A new Prime Minister & his/her first 100 days in office


Later this year we should be having a new Prime Minister entering Number 10. progress have set up a page on their website http://www.progressives.org.uk/ asking people to suggest policies or initiatives they would like to see the new Prime Minister introducing in his/her first 100 days in office. If you wish you comment please visit http://www.progressives.org.uk/100/


Some the ideas that people have suggested which I like are begin the separation of executive and legislative powers, electoral reform, introduce a plastic bag tax, make a commitment to end the genocide in Darfur, make a commitment to move to a democratically elected head of state, reduce the voting age to 16, remove the right of the Prime Minister to exercise the Royal Prerogative on behalf of the Monarch and work to reform International bodies (EU, G8, IMF, UN, World Bank).


I’m not sure a new Prime Minister would be able to achieve a lot on some of these ideas in his or her first hundred days however I do hope that the next Prime Minister whoever it may be does achieve something on the issues mentioned above.


With regard to the separation of executive and legislative powers I hope that the reformed House of Lords is totally independent of the executive and has no Secretaries of State or Ministers.


I hope that the next Prime Minister can at least deliver the referendum on Proportional Representation that we were promised in 1997 Labour Manifesto.


Make a commitment to end the genocide in Darfur is a little vague but I must be honest that I don’t know enough about the situation there but I have to say that it has been going on for far too long and while our attention has been focused on Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq etc hundreds of thousands if not millions of people have been forced out of their homes and this is putting great pressure on the countries neighbouring Sudan.


Make a commitment to move to a democratically elected head of state is something that I would like every government to offer and I really hope that the Liberal Democrats will sooner rather then later adopt this as policy however I don’t think that there are many supporters for this idea at Westminster.


Reduce the voting age to 16 is something that seems to have disappeared from discussions on constitutional reform at the moment but sometime ago the Electoral Commission reported that it was not the right time but I hope that a new Prime Minister will look again at the issue.


Removing the right of the Prime Minister to exercise the Royal Prerogative on behalf of the Monarch is something that I doubt we will see any Prime Minister suggest I think this will happen by Parliament acting to limit the issues on which the Prime Minister exercise the Royal Prerogative on behalf of the Monarch one by one.


Work to reform International bodies (EU, G8, IMF, UN, World Bank) is also something that is important especially if we want to make progress in the twenty-first century however this requires a united effort especially from the leaders of the worlds leading countries such as USA, UK, France, Germany, Japan etc. Some of these have recently elected new leaders of their governments and USA, UK and France will all have new leaders by January 2009 so I hope that either by then or soon after the new leaders have taken office we get some movement of the reform of some if not all of these organizations.