That said, perhaps if the people in general paid more attention, things would improve because they’d know who not to vote for next time.

A few comments. Firstly, the House of Lords is basically a rubber-stamping-ground most of the time. This is because most laws don’t affect lords, so they don’t care. The hunting ban did, so they did care.

Secondly, the House of Commons was created to be exactly what you describe for the House of Lords: an everyman voice in political decision-making.

Thirdly, I think the dictatorial image of Tony is slipping; it was a potential problem about half a year ago but more and more MPs are voting against him, so I think that’s probably a dead issue Banning MPs voting with the party line would in any case a) be unenforcable and b) give us a political system with the engine of a lawnmower and the brakes of a Rolls Royce; at some point, if we continue to blame leadership as much as we do for what goes wrong, we must also give them the latitude and the power to do something.

Finally, MPs for groups. Interesting, you could get to vote twice: once for a geographical MP and once for an “issue” MP. I can’t see the logistics of it working, as you say, but it’s a neat idea.