Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Inspirational Government?!

Two words that, at least in Canada and the U.S., are as oxymoronic as a liberal conservative or an initial conclusion. And yet, surveying this, my initial conclusion is that Britain's liberal-conservative coalition is an example of inspirational government.
Granted, much of this came in the form of preconditions for the establishment of the coalition in the first place, and a great deal remains to be ironed out...but that in and of itself is somewhat amazing. That two parties, normally completely at odds with each other, can look at a list of disparate policy objectives and say I can work with this is so far from expected political behaviour "over 'ere" as to be frankly incredible.
And just look at some of these initiatives.

  • A referendum on proportional representation. Hey, if the Motherland can scrap first past the post and institute some form of PR, maybe we can do it too!
  • high speed rail is a priority. In Canada, it's arguable we have the population density to make such a thing work, although I'd certainly like to see it in the Windsor-Quebec city corridor. But with further oil shocks coming, it's entirely sensible to be abandoning further aviation development in favour of a high-speed rail network.
  • An elected "Senate", i.e., the scrapping of the House of Lords. Now, I'm not completely sold on this--I think there is something to be said for a "chamber of sober second thought"--but hereditary lordship is replete with its own set of pitfalls, most of which have been stumbled into over the last year or so. Kudos to the coalition for (a) recognizing this and (b) being willing to do something substantive about it.
There are several other items on the list of which I'm sure I would have an opinion were I British. But again, the mere fact of this list's existence gives me some much-needed faith in elected bodies. Hell, watching Brown fall on his sword and actually tell the Queen to offer the government to the Opposition...can you imagine a scenario wherein Stephen Harper would do that? Or Ignatieff? I can't.

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