NEW Prime Minister David Cameron pressed ahead with plans to change the rules on votes of confidence in the government as the Queen opened Parliament today.
Mr Cameron wants to introduce a law whereby 55% of the House of Commons would be required to vote against a government in a confidence motion in order to force an election.
The PM argues that such a law is required if fixed-term parliaments of five years are also to be brought in but that is a weak argument.
There is little wrong with fixed terms in principle but the notion that this government could constantly lose in the Commons by as many as 60 votes without an election being called is simply unacceptable.
Surely fixed terms could be introduced - to take power away from the PM over when to call an election - but with an exception made for governments which lose a confidence vote by a plain majority.
This is another worrying sign from Mr Cameron who has so far shown little respect for Parliament and even ruffled feathers on his own benches in the short time since taking power.
For one, David Davis - the eminently respected and principled Conservative MP for Haltemprice and Howden - believes a 55% law would tarnish the supposed "new politics" which the Tory-Lib Dem coalition was meant to provide.
Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Davis points out that there would have been an outcry if James Callaghan had tried to bring in the measure to prop up his minority Labour government.
As it happens, Mr Callaghan was the last Prime Minister to lose a confidence vote, by a single vote in 1979, causing an election in which Margaret Thatcher won power.
Mr Davis also states that no doubt there would have been a similar reaction if Gordon Brown had spent his final days trying to play this trick.
Indeed, this is exactly the sort of authoritarian move that the public rejected when voting Labour out of office at the start of the month.
But Mr Cameron looks set to carry on with it regardless, just as he carried on last week despite causing a rebellion among his own backbench MPs over reform of the 1922 Committee.
The 1922 Committee is a means for Conservative backbenchers to analyse government policy - a prime example of Parliament holding the executive to account.
It is times like these - with the Labour opposition embroiled in a leadership election lasting months - that the government's backbenchers should remain relatively independent.
Traditionally, when the Tories have been in power, ministers have not attended meetings of the Committee. Last week, in an audacious move, Mr Cameron changed that.
But the new PM only narrowly won the vote among Tory MPs by 168 to 118 and relied on his 78 ministers to swing it in his favour.
Internal grumblings were vocal before and after the vote. One MP even went as far as to call it "a stitch-up that would make Robert Mugabe blush".
Further evidence, if it were necessary, of Mr Cameron's disregard of Parliament came today as he rejected calls for an inquiry after a full draft version of the Queen's Speech was leaked to the Sunday Telegraph.
Now, Tony Blair famously had little time for the House of Commons either. But he was blessed with a large majority courtesy of the unfair first past the post system.
However, the Conservatives would rely on Lib Dem votes to get this 55% measure made into law, and few Lib Dems supporters, if any, would be in favour of it.
Indeed, this is exactly the sort of issue over which Lib Dem leader and Deputy PM Nick Clegg will fear driving support away from his party.
Mr Cameron would be wise to drop this 55% lark - or the coalition could collapse in double-quick time.
*Queen's Speech: Bill-by-bill summary from the BBC
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