THEN we had Steve Richardson from the Independent. Had never heard of him (sorry Steve) but he was funny and did very good impersonations (Harold Wilson, Blair and Tony Benn).
On independent MPs, he said he'd just spent two weeks on a cruise with Martin Bell and Esther Rantzen (don't think they were together) and it had put him off the idea of independent MPs for life. (Don't think ER is an MP though, unless I missed a really big meeting.)
He talked about how easily new MPs (and presumably civil servants?) get sucked into the parliamentary culture and soon forget how things would appear to outsiders ('strangers', as they call us).
Another good point: voters are confused and asking for mutually contradictory things. eg, they want 'strong leadership' but they also want MPs to hold the government to account. These things are pretty much incompatible and the public needs to decide which is more important.
If we decide accountability is more important than strong government, then the media will also have to change its tone, and stop behaving as though the government's loss of a parliamentary vote is the end of the world.
He talked about Blair and co 'showing off' about how thoroughly they controlled Labour MPs.
He also said that this issue has made him support electoral reform (PR) for the first time. Blair once said that the media was his only effective opposition; this is undemocratic.