For The Walrus online, David Moscrop offers a "tepid" defence of floor crossing by members of parliament.
We return individuals to be parliamentarians. We should expect and want them to exercise their judgment. Indeed, for all the complaining we do about MPs being trained seals or nobodies or whatever, when one finally decides to think for themselves, we get awfully worked up awfully fast.
All true, but he still kinda hates the whole thing. Oh, well, at least he does not offer proportional representation as the solution.
In the final analysis, Parliament's vital task is to review and correct the actions of, and if necessary remove and replace, governments. (I know, it does not. But it should.) And to fulfil that role -- in other words, to play a useful role in holding government accountable -- MPs have to be able to use their own judgment freely throughout the life of a parliament.
David Moscrop is "tepid" on this, because he shares the viewpoint of voters who
tend to be torn between wanting their MP to be a representative exercising judgment but also a delegate responding to the preferences of the individual.
He too wants both. But in practice the delegate theory is always applied so as to make MPs servants of whoever is the party leader.
