Both Starmer for Labour and Sunak for the Conservatives have addressed the Confederation of British Industry.
Business wants immigration because there is full employment and a skills shortage in many areas that is holding back business growth.
Neither the Conservatives nor Labour want to relax the strict immigration controls the government imposed after Brexit. This is symbolic of winning back the nations sovereignty from the EU and it’s single market, free mobility of labour ways.
Both parties seem convinced that immigration is a bad thing that must be controlled by an exacting points system run by the Home Office.
I am somewhat surprised at Starmer, but he is anxious to win back the Labour vote in the former industrial areas who voted for Boris Johnson and Brexit.
That does not suggest either party have a sound economic strategy. The notion that the government and Home Office can operate a work visa system that is agile and responsive enough to meet the needs of business is a bad joke. Both parties are still playing the immigration control card in order to win votes, no matter what the consequences.
The UK seems to still be in need of a reality check regarding its economic prospects following the reduction in international trade with the EU and the restrictions in the recruitment of skilled workers.
Eventually it will sink in that this makes the economy shrink and everyone becomes poorer. Without a growth strategy the UK will not be able to trade its way to reduce the mountain of debt and crippling interest payments.
But the ball is in the Conservative court right now and they have to come up with a growth strategy after having painted themselves into a corner with Brexit.
Starmer does not have to do much except take note of their mistakes because he is not in power.
The progress of the UK economic recovery following the Covid pandemic and the Putin energy crisis will be compared to the major EU economies. The difference will be due to Brexit.
Well that is not how remember the election, quite the reverse in fact. He was a nice man with socialist principles, but he represented a radical politics that was rooted in the 1970s. That was never going to find traction with mainstream voters. Except by old labour campaigners and young idealistic students. He was also very lukewarm on the EU, happy to let the Brexit voice be heard because he regarded it as a club for capitalists. He let Boris Johnson run with the Brexit mantra and he lost the ‘Red Wall’ of seventy or so seats in industrial areas that traditionally voted Labour. This was an appalling failure of political judgement.
Radicals like Corbin on the left and Truss on the right that blindly follow an ideology without a without thinking through the practical consequences are often doomed to failure unless there is a sea change in political sentiment. That has happened in the past in UK politics, when things have been really bad. But those conditions do not prevail now and we are back to a competition between the parties for the political centre. The Conservatives are an exhausted party wracked by fights between internal factions and obsessed with the national sovereignty issue that gave rise to Brexit.
Starmer is facing an open goal at the next election unless, if by some miracle, Sunak manages to deal with the economic mess the country is in and head off the back stabbers in his party. Starmer seems very capable and is keeping his policy cards to his chest right now. He has to get back those Red Wall seats and both parties think immigration is still a key issue. The Conservatives find it convenient to stoke up the border crisis in the channel and generally make life hard for refugees. Labour seems to be sticking with the imported Australian points system the Home Office has devised. Starmer does not want to fall into the trap of being seen to be weak on immigration controls and let all those job stealing foreigners in. He will, however, give himself some wiggle room with a careful choice of words.
The fact is that if the UK wants a trade deal with India, they are going to have to make some concessions on immigration. Neither party want to talk about that and both try to convince the electorate they can control immigration….and deal with the skills shortage. The Confederation of British Industry, representing big business and trade, are right to be highly sceptical.
The attitude of the Conservatives is very much that business must train UK workers rather than importing skills from overseas and work visas should be restricted to the professional elite occupations. So no care workers, hospitality staff or agricultural workers because those occupations are, apparently not skilled enough and are low paid. At the same time the country has huge numbers leaving the workforce entirely.
Governments have little control over structural changes in the labour market such as we have seen after the Covid lock downs. And they have painted themselves into a corner with immigration. Most are reluctant to accept that immigration had any bearing on the economy. They are still fighting the issues of last election and do not recognise that the world has changed, the priorities are different and the debate has moved on.
Here’s a population breakdown from a few years ago.
Nation Population (mid-2020)
England 56,550,138
Scotland 5,466,000
Wales 3,169,586
Northern Ireland 1,895,510
A UK Senate such as you describe would have 3/4 of the chamber filled by senators representing around 1/6 of the population. That seems like it would create more problems than it would solve.
That’s exactly the purpose of the US Senate, so it makes sense that a senate-based solution would lead to that problem. If anything, the model seems more sensible in the UK, whose component parts really are separate countries with rich divergent cultures.
Going from the article cited in the OP, Keir Starmer hasn’t said anything in public or on the record. Instead, he’s had a “source” talk to friendly media. He probably thinks that reform of the House of Lords is a good idea, and that arguments over reform will provide him with opportunities to bash the Conservative Party. But for now, he’s just throwing out a radical reform idea to see what the reaction will be, while maintaining distance from that idea. So whatever Labour proposes in their future election manifesto will be much less than abolishment.
My guess is that Starmer will seek to reduce the size of the House of Lords and also set a limit on the number of voting Lords. That would probably be popular with the general public, especially if it could be tied to cost saving.
My personal preference would be to not eliminate Lords, but to categorise them as having different powers. Have a set number of Lord Legislators who scrutinise the bills submitted to Parliament. Have a fair system for selecting them, such as corresponding to MP’s parties or proportional representation based on the latest general election. Pay those Lord Legislators a salary, but also establish a duty that they perform their job and can be removed for non-performance. Have Lord Advisors who are experts in their field. Pay them if they’re assigned to a committee or a ministry, but otherwise they have an unpaid role to advise the government as needed. Put the Supreme Court judges into this category as Lords Law. For most of the rest of the Lords, have a title of Lord Honorary. They get to call themselves Lords and can submit opinions to HOL committees, but they don’t receive any pay. Place the hereditary lords and the bishops in that category. For that matter, create other religious lords for fairness. Make the Chief Rabbi, the leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, and other significant religious leaders Lords Honorary. Maybe have a subset of Lords Emeritus for former Prime Ministers, Chancellors and Deputy Prime Ministers with the bonus that they get an office somewhere in the parliamentary estate if they want.
