The point I was illustrating is that MPs often look at recall, but recoil from it because they fear it will somehow make them vulnerable. I would argue that MPs who do their job properly, stick to their promises and do their best by their constituents will find that their hand is strengthened by recall. It should in fact give them greater confidence to do their job in the knowledge that, if there is a question mark over whether they stay here, those who trust them the most will make the final decision.
There has been some suggestion that real recall would lead to vexatious attempts to remove MPs. Let us think about that for a second. This country has had a recall vote—we do not call it that, but that is what it was. In 1997, the Liberal Democrats won the Winchester seat at the election. The Conservatives claimed that the Lib Dems had done so by error and that they had been cheated of victory because they had lost by a mere two votes, and that that was somehow wrong. They got a judicially sanctioned recall, but it was seen by local people for what it was—a vexatious attempt by bad losers to overturn the democratic will of the people. What happened? Having initially lost by two, the Conservatives went on to lose by more than 20,000. I thus emphasise that we have nothing to fear from vexatious attempts at recall.