The current discourse about the election of a speaker for our new National Assembly has been variously described and assessed but here I will discuss the opportunity it presents us to identify and contemplate some important issues, the nature of which are likely to stay with us as we go forward in the present political context.
Firstly, we have become so accustomed to the political operations of a Westminster-type winner-takes-all system in which opposition is muted and the government can act with freedom