Denis MacShane: Disenchanted voters need politicians with big ideas to solve the nation's big questions

There are no politicians around who are providing big ideas to shape answers to big questions. Our politicians are tweeters and not thinkers. The loss of Michael Foot is a reminder of what once MPs were like. He was hated by the Right because he exposed Conservative complicity with and appeasement of fascism in the 1930s. He was hated by the Left because there was no fiercer foe of Soviet imperialism.

Now, in the age of Twitter and Sky sound-bites, the need to formulate whole sentences and paragraphs and have a foundation of philosophy and deep political thought seems superfluous.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Foot once wrote that "Men of power have no time to read, men who do not read are unfit for power". Today, we have a class of politicians who appear neither to read nor write books. Bookish men like William Hague or Gordon Brown have to dumb themselves down with coarse jokes or reveal personal intimacies on television.

Can we return to the time when a Michael Foot or an Enoch Powell could speak from the back- benches and have a real impact on national debate? Three measures are needed. The first lies in the hands of voters. As they deliver massive majorities to first one party and then another, they remove the power and authority of the backbencher.

Yet the era of total one-party hegemony has surely had its day. The idea that only one party has the single shining solution to all the nation's problems is nonsense.

If we are really "all in this together", to use George Osborne's mordant phrase, then we need to drop the partisan point-scoring on the tough decisions that have to be taken on deficit reduction. The "all" has to include the wealthy bankers, BBC executives and

non-dom tax dodgers.

An election that produces a small or no overall majority will allow a new politics to emerge. The talk of coalition or still worse a 1931 national government is wrong.

I hope Labour emerges as the majority party because I do not think David Cameron, despite having made great strides, has yet fashioned a new Conservative Party philosophy that answers the big questions of the day. But Labour needs to listen and reach out to a wider base of political support. Michael Foot worked with Tories like Winston Churchill or Enoch Powell on specific causes without surrendering his socialist-liberal principles.

The second measure is a new way of doing business in Parliament. Last week, the Commons took major decisions which transfers power to backbenchers. The composition of Select Committees will be decided in free votes, not on the diktat of party machines. More important, the business of the House – what laws are voted, and when, and with what priority – is now to be decided on an all-party basis and can no longer be rammed through by the Whips.

Third, we need a new kind of MP. This is tricky. The young Derbyshire MP, Natasha Engel, wrote a powerful essay recently that MPs were more and more expected to be super social workers, and were no longer able to function as national legislators with time and resources to think about the big issues of the day.

Certainly, there is a power grab by unelected forces like retired mandarins and off-shore media owners to weaken the authority and status of MPs. The House of Commons has its own giant bureaucracy paid lavishly with handsome pension arrangements and generous holidays.

It is using the crisis over MPs' expenses to turn MPs into box-ticking automatons spending hours each day replying to requests about how many paper-clips they buy at Staples.

Constituents send hundreds of emails to MP and expects instant answers to questions that are issues for councillors or local agencies and solicitors to handle.

Most MPs are conscientious and want to help constituents. But, as they become superior councillors, who thinks about wider national and international questions and makes good laws?

Already there are proposals to allow Ministers in the Lords to answer questions and debate in the Commons. This will allow a Prime Minister to stuff his Cabinet with unelected Lords and downgrade the Commons. Where are the Michael Foots to defend the Commons from this attack on the ancient parliamentary freedoms of our nation?

The people want revenge on politicians. They should be careful in case their wish is granted as the secret power-holders in London reduce Parliament to a rubber-stamp for decisions taken by the unelected and unaccountable.