can’t be trusted with something like the Constitutional Treaty. We know we can’t really rely on the bulk of MPs to represent our interests in this, instead of the political elite’s interest - Also what the Conservatives may, or may not, have done in the past is not a legal precedent and we wouldn’t be impressed with the argument even if it was.

You need to ask yourself. If you foist this ‘treaty’ on the UK Electorate without a specific mandate will it actually ever receive any support from the people? Will you in the end be doing incalculably much more harm than if you were honest and called a referendum?