Nick Clegg: Bar the gates. No summer holiday before the overhaul . - The Guardian

9.05.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Thu 28th May 2009

"Nick Clegg: Bar the gates. No summer holiday before the overhaul" - how The Guardian headlined the Lib Leader's proposals for big changes to our political system on May 28th 2009.

He began: "Warm words and rhetoric are easy. We must seize the mood and enact a radical programme of reform within 100 days.

Finally the dam has ­broken, and everyone is talking about changing Britain's political system. For decades reformers have been thwarted by Westminster inertia. But the MPs' expenses ­scandal has overturned old certainties and made change possible.

Today I'm setting out a plan of action to get all the changes we need delivered in just 100 days - making it possible for MPs to be sacked by constituents, abolishing the House of Lords, getting corrupt money out of politics and changing the electoral system to give everyone a voice. People will say it isn't possible - parliament can't act that quickly. I say the innate conservatism that marks out our political establishment is part of the problem. Let's stop all this self-congratulatory hype about the mother of parliaments and get on with improving it."

Read iy in full -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/27/nick-clegg-a-new-politics