I don’t care what parade he marched in or who he lived with during his divorce. That’s an absurd thing to focus on. I see Giuliani did help pass protections for gay couples and extended domestic benefits to partners of city employees, and that does count as progress. That actually matters. Of course Giuliani then opposed the same-sex marriage law that was passed here a few years ago because that’s the kind of thing he does, and Bloomberg supported it. Obama has moved slower than I would like on gay righst issues, but he’s at least moved in the right direction by ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and ending the government’s support for the Defense of Marriage Act.
I’m pretty sure you are wrong about that. He has dressed in drag a few times, including once at a New York political comedy event and once on Saturday Night Live, but I don’t think any of them had anything to do with gay causes.
They don’t have a power of veto - only a power of delay, and even that is very rarely used. Almost all of the time it spends its time seeking to persuade and critique the decisions of the Commons and get them to agree to what it wants changed - as they are the elected chamber, it is right that they are held to account for the decisions that they have the final say over.
In what way is it archaic? If you mean inheritance, that portion is a minority and will probably eventually disappear; if you mean appointment, that’s only been since the fifties. As a whole the House is ‘newer’ in composition and function than the US Senate.
I have a built-in flinch mechanism whenever someone says ‘archaic’; it’s a lazy term for something you consider distasteful, but age should not ever be considered a baseline to determine the merits of the system.
These ideas have been floated before; the regional chamber idea is unlikely because a) they will clash with MPs on constituency duties and b) clash with the Commons and ensue an undesirable power struggle. Such accountability that either House currently has would be lost.
As for short-term appointment, you will get short-termist consideration of matters. One advantage of the present life term is that the appointees cease to be beholden to anyone for their position.
Random sortition may have merits, but it would make the House unprofessional and erratic, and would lose out in procedural gaming to the Commons, and I can forsee the House picking fights with the Commons again. If it did, I can’t see any accountability in that system either.
My preferred solution would be a kind of filtered sortition, so that a fixed number of Lords are chosen by a statutory Appointments Commission, accountable to Parliament, to pick out the best of the best to sit in the House; the parties would be able to draw up a longlist of preferred candidates to be their appointees, but the Commission would be able to vet them for merit and if necessary reject them.
In a democracy, we’ve determined that accountability is a better characteristic than immunity to outside considerations. The Lords as they stand hardly embody neutral arbitration either, given they’re susceptible to division along party line.
Edit:
It’s in practice a power of veto: I don’t think any bill has been been proposed during the same administration a third time (after failing to pass in the Lords twice).
It’s never quite so simple as that - for one thing, direct election of both Houses in a bicameral legislature is not as universal as you appear to assume. The second House is intended to be a cooling-off chamber to pick out the flaws in hastily-considered work by the first House. If that means one of the Houses is not elected, fine by me.
They are accountable to their fields of expertise, and without the ability to kill legislation dead, they have no need for accountability through election.
The alternative, as I have pointed out, is competition and dispute between the Houses which will undermine the accountability we already have.
Once. The Parliament Act changed the law so the Lords can only stop a bill once.
You’re forgetting the fact that the Lords has only used its powers a few times times in the last 100 years - hardly a routine thing! It goes to show that by and large both Houses seek to reach agreement, rather than let a bill die.
What accountability is there in a system where Lords are appointed for life?
I vaguely recall there was a relatively recent incident of a bill reaching the Lords a second time and being defeated, then abandoned. While the bill was largely the same in its second incarnation, it was proposed during two different parliamentary sessions.
What accountability are there for judges? Look, I’m not saying it’s perfect, but the alternative is a messy system where both Houses will be at each other’s throats and the ensuing policies will be accountable to nobody. The basis of the UK’s system is that the policy outcomes should at least in part be linked to the wishes of the public as expressed at election, and the Lords works fairly well within that basis.
I don’t doubt that you’re correct, but you’re missing a crucial point - the government could have ignored the Lords and pushed on ahead, but the only reasons it ever declines to is because either a) it doesn’t have the support of the people or b) they realized the Lords made a very good and reasonable point.
