In a wide-ranging lecture in London on Monday hosted by Brunel University's Magna Carta Institute, Justice Secretary Jack Straw outlined his thoughts on the state of democracy in Britain and beyond.

After the talk, Straw told Reuters that the most pressing issue in UK democracy is the need for politicians to restore public trust following an expenses scandal that forced the main political parties to work together to resolve the crisis.

"People feel a bit detached from the political system," Straw said, adding that it is important to work out ways to "get people back into connection."

Disclosures earlier this year that MPs claimed on their expenses for everything from manure to porn films triggered public outrage. The controversy led MPs to oust parliament's speaker for the first time in 300 years.

Britain’s embattled political class are falling over themselves to modernise parliament, but given we have fully embraced the Internet age the proposals have a rather tame feel about them.

Gordon Brown’s latest proposals for “democratic renewal” — the reform of MPs expenses and an elected House of Lords to name but two — could hardly be described as Parliament 2.0.

Maybe Brown should take his cue from Barack Obama, whose U.S. presidential election success had much to do with the way his campaign embraced the Web and mobile phones to mobilise American voters.

If it worked for Obama, why not go one step further and allow voters to cast their votes in local, general or european elections by texting or via the click of a computer mouse.

Obviously an electronic vote raises the issue of electoral fraud, especially given the difficulties that have been encountered in the past with postal voting.

And on a similar theme why is Britain so coy about the use of referendums? Switzerland has a long established tradition of direct democracy which provides its citizens with the right to vote on the big political questions of the day.

Given how few people voted in the European elections last week in the United Kingdom and the low esteem our political representatives are held in by the public, has the time come for people to be allowed to vote electronically in elections and for Britain to explore the idea of a more direct democratic system?

Foreign Secretary David Miliband says Pakistan has made democratic progress and should be re-admitted to the Commonwealth.

He has pointed to the extension of press freedoms and the re-establishment of constitutional rules. New Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani, a member of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), whose leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December, was sworn in last month.

He has promised to cut back on ministers’ perks and re-establish student and trade unions.

Pakistan was suspended from the Commonwealth in November 2007 because of President Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of emergency rule. It had previously been suspended in 1999 as well, after Musharraf seized power in a coup.

Do you think the time is right for it to be re-admitted? Could it be that the organisation — and much of the West in general — has failed to appreciate the dangerous security reality in which the country lives, with large areas of its border regions sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda?