Q. What’s the difference between the House of Commons and the GLA?

A. Testosterone and Ken!

Looking for a slightly more substantive answer – there are several differences that hit you in the face from day one between Parliament and the London Assembly (GLA).

First – the seriousness with which the whole business of Parliament is taken by the media, by MPs, by the world outside, by the officers and by the doormen. Maybe that shouldn’t be the case – but it is. The world looks at the goings on of the House and takes notice in a way that just doesn’t happen at the Greater London Authority (GLA).

Secondly – and supporting the first point – are the levels of traditional practise and hierarchical deference which hang heavy in the Parliamentary corridors of power. It would seem that without nodding to the Speaker on entering or leaving the Chamber, without having to wait weeks for an office and a computer because everyone has to be serviced in order of importance (and/or order of swearing in unless you know the ‘right’ officer to skip the queue), without using the correct term of address for colleagues, without knowing when you can or can’t intervene, without rising to your feet at the end of every speech, without prayers at the start of each session, without the mace and the formality – clearly England, nay Britain, would fall! Tradition and deference are the watchword.

I preferred the GLA’s modernist approach and remember fighting against even having to stand in the chamber at City Hall every time you wished to make a speech. I liked the informality of calling Ken ‘Ken’ – and occasionally Mayor Livingstone. I liked being able simply to indicate to the chair that I wished to speak without having to look like a bobbing idiot. I liked the building better. The public spaces and the interweave of public with the members of the Assembly and the Mayor smelt of a new era.

Parliament stinks of the past. In Parliament the divide is absolute – you are a Member or you are a Stranger. It actually feels like a type of apartheid – which indeed it is.

And thus they intend to keep it. There is a point to some of the traditions. Having traditions can make the departure from them all the more significant or poignant – as with the Speaker’s beautiful gesture of coming down from his high seat to kiss Patsy Calton on the cheek when she took her oath just before her sad death.

But much of it is tradition for tradition sake – the need to hold onto the status quo and protect it against the onslaught of modernism. It’s the expression and form of holding the class system in place – albeit these days they clearly let anybody in!

I don’t have the time, patience or inclination to bother to take this on. I have my sights set on other challenges. But neither do I believe that something is more valuable, has deeper meaning or import because it is surrounded by all of this mumbo jumbo. If it needs all of this to make it seem important – then strip it away and lay bare the substance I say.

In the end the real and truly substantive difference between Parliament and the GLA is the power each institution wields. Parliament is the legislature of the nation (for the most part) whilst the GLA in the form of its directly elected Mayor has very few powers and those powers are severely restricted to very few areas of operation. That is what feels different, smells different and is different.

Ask me again in a year or so – I will probably have become part of the Establishment and will barely remember the brave new world of the GLA. The seduction will be complete!