British Parliament- a modest proposition

Great Debates
1

Currently the British political system gives virtually dictatorial power to the Prime Minister via Crown Prerogative and a system of preferment into Government jobs. The House of Commons is full of Party Hacks who will do what they are told willingly or be threatened (even with violence) until they comply; to encourage them they are also bribed with titles, offices and money in the future. The House of Lords is still an anachronism and should be abolished.

I propose:

An Upper House- The House of Government, elected by first past the post in single member constituencies of about 100 members- about 300 000-400 000 electors each. Because of the size of the constituencies, their forced urban/rural status, and a presumption that constituencies should tend to be as marginal as possible, there would be more marginal seats; constituency formation would be done by a committee of the Lower House and such decisions of the Lower House would pass without reference to the Upper House; similarly all future decisions about elections would be the prerogative of the lower house acting alone. This house would be whippable and Government Ministers would be drawn from that house or from non-elected individuals who would have speaking but no votong rights in that chamber. This would result in a clear choice of Government. This Upper House would have all the powers of the current Commons. The Government would replace any members leaving the chamber from a party list of temporary substitutes. In order to maintain support of the Lower House, it might be (probably would be) necessary to appoint some ministers from outside the Governing Party. Elections for both houses would normally be for term of exactly four years. If the Government fell and no alternative Government could be agreed by the Upper House, an election would follow immediately. If that election fell in the first half of the term, it would only continue for the rest of that term. If it fell in the second half of the term, it would continue for the remainder of that term and the subsequent term.

A Lower House- The House of the People, elected on a multi-member constituency allowing virtually proportional representation. It would consist of about 500 people elected from about 50 constituencies, ensuring that each constituency would have an MP that reflected the views of most of the constituents (each group of ten would be likely to have several right wingers, several left wingers, several liberals/libertarians, plus greens and apoliticals). The members would be free to give party affiliation or policy statements, but must agree to refuse any illegal advances from the Government. This house would be open only to those people who had previously held no Government sinecure and whose members would be banned from any current or future Government preferment, quangos, salary or posts for at least ten years after their exit from the house. Whipping or other attempted coercion of any member of this house would be as illegal as lobbying Judges about their decisions. The Upper House and Government could address the Lower House and attempt to change its mind, but could not offer any adducements to act in a particular way. If the Lower House successfully blocks a bill for more than a session of Parliament without voting to continue discussion, a General Election for both Houses would follow immediately. The Lower House would replace any members leaving the Chamber by a deputizing system- each member would announce a list of potential replacements in their election address and such replacements would be used in order.)

Result- a Strong Government House with a checks and balances system that would limit the power of Government by the power of the people.

Result- no repeat of Thatcher. No repeat of the current Blair power seizure on a quarter of the vote. The Governing Party would have to win the backing of a representative House of the People in order to continue governing. Full representation for minority interests in controlling the government. Democracy rather than Elective Dictatorship.

Comments?

2

Why not the New Zealand model? No upper house, and parliament elected by proportional representation. The House of Lords is an anachronism, and any attempt to reform it will only give it renewed legitimacy.

3

Something needs to be done. I’m sick of elected Prime Ministerial dictatorships whatever the party in power.

4

The demographics of New Zealand are somewhat different to the UK- relatively little urbanization, fewer regional/cultural differences, narrower political spectrum. If there was a single PR house in the UK, its composition would be almost entirely dependent on the boundaries of constituencies. To meet the same level of representation we would need a chamber of over a thousand MPs. It would still be dependent on party politics and whipping and bribery (preferment).

5

Yes they are different, but not as much as you seem to think. A lot of the population of New Zealand is in the major cities: about 1 person in 3 lives in Aukland, the largest city. New Zealand has the big cultural split between the indigenous Maori and the majority descended from British immigrants, which is at least as significant as any split in Britain, partly because the Maori are concentrated in particular geographic areas.

PR does not depend much on constituency boundaries, as long as you have reasonably large electorates and the number of members is proportional to population, when most people are voting for political parties. And I’m not sure that increasing the size from about 500 to about 1,000 would make much difference.

Yes, you would still have political parties with PR, but it would be harder for one party to have a majority, so you would be likely to need some kind of coalition with give-and-take between members of the coalition.

6

I wouldn’t mind that model for the American Congress. In both countries it would strike a balance between giving parties too much power (with party list elections,) and giving local issues (with accompanying pork,) too much power with individual entrenched legislators.

