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Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

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Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#91

Post by dralley »

pjc50 wrote: post #45
jfengel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Senate is designed to check and balance the House of Representatives. But that often puts the Congress as a whole in deadlock, meaning it can no longer balance the other two branches. When they could get anything done they delegated a lot of power to the Executive. Which worked ok, but eventually a "unitary executive" appropriated even more power, and the Legislature is powerless to prevent it.

Unpopular opinion: deadlock is fine. Most legislation is bad. What really matters is the budget. And the rule that failing to pass a budget can automatically force an election avoids the absurd US "shutdown" that isn't a shutdown.

On the other hand, voting needs to mean something. If voting doesn't mean anything, because the whole system is held in a vice grip by a sclerotic institution playing power games with itself, then the broader system eventually collapses.

My personal opinion is that Mitch McConnell's intransigence and unwillingness to do anything lest Obama get credit for it led directly to an increased desire for a "strongman"

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#92

Post by scrlk »

cm2187 wrote: post #75
scrlk wrote: post #64

The irony is that, on a technicality, the hereditary peers were the only members of the Lords who had to win an election to get their seats. > Under the reforms of the House of Lords Act 1999, the majority of hereditary peers lost the right to sit as members of the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Section 2 of the Act, however, provides an exception from this general exclusion…

Yeah, the assumption is that the non hereditary peers are somehow more representative, but all they represent is being friends of the PM of the time. It's a historical oddity of questionable usefulness. Meanwhile the house of commons can wipe out any civil liberty with a majority of 50% plus one vote. It is remarkable how a system that seems so unstable and prone to abuses of power has served the longest continuously…

As Walter Bagehot wrote in The English Constitution: "An ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered."

Absent ideological capture, it is perhaps one of the best forms of government ever created due to its pragmatic nature and its Lindyness is proof.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#93

Post by fc417fc802 »

cuuupid wrote: post #77

Some years ago I, an American citizen and resident, studied abroad briefly and was asked by the House of Lords to speak to them about what GDPR (a UK law!) was, how it worked, and the impact it could have. Further than ejecting nobles, they really should just overhaul the entire chamber, which is surely doing more harm than good if they need a foreign national to explain their own laws to them.

Did they _need_ you or were they seeking the perspective of someone they considered well informed or valued for some other reason? What's the context here?

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#94

Post by inglor_cz »

kbelder wrote: post #87
KK7NIL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you're joking, but Athenian democracy had a significant amount of randomness, with candidates being chosen randomly from the top vote winners. Terms were also only 1 year for most positions. These, and other systems, helped prevent any one person from monopolizing power. This is a good video on this: https://youtu.be/pIgMTsQXg3Q

Not joking, although maybe not terribly serious either. I could envision a random (filtered) selection of citizens being given a veto power over legislation, as another check against abuse.

We could start by something like a randomly appointed commission to investigate, say, very expensive public projects.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#95

Post by fc417fc802 »

jfengel wrote: post #85
fc417fc802 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is now my second favorite idea, after a nationwide ban of first past the post voting schemes. My third (previously second) is outlawing political parties. The problem with that one is it would be really difficult to implement in a way that doesn't run afoul of freedom of association and freedom of speech. Probably worth figuring out though.

I don't think it can be figured out. Every democratic country has political parties.

True but I think much could be done to blunt their impact if we collectively put our minds to it.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#96

Post by inglor_cz »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #66
pjc50 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: deadlock is fine. Most legislation is bad. What really matters is the budget. And the rule that failing to pass a budget can automatically force an election avoids the absurd US "shutdown" that isn't a shutdown.

This is now my second favorite idea, after a nationwide ban of first past the post voting schemes. My third (previously second) is outlawing political parties. The problem with that one is it would be really difficult to implement in a way that doesn't run afoul of freedom of association and freedom of speech. Probably worth figuring out though.

People really love to create associations, and if "parties" are banned, "movements" or "clubs" that are "totally-not-parties" will take their place.

We are too gregarious to prevent emergence of political groups. A parliament of cats would probably be more individualistic, but not that of humans.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#97

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

01jonny01 wrote: post #82
kergonath wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitution It’s also very brittle and one charismatic populist away from unraveling like the American government. Too much depends on gentlemen agreements and people trusting other people to do the right thing. It works in a stable environment, but shatters the moment someone with no shame and no scruples shows up.

Britain's problems are due to uncharismatic Blairite socialist.

I don't know much about UK politics but I definitely know enough to know that there's no such thing as a "Blairite socialist".

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#98

Post by rgblambda »

pjc50 wrote: post #38
throwaway7783 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does House of Lords have any real power today?

Sort of. They can and do amend bills, but they can't overrule the Commons on anything the latter regards as important.

With a very small number of exceptions, including changing the maximum duration of Parliament from 5 years.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#99

Post by tialaramex »

post-it wrote: post #71
alexpotato wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate: Some people argue that the difficulty of passing laws in the United States is "a feature not a bug" b/c it prevents the US from creating laws too quickly. You could argue the House of Lords did the same: by vetoing bills, it acted as a "speed bump" to laws that might cause too much change too quickly.

The House of Lords isn't going anywhere. The majority of the chamber are life peers, functionally identical to Canadian senators.

And for many years now, even the remaining minority of hereditary peers in the chamber are elected to that job, albeit not by the general public. My guess is that all those who are actually useful will get "grandfathered in" by this legislation making them life peers so that they can keep doing the exact same job. Many life peers (who are all entitled to be there) rarely attend, so it would be kinda silly if Lord Snootington, the fifteenth Earl of Whatever is kicked out for being a hereditary peer despite also being the linchpin of an important committee and one of the top 100 attendees in the Lords, while they keep Bill Smith, a business tycoon who got his peerage for giving a politician a sack of cash and hasn't been in London, never mind the House of Lords, since 2014...

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#100

Post by rgblambda »

kbelder wrote: post #87
KK7NIL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you're joking, but Athenian democracy had a significant amount of randomness, with candidates being chosen randomly from the top vote winners. Terms were also only 1 year for most positions. These, and other systems, helped prevent any one person from monopolizing power. This is a good video on this: https://youtu.be/pIgMTsQXg3Q

Not joking, although maybe not terribly serious either. I could envision a random (filtered) selection of citizens being given a veto power over legislation, as another check against abuse.

Not quite the same thing, but in Ireland, it's become more common for Citizens Assemblies, which are randomly selected (this is disputed by some) citizens appointed to help word referenda on constitutional amendments and otherwise gauge public feeling on certain issues.

The assembly then passes it's recommendation to the Parliament who are free to ignore it if they don't like it.

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