The end of the road ?

It was all too depressingly clearly laid out by Professor Gearty. Basically ...

• Parliamentary sovereignty originally protected the elected representatives of the people (MPs) from the King.

• Currently - despite sovereignty and all power flowing from the electorate - the only legal way of holding an MP/Minister/Government to account if they've lied to us is once every 4 or 5 years at the ballot box.

• There are no other legal routes of enforcing an MPs obligation to be honest, transparent and accountable.

We took some comfort from the Professors observation that MPs "can't go about machine-gunning people they don't like". There's some folks in various distant parts of the world who may disagree.

Outside of the ballot box, our alternatives are ;

1. The Press/Media
2. Report the offender to the Police if the lie/misrepresentation/misleading statement happens to be covered by a statute. Then, if the Crown Prosecution Service decides there's been a breach of the statute they may or may not prosecute (see George Bathurst v. John Prescott for how this can pan out).
3. Complaining to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards - Sir Philip Mawer.
4. Revolution (see Guy Fawkes etc.)

Despite the fact that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards - Sir Philip Mawer ultimately reports to Parliament (judge, jury and defendent in your own courtroom does seem very convenient) we figured given the choice between options 3 and 4, we should give Sir Philip a call.

Amazingly, he called back and agreed to a filmed interview. We'll be posting it ASAP.