Friday, May 06, 2005
The Way Politics Should Be
As regular readers of this space know, I'm always prattling on about non-partisan politics - about how, in an ideal world, MPs would not sit in formal caucuses, and would be beholden only to their beliefs and their constituents.
I am generally accused, when I espouse such views, of blinding myself to reality and ignoring the fact that "politics is a team sport" (whatever the hell that means). Apparently, the people doing the accusing haven't me Dr. Richard Taylor.
Dr. Taylor is the British Member of Parliament for Wyre Forest, having been elected in 2001 and re-elected yesterday. He is only the second independent MP elected since 1945. Unlike independent MPs elected in Canada (hello John Nunziata and Chuck Cadman), he wasn't first elected under a party banner only to defect or be kicked out before the next election; he is a genuine independent, having been elected on a wave of anger over the downgrading of the local hospital.
Difficult to pigeonhole - against the war in Iraq and tuition fees, but equally against gay marriage and the recent ban on fox hunting - he prides himself on being "unfettered by major political party influence" and voting only when he fully understands the matter under debate ("I don't vote if I don't understand the issues and if I don't have time to sort them out."). According to Public Whip (which is, in passing, my new favourite website - we need something equivalent here) and They Work for You, he also has a strong record on constituency work, is extremely frugal with public money, and is roughly average in terms of his activity in Parliament (he speaks more than most MPs, but is also absent more often).
With anger over the single issue on which he was elected having generally subsided, both the Tories and Labour hoped to unseat him, calling him, predictably enough, a "single-issue candidate" (the Liberal Democrats did not run a candidate in his riding). Dr. Taylor responds that "it is absolutely utterly impossible if you are an MP to be a single issue MP", likening it to being a surgeon and having to take whatever comes through the door. Voters in Wyre Forest responded by giving him a subtantial, albeit reduced, plurality.
Dr. Taylor is clearly rather unsophisticated as a politician, and the temptation is to dismiss him as a sweet old bungler, out of his depth in Westminster. I prefer to see him as evidence that residents of at least one riding are happier with one of their own making decisions on their behalf than with faceless and unprincipled party leadership doing it for them.
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As regular readers of this space know, I'm always prattling on about non-partisan politics - about how, in an ideal world, MPs would not sit in formal caucuses, and would be beholden only to their beliefs and their constituents.
I am generally accused, when I espouse such views, of blinding myself to reality and ignoring the fact that "politics is a team sport" (whatever the hell that means). Apparently, the people doing the accusing haven't me Dr. Richard Taylor.
Dr. Taylor is the British Member of Parliament for Wyre Forest, having been elected in 2001 and re-elected yesterday. He is only the second independent MP elected since 1945. Unlike independent MPs elected in Canada (hello John Nunziata and Chuck Cadman), he wasn't first elected under a party banner only to defect or be kicked out before the next election; he is a genuine independent, having been elected on a wave of anger over the downgrading of the local hospital.
Difficult to pigeonhole - against the war in Iraq and tuition fees, but equally against gay marriage and the recent ban on fox hunting - he prides himself on being "unfettered by major political party influence" and voting only when he fully understands the matter under debate ("I don't vote if I don't understand the issues and if I don't have time to sort them out."). According to Public Whip (which is, in passing, my new favourite website - we need something equivalent here) and They Work for You, he also has a strong record on constituency work, is extremely frugal with public money, and is roughly average in terms of his activity in Parliament (he speaks more than most MPs, but is also absent more often).
With anger over the single issue on which he was elected having generally subsided, both the Tories and Labour hoped to unseat him, calling him, predictably enough, a "single-issue candidate" (the Liberal Democrats did not run a candidate in his riding). Dr. Taylor responds that "it is absolutely utterly impossible if you are an MP to be a single issue MP", likening it to being a surgeon and having to take whatever comes through the door. Voters in Wyre Forest responded by giving him a subtantial, albeit reduced, plurality.
Dr. Taylor is clearly rather unsophisticated as a politician, and the temptation is to dismiss him as a sweet old bungler, out of his depth in Westminster. I prefer to see him as evidence that residents of at least one riding are happier with one of their own making decisions on their behalf than with faceless and unprincipled party leadership doing it for them.
