Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant'
26th July 2012, 09:00
Yeah...or you could just have all working class and erase the current political class for good and forever. Just saying.
Only people on the minimum wage should be allowed to stand for Parliament in 10% of seats to make politics more representative, a Labour MP has said.
Denis MacShane said the backgrounds of MPs from all the main parties at Westminster had become far too narrow.
Party leaders were keen to talk about recruiting more working class or ethnic minority candidates, he argued.
But it would take something as drastic - and potentially unpopular - as all-women shortlists to make it happen.
"The country desperately needs new political ideas, but the intellectual reservoir from which we draw our political leaders has become a paddling pool, when what we actually need is a raging torrent to get the country going again," he told BBC News.
Mr MacShane, an Oxford university graduate who worked as a journalist before becoming MP for Rotherham in 1994, said there needed to be fewer candidates with his kind of background in the future.
(more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18969789)
Only people on the minimum wage should be allowed to stand for Parliament in 10% of seats to make politics more representative, a Labour MP has said.
Denis MacShane said the backgrounds of MPs from all the main parties at Westminster had become far too narrow.
Party leaders were keen to talk about recruiting more working class or ethnic minority candidates, he argued.
But it would take something as drastic - and potentially unpopular - as all-women shortlists to make it happen.
"The country desperately needs new political ideas, but the intellectual reservoir from which we draw our political leaders has become a paddling pool, when what we actually need is a raging torrent to get the country going again," he told BBC News.
Mr MacShane, an Oxford university graduate who worked as a journalist before becoming MP for Rotherham in 1994, said there needed to be fewer candidates with his kind of background in the future.
(more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18969789)