Having survived only by his well-bitten fingertips, the prime minister is in full hairshirt mode. Gordon Brown has apologised profusely to Labour backbenchers and promised the public wide-ranging constitutional reform.
MPs will find themselves under much greater scrutiny and could face recall for serious financial misconduct.
A new parliamentary body will be set up to pay expenses, while a commission will examine the membership of select committees.
These should be relatively uncontentious changes. Given the revelations of the past month, it would be hard for anyone to assert that reform of Parliament is not overdue.
The arguments will be saved for the wider reform of the electoral system and the proposal to move to an Alternative Vote Plus system. But at least these issues are being debated, with nothing seemingly sacrosanct.
Time will tell whether this heralds a new era of open politics. However, the early signs are not hugely encouraging.
Brown’s reshuffle, following Labour’s disastrous performance in the local and European elections, was a classic example of old-fashioned politicking. The clear winner was Lord Mandelson, who emerged as the de facto deputy PM with ten ministers reporting to him.
The loser was the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, which found its brief existence brought to a summary end (see news analysis, pages 12–13).
This might have been a logical move – the chair of the select committee overseeing Dius tells PF this week that the department was ‘not functional’. But the change seems more designed to bolster Mandelson’s role than to improve the machinery of government.
To jettison a Whitehall department in the middle of a recession and with less than a year to go to an election smacks of political expediency.
We might have some way to go before we enter the promised land.