At no point can the Lords block something in the face of the public’s wishes. A government backed by popular support will always override the Lords, and would only ever decline to bank on that if it realizes the idea was stupid in the first place.
That’s an advantage: they don’t have to worry about reelection and vote according to their judgements and consciences. And it’s difficult to abuse because the Lords is a revising house - the Parliament Act allows the Commons to overrule the Lords. The Lords are a reservoir of considerable experience; they’ve generally been significant players in public life before their elevations (yes, there are exceptions). They also tend to the elderly, so there’s a considerable turnover in active peers.
Such as how US Senators are now accountable to nobody?
Except when the platform of a party changes or the public mood does, there is no corollary in the Lords. No whip system, no form of recall. Positing that it’s a good thing that they can ignore the public will is precisely contrary to the spirit of democracy - Tom Paine wrote quite a bit on that subject. It’s fine if one opposes democracy, but then we’re arguing about more fundamental concepts.
You misunderstand me. I’m trying to argue that if you’re happy with judges being ‘unaccountable’, then why the hand-wringing about the Lords?
I’m actually referring to the policy that results out of the legislature, rather than the individuals. The US system requires compromise and deals, and those deals are likely to be ones that the government will not answer for. The British system works on the principle of core accountability - that the government is solely responsible for everything that happens under its tenure. Accountability for policy in Britain is more direct than the US, and the life-term nature of the Lords is a part of that principle.
TL;DR - They don’t need to be accountable in the mode that you insist upon. Again: direct election of upper houses worldwide is not widespread.
It’s not meant to be - that’s the point.
There is a whip system - but it’s looser than the Commons. As for recall, they are currently looking into such a system - but absolutely nobody wants such a power to be too easy.
They don’t ignore democracy - can’t you read? They work with the Commons to improve legislation. They can highlight problems and even at times flatly disagree, but in the end the will of the people will always prevail.
This is the basis of the working relationship between most upper houses worldwide.
I think this is more ‘democratic’ than the US system whereby two Houses with equal powers will create unaccountable compromises and/or kill genuinely popular proposals.
People can’t seem to understand that in a lot of places the Upper House is NOT a legislative body. Its primary purpose is the revise and refine legislation and where this brings it into conflict with the elected lower house there are mechanisms to ensure the primacy of the elected house. It is a ‘stop and think’ mechanism.
Certainly in the UK the appointed/unelected House of Lords is a much better mechanism for reflecting public will and concern precisely because they are not able to be ruthlessly whipped.
There is much wrong with the system but I prefer it over any system designed to prevent governments doing anything and where members of both houses are constantly concerned with individually either raising huge amounts of money or trying not to offend powerful interests.
Reform of the House of Lords is an ongoing project and one of the key issues is - if you make it elected then this is a fundamental change in the British Constitution, which is based on the primacy of the Commons.
Meanwhile it remains a repository of knowledge and expertise not electorally beholden to the party line but not able to ultimately thwart the will of the Commons.
To be fair, that’s how the life peers get them too.
Step 1) Contribute a few million to the political party of your choice.
Step 2) Receive a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List for “services to business”.
Step 3) [del]PROFIT!!![/del] Join the House of Lords.
Step 4) Incur the wrath of the tabloids and lose your knighthood again.
Again, with no power of recall, talking about “accountability” is meaningless. They are not accountable to the Commons, nor the public they are meant to represent. Unless you think that being able to vote against a representative that voted to elect a head of government that proposed the peerage to the hereditary head of state in order to punish them for the poor decisions of the now indentured peer is a model of democratic accountability.
An appeal to popularity, which is ironic considering your antipathy to even representative democracy.
It’s certainly not the point of democracy.
Well, you’re right, but it’s largely farcical given that the parties can’t exactly revoke their nomination for a ward. I shouldn’t have spoken in absolutes. That said, Tony Benn would certainly argue that recall of the Lords should be easier, he would have abolished the entire chamber.
