341–350 of 413 posts
> “Our parliament should always be a place where talents are recognized and merit counts,” he said. “It should never be a gallery of old boys’ networks, nor a place where titles, many of which were handed out centuries ago, hold power over the will of the people.”
Really? About time they got rid of the monarchy then also.
When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte, As every child can tell, The House of Peers, throughout the war, Did nothing in particular, And did it very well; Yet Britain set the world ablaze In good King George's glorious days! (from Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan) Gather a group of the most powerful people in the land; give them ermine robes and manifold privileges; require of them nothing other than that they meet regula…
The Iron Law of Oligarchy
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The idea of a second chamber is not controversial. The argument is how you populate it. Elected - you have the problem of two chambers claiming legitimacy and potential deadlock, and also the problem of potentially having the same short term view as the other elected chamber. Appointed - who gets to appoint, on what criteria, who are they beholden to ( ideally unsackable once appointed - I want them to feel free to s…
Abused is probably an understatement. The Tories made some extremely questionable and bizarre appointments in their recent terms. We have the son of Russian oligarch sitting there! Inexplicable advisors whose appointment is a mystery even after FOIA requests. And extreme partisans like Jacob Rees Mogg and Priti Patel. Imo they should be proposed and voted on by the house. That should at least offer some prevention of…
You'd get party political trading - we will vote for your pick if you vote for our pick - but perhaps it will help at the margins - the obviously embarrassing would be harder to squeeze through.
The problem is the current process relied a bit too much on people being trustworthy - as you say that's kinda fallen away recently - and obviously the election of Trump show how dangerous it is for a process to rely on people being decent and not abuse the trust. Which is a shame as trusting people gives people the leeway to do the right thing.
In terms of JRM or Patel - while they are not my cup of tea, I think there is value in senior politicians becoming members of the Lords almost by default ( like senior judges or religious leaders ) - as to some extent it does reflect what people have voted for in the past and they have valuable experience. However perhaps it's too early in their cases.
An age limit has been talked about - but normally in terms of upper age - I wonder if it wouldn't be better as an age threshold - you have to have retired and be no longer 'on the make'. Sure that means no young people in the second chamber - but ultimately being representative is the commons role, the second chamber is for experienced people to tell the commons not to be hasty and do more work.
Genuinely regrettable. The appointed life peers system is worse than the traditional ‘hereditary sortition’ (if you will). The former creates a class of semi-sinecures of equally questionable quality yet beholden to the political system of the moment. Life peerages become awards for donors and loyalists, a legitimized corruption. The house’s composition becomes an ever-growing competition based on unlimited partisan…
What about just no house of lords?
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Abused is probably an understatement. The Tories made some extremely questionable and bizarre appointments in their recent terms. We have the son of Russian oligarch sitting there! Inexplicable advisors whose appointment is a mystery even after FOIA requests. And extreme partisans like Jacob Rees Mogg and Priti Patel. Imo they should be proposed and voted on by the house. That should at least offer some prevention of…
> Imo they should be proposed and voted on by the house. That should at least offer some prevention of peerages as favours, as they quite clearly have been used. You'd get party political trading - we will vote for your pick if you vote for our pick - but perhaps it will help at the margins - the obviously embarrassing would be harder to squeeze through. The problem is the current process relied a bit too much on peo…
In the case of Priti Patel she was fired from government for having secret/undisclosed meetings with Israel to recognise some contested land (IIRC). That should be an instant disqualifier for a lifelong peerage.
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> Which manifesto commitments have been blocked in this parliament? To be clear, I didn't say they "blocked," I said: > though the Lords recently have been playing silly buggers around the Employment Rights Act This was a manifesto commitment which, while it eventually went through, it was touch and go for a little bit. Reporting at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f412kJChC6g
Okay, though to be fair to me, you said just after > and ignoring the Salisbury Convention (which is that they shouldn’t block manifesto commitments) which is what attracted my question. Thanks for the link. I haven’t watched it, but I will observe that a lot of the modern legislation that comes out of the commons should properly attract the attention of the Lords, as it doesn’t get nearly enough attention from the c…
However after that amendment was accepted, Conservative Peers (who hold a majority) initially voted against the bill again: https://bectu.org.uk/news/prospect-slams-house-of-lords-for-...
It was eventually passed a week later when the Lords accepted the Commons amendments but that second block on 11th December shouldn't have happened.
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> Imo they should be proposed and voted on by the house. That should at least offer some prevention of peerages as favours, as they quite clearly have been used. You'd get party political trading - we will vote for your pick if you vote for our pick - but perhaps it will help at the margins - the obviously embarrassing would be harder to squeeze through. The problem is the current process relied a bit too much on peo…
It's very tricky to balance right that's for sure. Agreed that it opens the door to behind the scenes deals. But marginal improvements are still better than whatever the hell we have now. In the case of Priti Patel she was fired from government for having secret/undisclosed meetings with Israel to recognise some contested land (IIRC). That should be an instant disqualifier for a lifelong peerage.
Again the current process does have an element of that - MI5 et al have a look at the list and say 'reputational risk'. "That's a very brave choice minster.."
However, as with Mandelsons appointment to the Lords and US ambassador, it's clearly being ignored - but then who better than the PM of the day to have the final say - the problem is somebody has to - and if you take it away from the PM - then it potentially becomes undemocratic.
Perhaps one improvement would be the removal of the tradition of exiting PM's creating a nomination list - when they no longer care about what the public think - a bit like Joe Biden outrageously pardoning his son.
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Oh piss off. It's removing the nobs from the system, people who are there by right of birth alone. There is no reason a modern democracy shoud cow-tow to such people or allow them any power over the rest of us.
Appointees are even worse. We already have MPs who are supposed to be elected but enact the same UN NGO and WEF programmes as other countries without democratic assent.
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather some real democratic reform of the Lords, but there's no chance of that any time soon. In the mean time getting rid of as many people as possible who have no democratic legitimacy whatsoever is a good thing. And at least appointees were in general appointed by someone who had the democratic mandate. People who were born into it are so far from accountable it's not funny.
When the brexit referendum was going on, I lose count of the number of times I was told that having appointees in the EU Commission didn't undermine the democratic nature of the union...
>> We already have MPs who are supposed to be elected but enact the same UN NGO and WEF programmes as other countries without democratic assent.
MPs ... who are elected? Seems like they do have democracy behind them, no?
Will they do the same for hereditary monarchy? When I was a kid I was appaled that a country in this age can have a king/queen. Then I understood that they are basically like an animal in a zoo, all for show with no actual power. It's a dreadful fate to be born as a monarch.
I used to think that but it's not true. The military swear allegiance to the crown, as in Royal Navy, which makes it hard for a dictator to take over. You may think that's academic but other European countries ditched the monarchy and got Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco etc.
The point of the hereditary peerage was the same as the point of having a non-elected Senate. Now both will have been lost in the name of "democracy" - a system of government that constantly fails to do either what is the desire of the people OR what is truly in their interests. From here on out it'll just be whoever manages to connive their way into power through connections, payola, corruption, island meetups, and…
How about a chamber populated by random lottery? Like jury duty?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
“Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it.”
― Plato