Reflections on parliamentary politics

I knew that title would arouse your interest to bursting point.

Anyway, I've been working for a Member of the Scottish Parliament for a few months now and it seems reasonable to reflect on the marginal insight I have into 'the system'.

Broadly speaking it's uninspiring. The consensus is so pervasive that the party who won power with arguably the most ambitiously left wing manifesto of the big four is now very much in bed with the Tories - so little had to be tweaked in the SNP's budget statement to accommodate the right.

And yet, a great deal of energy is expended asserting the negligible difference between the mainstream parties, rather than turning the consensus to any sort of advantage. I don't have entire faith in that consensus, but seeing as it's there, it would surely be more efficient to recognise it.

So is the answer a departure from the party system? Increasingly I think not. According to one genunie insider, at local government level where there are many independents, it is these unaffiliated representatives that behave with the most parochial, and sometimes personal, self interest. The party ticket seems at least to limit the excesses of the powerful - think Derek Conway for a start.

Perhaps the answer is found to a greater extent in civil society although anyone with experience of working in the not-for-profit sector would avoid such hasty conclusions: bad management, subcontracted good works, and an absence of democracy is a stereotype, but not entirely untrue.
I do believe, and this is where I can support the party with which I work closely, that localism is an essential step towards more effective social change, but I'm increasingly persuaded that this is a means to a kind of libertarian socialist end.