I don’t miss subtext:
This is an appeal to tradition; the brand of direct democracy practiced in Gaddafi’s Libya.
Edit:
Appealing to the fact that Lords tend to be elderly is particularly short-sighted, since it is another vector for systemic bias due to their lack of representation of the demographics of society.
Please, don’t try to hide. Answer the point: do you think judges should be elected, to be consistent?
I’ve already explained: they are accountable to their fields of expertise. As to their votes and the speeches they make, they are about as accountable as the rest of us. The Lords cannot fight a determined Commons. Therefore, the House that needs accountability, the House with the actual power, is the Commons.
The purpose is to support, not challenge, the elected Commons. I don’t see why you can’t grasp this. tagos (above) has also piped in, if you want to read his helpful post.
Why do you insist the only form of democracy is yours? Once again: there are numerous ways that upper houses are formed worldwide.
Don’t troll. It’s not an appeal to popularity, but an effort to reveal to you that the US isn’t the centre of the world. There are numerous manifestations of democracy, and Britain’s and America’s are two different but perfectly valid modes.
I have no antipathy to representative democracy. I fully support and admire the elected House of Commons. It is my dedication to representative democracy that makes me oppose another elected House that would excesively frustrate its will.
Says you. Once again: many upper houses worldwide yadayada…
And Tony Benn, frankly, is incorrect. I’m sorry, but you can go bleating about democratic principle, but I have already explained that the Commons has all the power to ignore the Lords when it wishes to.
Now you’re just sounding shrill. The Lords are not representatives. That the Commons’ job.
Where did I say that their age is a factor? And ironically, in terms of racial minorities and females, the Lords used to trump the Commons until 2010 - now the two Houses are similar.
Think about this: the current government is looking into means to elect the upper house, and the starting points they have proposed is that they should have 15-year non-renewable terms. The general consensus is that this is no more accountable than the present system - doesn’t it make you think that they see some added value in what the Lords provide?
It really isn’t, you know. You are misunderstanding the fallacy entirely. You might legitimately argue false equivalence but in demonstrating why it’s a false equivalence you’d end up answering the point you were asked about.
I hold the unusual position that words signify meaning. In this case, “democracy” means “rule by the people”. Now, technically, Lords are people. However, claiming that restraining passions by deigning to an unelected chamber that will not sway to the majority opinion is not democracy. Argue for its necessity all you like, just do not give it a label precisely opposite to its function.
Ad hominem.
Strawman, that’s certainly not what I’ve been arguing.
Appeal to popularity.
Was an addendum addressing this:
Edit:
I’m arguing for democratic accountability in the legislature and he’s bringing up the strawman of the lack of democratic accountability in the judiciary, as if I were simultaneously arguing in support of a lack of democratic accountability in the judiciary, in an attempt to spring a tu quoque.
Can we take the stuff about the House of Lords to another thread? Please?
I think Ibn Warraq hit the nail on the head, to a point: if you’re going to be fair about this, you have to compare Johnson to the mayors of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco or Chicago.
I accuse you of hiding behind technicalities and declining to justify your position.
Rule by the people? The House of Commons rules. The Lords advises and scrutinises. It can delay, but not block.
I know it’s not, please pay attention. I’m saying to you that the Lords has a range of advantages that people here find preferable, one of them being their long term and independist stance. This proposal is an attempt to retain it.
Not quite. It’s something that a lot of people want to retain. Is your position then, that it should be elected even if it’s destructive to the basic principles of our constitution?
Fair enough; nonetheless you haven’t been very good at producing any convincing arguments, yourself - only accusations of logical fallacies. That in itself could constitute a fallacial stance.
In the US, the Supreme Court has the power to strike down Congressional laws and interpret legislation. That’s a phenomenally powerful legislative power, and one which our courts absolutely don’t have. The US Supreme Court has more extensive legislative powers than our House of Lords.