What do you feel about a mixed house - one taken both from constituencies AND from country-wide party lists? You wouldnt even need if you have both checks and balances in one house, especially since smaller parties can hold more of a balance in PM-style governments.

7

We go around and around about this every month or so. Here we go again.

First off, it is not too broke, so there is no real reason to fix it. Second, I am not British, and so I do not have a dog in the fight. The internal constitutional arrangements are for the people of each nation to set. All that being said …

The House of Lords is most certainly not anachronistic. Commons is not representative of the British people. It is representative of those sort of people who choose to run for Parliament. Commons lacks women, old and young people, Gay and handicapped people racial and religious minorities in the same proportions as the British people.

Lords (before Tony started mucking about with it) was in many ways more representative than Commons. It had a homeless member (he attended just for the per diem), it had old and young members. It had members who were schoolteachers and members who were executives.

Commons had politicians.

Lords is far from perfect. It is too male, to Christian and too white, but that could be fixed with a couple of honors lists.

Lords was the one part of government that New Labour could not control, so they decided to ‘reform’ it. Darn shame.

8

Must have missed those monthly threads, perhaps you could list them :slight_smile:

The current system allows a government that has support of less than a third of the voters and less than a quarter of the electorate an effective electoral dictatorship for five years. Same could be said for Thatcher between 1987 and 1991 and Major 1991-1997.

Although I agree that the Commons is full of professional politicians, to say that the Lords was representative is laughable. It had an inbuilt conservative and reactionary majority which savaged Labour governments and acted like a lap dog to the Conservatives. It was a blemish on any democracy, with the corrupt Commons a close second. No one else in the world accepts that a small group of aging Aristocracy could overrule the will of the people. Its like insisting that the Senate should be composed of the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, the Virginian Settlers, SCOTUS, Major Religious Leaders ex officio ranging from Pat Robinson to Jesse Jackson, first sons of bastard sons and daughters of any US President and political appointees at the behest of the last six administrations with no method of review or assessment of their fitness.

The new Lords is considerably better- politically it represents the current polity of Britain quite well and all appointments are proportional and have to be reviewed by an independent commission. It is still ridiculous and has to go, but at least its better than what went before. Now when it opposes the Government (which has been quite often and mainly from the perspective of Human and Individual Rights rather than Tory Backlash, it has broadly represented the wishes of the electorate at the time.

9

(While my search for the older threads is conducted, let me deal with your comments.)

If you are upset that Ruling Class people rule, well you fairly well object to all the governments on Earth.

Commons is too liberal. You may like it, I may like it, but it does not reflect the views of the British people. Consider the case of the Age of Homosexual Consent.

The British People, as shown time and time again wanted to keep it at 18 (16?). Commons voted to reduce it to the same age as Heterosexual Consent. Commons went against the wishes of the people. Lords shot it down, once, twice, thrice. Then Commons overrode Lords and passed what the heck they thought was good for the people anyway.

Lords is a check on the political class. A reformed Lords with more women, and minorities would be even better. Needless to say, the Political Class does not even want to raise that issue.

(My search is complete. Obviously someone has deleted all the older threads on this subject. I suspect the Freemasons.)

10

I too searched the obvious key words and found nothing either. Perhaps, because this is basically an American board, the Brits talk about their political issues in other fora.

11

Glad that you either admit that this hasn’t been recently discussed or you are depending on paranoia for your defence. :smiley:

The ruling class will always rule. What they need is a popular vote to check them. Our current system is five years of elective dictatorship with no escape clause.

Who says the commons is too liberal. It is always too extreme- either to the left or to the right- our first past the post system ensures that. From 1987 t0 1997 the Lib/SDP and Labour votes (both parties well to the left of centre) had a mjority of the popular vote, yet we had a majority Tory Government. The Commons was too Conservative. 1997-2001 The LibDems and Labour- both seen as left of centre at that time had a majority of the popular vote and that was reflected in the Commoms- Commons was in line with the electorate. 2001 and especially 2005 onwards- Labour more corporatist, statist and illiberal, LibDems to the Left and Libertarian and hUmans Rights Centred, Tory Party still to the right, but more libertarian than under Thatcher.- Difficult to tell where the Commons is now compared with Public Opinion. I can think of no time since 1977-79 when the Commons could be considered 'too liberal’compared with the popular view of the whole span of politics. Of course on some issues like the Age of Homosexual Consent there may be differences, but this was a minor issue compared with whole manifestos. This is a sea change issue. Society is changing and sometimes individual Civil Rights need to be protected more than Society wide Political Rights- see the Civil Rights Movement in the USA 1960s, Moves against the Death Penalty in Civilized Nations, anti-slavery movements in all eras, female enfranchisement, civil unions/gay marriage, decriminalization of homosexuality- all of these would have been opposed my a societal political majority at the time of proposal- all were pushed through by people standing for human rights- all have become broadly accepted in the socities over time. If you want to hold up the Age of consent for gay men as an issue, you would need to apply the same logic to all of the above issues.

