Macchiavelli revisited

Can readers suggest modern politicians this passage could apply to?

"...he never consulted anybody and never did things as he wanted to; this happened because he did the opposite of what I said above.  [He] is a secretive man, he does not tell anyone of his plans, and he accepts no advice.  But as soon as he puts his plans into effect, and they come to be known, they meet with opposition from those around him; and then he is only too easily diverted from his purpose.  The result is that whatever he does one day is undone the next, what he wants or plans to do is never clear, and no reliance can be placed on his decisions"

Lobbying, but not as we know it

I would like to point readers to this Bagehot article over at the Economist about the complexities of coalition politics.  Its key point is that the ambiguous nature of the coalition government's democratic mandate for its policies (because the two parties' manifestoes were ditched to form the coalition agreement) is going to make law-making in Parliament more complex.  This is particularly the case with regards to the House of Lords and the conventions it operates under, whereby peers are more timid about interfering with manifesto commitments and primary legislation from the elected government.

This had me thinking about the ramifications for those of us on the outside who interact with Parliament.  The nature of the coalition combined with reform of the House of Lords which will increase its democratic legitimacy, will make for a much more powerful upper chamber.  What will some of the major consequences be?  I would like to venture the following:

• Diffusion of power among a greater number of players - meaning much more lobbying effort to reach the same result due to a greater number of stakeholders to talk to, and in order to build more support than was previously necessary in order to effect change
• More checks and balances - the House of Lords will present a greater hurdle than it used to, so new legislation can be more easily amended or stopped; governing will be made more difficult but legislation will also be more carefully drafted and thought through
• Greater complexity - as Bagehot points out, politics will become more complex, meaning shifting alliances and clever use of parliamentary procedure will be more important; the need for procedural understanding and knowledge of those shifting alliances will increase also (think the West Wing)
• Peers will become more important in our media and our politics - they will more often be Ministers, be more prominent in the media and think tanks and also more subject to scrutiny of both the constructive and the scurrilous kind
• Parliament will be more important to lobbyists - as a whole, the legislature will become a more important feature of our politics and lobbyists will pay it greater regard both strategically and tactically; parliamentary relations will be a more important function of external/public affairs than it is now