James Forsyth James Forsyth

Politics | 30 May 2009

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics

issue 30 May 2009

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics

The last thing any politician wants to be seen as at the moment is a defender of the political status quo. So this week we have had Alan Johnson’s call for PR and David Cameron’s ‘power to the people’ speech. The Prime Minister is expected to lay out his own reform agenda once the European election results are in. Brown loyalists hope that this will allow him to regain the initiative after what are expected to be a disastrous set of local and European election results for the government.

Alan Johnson’s call for PR was more about public relations than proportional representation. Johnson had actually first raised the issue of a referendum on PR in an interview with Independent readers two Mondays ago. But his comments failed to gain traction. So, he tried again the following Monday with an opinion piece in the Times. The paper wrote it up on the front page as a declaration of leadership intent.

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