Daniel Finkelstein, the Executive Editor of The Times, has it all figured out. If you don’t believe me, read his article It’s Unavoidable: We Need a Directly Elected PM.
First he diagnoses the problem: “The entire modern British constitution is based on a party system that is crumbling.”
Then he prescribes a treatment, drawing in Ed Miliband to provide a second opinion: “… Open primaries in which anyone can run and anyone registering an interest can vote. Ed Miliband suggested he would move towards such a system… Take the executive out of Parliament and have a directly elected prime minister.”
And the desired clinical outcome? “The monopoly of the executive over law-making would go, unable to survive the increased independence of legislators… And both Supreme Court judges and executive appointments could be made subject to some form of confirmation hearing.”
Sorted. The newly cured patient, otherwise known as our ancient constitution, will jump off its sick bed and rush out towards new worlds to conquer – with Miliband as the directly appointed prime minister, and Finkelstein as his chief ‘expert’.
(One of the advantages of the proposed system is that it will have “more outside experts drawn into government”, and who better to lead them than Finkelstein?)
I like it. This is a true and tried system. The only teeny-weeny problem is that so far it hasn’t been tried in Britain.
But hey, who says we can’t adopt what’s best in other systems? Certainly not Finkelstein. And certainly not me.
In fact, I’d like to offer a couple of embellishments to the Finkelstein-Miliband model, stealing their thunder.
To emphasise that our new prime minister will be directly elected, he should be called not prime minister but president. We already have a Supreme Court, so why not a president?
Then of course Parliament, now that the executive has been taken out of it, should change its name too. And the two chambers? Easy.
Rather than racking our brains for the appropriate names, we can use those we know work. The upper house should be called the Senate and the lower one the House of Representatives.
Parliament itself should now be called Congress, and it goes without saying that both its chambers will be elected.
Each of the 86 counties, regardless of their size, will elect two senators, making the Senate a body of 172. The counties’ representation in the lower house will be proportionate to their population, with the overall number of congressmen to be determined.
Oh yes, unless I forget, the counties should now be referred to as states – it’s much more progressive and will now also be more accurate.
The only downside of this project is that our army of the unemployed will have to grow, now to include the entire royal family. After all, nominally it is the monarch who is supposed to head the state, the role now to be assumed by President Miliband.
Not to worry. Her ex-Majesty could be appointed director of the new Ye Olde England museum, with the princes and princesses acting as tour guides. They could be made to wear Elizabethan costumes, say things like ‘thou art’ and be photographed with American tourists.
Since the country will no longer be a kingdom, its present name will have to change in line with the new constitution.
Again, rather than reinventing the wheel we can go with the name that has withstood the test of time, modifying it slightly for local colour: the United States of Anglia, the USA for short.
To avoid any possible confusion at UN meetings, the new USA should apply for the honour of being incorporated into the old one, perhaps as its 51st state.
No, scratch that idea. That way Ed Miliband, Dan Finkelstein’s constitutional idol, would have to be called governor, not president. That’s not good enough.
So perhaps the new country ought to be named the USB (United States of Britain). Yes, that’ll work.
There, all our problems have been solved. Now we can confidently predict that we’ll be governed by a much better class of statesmen.
After all, the system on which the Miliband-Finkelstein proposal is based has placed at the helm such titans as Obama (directly elected! with primaries!) – preceded by Dubuya.
Who says we can’t throw up a comparable giant of intellect, character and morality (we already have one waiting in the wings: Ed Miliband, the constitutional philosopher)? Not me. In fact, I’m already throwing up.
What we need, Dan and Ed, isn’t to draw a new constitution but to respect the existing one. You know, the one American tourists say doesn’t exist because it’s not written down, like theirs.
In fact, a written constitution is like a nuptial agreement stipulating the frequency of sex: if you have to write it down, you might as well not bother.
Granted, a new state like the old USA may need a written document. But our state has been rather successful for over a millennium – with a constitution based on what Burke described as prescription, presumption and prejudice.
At its heart is the monarch whose power is limited but real, the elected House of Commons, whose power is real but limited, and the hereditary House of Lords that maintains the proper balance between the two.
It’s only after this constitution, easily the most successful one the world has ever known, was debauched by the moral and intellectual equivalents of Dan and Ed that it began to be operated by moral and intellectual pygmies.
The treatment proposed by Miliband and Finkelstein is poison, not medicine. Its only possible result would be euthanasia, not recovery.
We need a different remedy: a system that keeps the likes of Ed away from political power. And the likes of Dan away from what used to be a respectable newspaper.