I highly recommend everyone in the UK reads this, to understand what is happening in government on the mechanical level. They are drafted by departments, controlled by Ministers, the most powerful of them drafting most bills. They have to combine helping constituents, including with the effects of failing government policies such as local funding cuts, with intensive, but often less fulfilling, parliamentary work.

Sir Michael Caine knows a thing or two about gangs: whether that’s joining one as a kid, or playing them in movies for over 50 years. The coalition for proportional representation would be a one-off event, a movement not a political party. Life Peerages were introduced in 1958, allowing women peers for the first time, as Dunt does not point out.Thankfully, it turns out that new administrations sometimes feel positive about constitutional changes that limit their power.

A highly recommended read for those with an interest in finding out why the British political system appears so reactive to current events, having lost focus on building Britain for a great future. This book adds substance and reasoned perspective to our anticipation that successive governments are failing the British nation and its peoples. Here Ian puts forward sensible, workable solutions to the clear and obvious failures of our political system. What follows is a series of detailed chapters each devoted to a key component of the political system.They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. g., the decision to send asylum seekers to Rwanda—government measures can be blocked or delayed by the courts on appeals by protesters outside politics, and “lefty lawyers” as politicians disparage them. A Commission should direct tax policy, and spending policy should increase its focus on long-term growth. Ian’s narration style is easy to listen to and, since it is his own material he is reading and he knows it inside out, I felt his narration made it very easy for the listener to follow with the emphasis in all the right places.

His final sentence is: “Change will not come from the generosity of those who benefit from the existing state of affairs.The Prime Minister is at the same extremely powerful (being able to replace ministers at will and immediately, to the detriment of understanding the subject matter and good policy decisions), but also somewhat weak, due to limited own capacity for policy, as they have only the small staff that can be fitted into Number 10 Downing Street - a building unfit for modern work of government. Pretty much every point is underscored by at least one quote from someone within the political system (from all levels, parties, and departments. The general theme is the dominance of machismo (exacerbated by winner takes all nature of the first-past-the-post system) and unnecessary rush in everything - from legislation to ministerial tenure that results in bad policy and terrible decision-making. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more than he can cope with. There is lots of detail to absorb in this book, which is based on over 100 conversations with people across the political system.

Also, New Labour established a Rough Sleeper Unit of experts tasked to reduce rough sleeping, as they did. From his perspective, he needed to implement a policy change swiftly, showing his own right-wing credentials, to position himself for a promotion in the next reshuffle. Interestingly his fundamental, but by no means his only, solution is proportional representation at general elections and indeed he makes a sensible case for this. This has led to what Dunt describes as an “irrational,” unfair tax structure which facilitates tax avoidance, as the IFS has pointed out.Some of his criticisms are a little harsh, particularly on civil service expertise, but he poses solid alternatives and fixes alongside his analysis and there are really shocking exposés in here on the lack of real checks on the legislative process. However, Dunt argues that they have long had the potential to wield more power than leaders in many other countries because Britain’s first-past-the-post election system enables them to gain substantial majorities unlike states with Proportional Representational (PR) systems in which coalition governments are frequent, leading to compromise decisions rather than authoritarian power. I was particularly impressed with the choice by the author to choose the latter route, since it seemed to be an ideal way to highlight the main problems with the system.