We independents could bring on reform says Terry Waite – Times Online

Terry Waite has a very interesting article in the Times online which he starts by saying;

If I decide to stand for Parliament, it will be to try and bring some fresh air to a political hothouse

Week three and the whiff of revolution is still in the air. MPs who were not fatally wounded are still running for cover, while the Lords tremble at the thought of being next in line. Over in Brussels nervous passengers on the Bisto Express are locking themselves in the bunker that has so far proved impervious to the annual ordeal by audit.

As spectator sports go I have to confess to mixed feelings. I take little delight in seeing anyone publicly injured and humiliated. But along with the vast majority of the population, I am amused and angry. Amused at the ducks, the moat, horse manure, dry rot and phantom mortgages. Angry that, as Jonathan Aitken (who ought to know about these matters) said on the Today programme, compliance has replaced conscience.

The truth is that the gunpowder has been accumulating for a very long time. Increasingly a professional class of politician has grown and the more professional they have become, the more remote they are. Admittedly we live in a complex world where many of the issues that Parliament has to deal with are simply not resolvable by Parliament alone. Yet our MPs stumble along passing legislation that lays impossible layers of bureaucracy on education, the health service, small businesses, you name it. Politicians have fallen into the trap of believing that law and process alone suffice.

Despite the rhetoric about Martin Bell’s white suits and Esther Rantzen’s dancing, Roy Hattersley made the sensible point in last week’s Times that parliamentary parties lack a coherent ideology. He then implied that independent MPs were a waste of space.