Jeremy Paxman
Let’s start with some practical changes in Britain. I would make it compulsory for people to vote in general elections. If you live in a society, that’s part of the deal, along with paying your taxes. Compulsory voting would be conditional, of course, upon there being a box on the ballot paper marked “None of the above.” To require citizens to make the minimal effort of going to a polling station every few years seems to me the least that anyone could be expected to do.
I’d put limits on the length of time an MP can represent a constituency. Two terms in parliament is quite enough to see what someone has to offer. They can have a third term, maybe, if they’re a member of the cabinet or shadow cabinet, or chair of an important parliamentary committee. If you allied that with the requirement to have had a proper job before going into politics, you might start to see a political class which is representative of the country as a whole. We don’t have that now: the present system requires you to strike an attitude at 18 or 19 and never to deviate as you make your way up the greasy pole. The system rewards cases of arrested development. No thoughtful person can indefinitely justify things they thought when they were a teenager. I want parliament to be made up of representatives who think about things, instead of slavishly obeying the whips. While we’re at it, we could turn the Palace of Westminster into a museum and invent a new parliament, probably somewhere outside London.