What is needed is not a reformed Lords but a truly People’e House that is fully representative. My proposal should allow that. The Lords is not going to be reformed- it will be dead with the next Government.

I am so surprized that other democracies are not clamoring to take on our political model of letting the aristos let them know what they are allowed to do. :rolleyes:

12

One thing the UK sorely needs, especially with what is almost a three-party system - preferential voting.

13

I agree with this; and I predict that if we brought it in, the Greens would make a considerable increase in seats.

14

I beg your pardon. An institutional elite, including a specialized category of career politicians and upper civil servants, is one thing. A socioeconomic elite class is quite another. In most countries the former is disproportionately drawn from the latter, but there is no logical or necessary reason why it must be so.

15

What is that, exactly? A form of PR? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation) Or of IRV? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_runoff_voting)

16

Psssst…preferential voting has it’s own wikipedia page…

17

Paul

It has taken us in England close to a thousand years to first live with and then erode the power of the aristocracy, and that included executing one ruler, a couple of civil wars. You can argue that prior to that time, England was not a particularly unified entity though it did come under one monarch.

Why in hell would we want to continue to have a bunch of people whose sole qualification for rule being the accident of their birth continue to wield power over those who produce the wealth of this country ?

How on earth could such a group be possibly representative, how many are under 50 ? what percentage are white ? historically, how many were engineers, scientists, authors or the myriad other part of society that understand and form public opinion ?

Don’t you think that possibly some of the problems associated with the ME region have their roots in such feudal systems ?

18

It’s a form of IRV. In the Australian context it’s used in both:

(1) single member electorates (and thus obviously not a form of PR), allowing voters to rank the candidates in order of preference. The winning candidate is the one who secures an absolute majority of the votes cast, rather than just a relative majority as under the first past the post system. If necessary, second, third, fourth etc preferences are allocated until the absolute majority is obtained. It’s not a perfect system by any means, but it’s better than the first past the post system, especially if there are three or more major parties;

(2) multi-member electorates (thus vaguely approximating a form of PR). Again voters can rank the candidates in order of preference. Depending upon the total number of votes cast at the election, a quota is calculated. Any candidate receiving the quota is elected. Voters’ second, third, fourth etc preferences are distributed until enough candidates have achieved a quota to fill all of the available positions.

19

Preferential voting does not have to mean IRV. Instant Runoff Voting is one form of counting preferential ballots, but there are other (IMO better) forms.

20

Commons is not representative. We seem to agree on that. I have to admit that Lords is not perfectly representative, but in an odd sort of way, it is more like the British public than is Commons.

This is because it was selected mostly at random. Sort of like a big jury. Diabetics, amputees, homosexuals, fly fishermen, all were in Lords at levels about the same as in the general population.

As I said, Lords as it existed needed tweaking, still it was not so out of whack as to have to be reformed so extremely. It was (like Commons) too White, too Christian, too Male and too Old. It would be an interesting thread on how it should have been reformed.

(Perhaps the Throne appointing 30 new Lords a year, with the approval of Commons on a lifetime-plus-one-child basis. But I digress.)

As Brain Glutton pointed out:
‘’‘I beg your pardon. An institutional elite, including a specialized category of career politicians and upper civil servants, is one thing. A socioeconomic elite class is quite another. In most countries the former is disproportionately drawn from the latter, but there is no logical or necessary reason why it must be so.’’’

Who has more net worth? The old Lords or the Commons*? Commons is a socioeconomic elite class, politicians. Lords was a bunch of old guys whose grandfathers were once quite rich.

How many ‘’‘engineers, scientists, authors or the myriad other part of society that understand and form public opinion’’; are there in Commons nowadays?

*Serious question, I would like to know. It is too easy to focus on the rich Lords we see in the papers. How may poor ones are there we never hear about?

Forgive my disordered writing and thinking this morning. I need my coffee.