Douglas Carswell's Blog

My week in numbers

529 letters signed and sent to constituents

3 times I have spoken in Commons debates

1 question asked of the Prime Minister

13 constituents in my advice surgery

7,392 individual people read this blog

But for all that, I have comprehensively failed in my job as an MP. Why?

Because this week government ran up a further £2.3 billion of debt. That's not how much they spent this week, but the difference between what they spent and what they could afford to spend. 

We think of our country as a democracy, but perhaps the tools for meaningful democratic oversight have been blunted. The process for the legislature to oversee the executive subverted. The hand-out state carries on regardless.

MPs have never been busier.  But the whole purpose in having a Parliament is so that those we elect can oversee those who levy taxes.  Its the reason we invented the thing in the first place.  And how much of what we do bears any relation to that?  

I fear that much of what happens in SW1 is displacement activity blah blah.  A growing number of voters seem to think so.   

0 is the confidence we should have in our political system without far reaching political reform.

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