I was in Westminster for the last time until after the election, as Parliament dissolves. We have no MPs and no Parliament for the next five weeks. Then, something magical and mystical happens, when millions of us go to the polls to choose a new Parliament.
The power to choose and the change to change is in our hands. I never go into an election without a nod towards the Chartists, Suffragettes, and other campaigners for the vote in our country.
I did my Masters in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck. I can tell you the Victorian era was not all about steam trains and covering up piano legs. The history of the nineteenth century is a history of struggle for social, political and economic rights, with the emergence of the Co-op movement, the trade unions, democracy campaigners, and in 1900 the Labour Party.
For decades I have argued that our democracy is a work in progress, and I am no fan of first-past-the-post as an electoral system, but our parliamentary democracy remains something precious and wonderful.