I think there are lots of potential positive ideas for reform of the House of Lords and Kier Starmer would be smart to select a few of the best ideas for his future election manifesto. However, abolishment of the House of Lords won’t be in that manifesto.
So let’s say that each nation had 100 seats in the UK Senate, and those are decided by the popular vote of the last regional election allocated proportionally (for England the votes within England for the last general election).
The Scottish National Party would have 48 seats, based on 1.3 million voters. Plaid Cymru in Wales would have 20 seats based on 225 thousand voters. (Those numbers are from Wikipedia and seem quite low. If other posters have better numbers, please correct me.) Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland would have 29 seats based on 250 thousand votes.
Funny this, but looking at the numbers, maybe there is an argument. I’m not saying I agree with you. The nationalist parties would have 97 out of 400 seats in this scenario, with 1.8 million votes. That’s hugely disproportionate, but still less than 25% of the overall seats. Maybe a hybrid solution of 50% national selection, 50% parliamentary seat selection could be a workable solution. Prepare a draft proposal to send to Kier Starmer and forward it to me for review. I might endorse it.
I don’t think UK Lords can be made Lords of Commonwealth lands any longer, but perhaps Parliament could make an exception and make him Lord of Obi Land in Canada.
The European Parlimentary elections in the UK were used as a protest vote and many if the Members of the European Parliament elected were members of the UK Independence Party that campaigned to leave the EU. So they simply claimed the generous salary and allowances. Nice work if you can get it.
While it is easy to contrive democratic systems such as an elected house of Lords, it does not mean that the electorate are going to take it seriously.
The Constituencies represented by Members of the House of Commons is taken seriously and works well. If you have a problem with public services you can go along or write to the office of your local MP and ask for help. Good constituency MPs take this responsibility very seriously. It is a representative democracy and your local MP is working for you.
So where does an elected member of the House of Lords fit into this? They revise the laws created by the House of Commons. So what value would the electorate see in this, given this secondary role? It risks being regarded as an irrelevance in the eyes of the voters.
It is important for the revising chamber to have significant government expertise. Many are former ministers, civil servants, former judges, etc. These are often selected by committees of MPs consisting of all parties. Many are independent of the main political parties, especially the former civil servants.
Would we instead have these Lords campaign to convince the electorate that they are merit worthy? I can see the public electing Lords with a level of discrimination such as we see in a Reality TV show.
The UK has had experiments like this before. There was an initiative to introduce ejected mayors to cities and one city elected a man dressed as a monkey. They did not see the relevance of the office and did not take it seriously.
There would have to be a serious effort to educate the electorate and sell and explain the relevance of an elected upper House. Most have only a vague idea of what they do.
Nonetheless, there could be some significant improvements to the existing system. Taking away the privilege of the Prime Minister to appoint his supporters and financial backers to life peerages in the Lords would be popular. Give the job to some cross party committee of MPs?
But he actually did, and won re-election - twice. Directly elected city mayors have worked effectively - where they were given clearly-defined and effective powers, especially those delegated from central government, and backed up by some fiscal independence.
But what you say is actually an argument for indirect election rather than against election as such. A revising/watchdog Upper House would be an obvious candidate for that - as in other countries.
I think you make some very good points but I’d just like to stand up for “H’Angus the Monkey”. It did indeed start off tongue in cheek but Stuart Drummond, the man behind the monkey mask not only got elected, he get re-elected twice. Evidently appealing just as much to the Hartlepool voters just as much as any other “traditional” political figure. I have family in that region and apparently he did a good job.
I don’t know what that proves other than perhaps a perversity of mind in the British public. The same mindset that elects a monkey, or sugggested “boaty mcboatface” for a naval ship is the same one that could easily see a very curious mix of characters in a second chamber.
Also, given that H’Angus did do a good job after all, perhaps suggests that career politicians are not the only people able to work in the best interests of the people.
Not from the UK and I have the same impression. In the last general election, an average observer of British politics could reasonably predict the landslide Tory victory. This is because Labour under Corbyn was going into the election with a railway nationalization agenda among other things, apparently out of touch with the more immediate concern voters had, and that’s Brexit. The rest is history.
This sounds a lot like a similar proposition. Sure, abolish the Lords if it comes right down to it, but voters right now want to hear what the parties will do to fix the economy and improve the average household’s purchasing power.
I think that is a very fair assessment. Issues around the cost of living are the most important factor in UK politics. Reforming the House of Lords seems an irrelevancy at best and a distraction at worst. If Labour think it is a big vote winner I think they’ll be disappointed.
Labour is currently leading the Tories on “best to deal with cost of living crisis”.
This wasn’t a big flagship election pledge, it’s not going to be the centre of the manifesto, it was Starmer telling Labour peers outlining his plans for an area of relevance to them, and flying a small kite about it. He’s not banging on about it outside of that - all of his recent public speeches have indeed been about cost of living crisis and the dangers of austerity 2.0 and not one word about reforming the Lords. There’s nothing to suggest Starmer or Labour think this is a big vote winner or that they’re talking about it at the expense of focusing on the major issues. At most, I suspect they think that it’ll be something that motivates the politics geeks of the party faithful (which has value - doors don’t knock themselves) and doesn’t move the needle one way or the other for the general population - which is fine, because they have economic policies for that.
Well, that is what everyone says. I am not sure it is correct.
The Lords are too White, too male, and too Christian. But in other ways they are perfectly representative of the British people, as they are selected randomly. The Commons is drawn from the people with enough time, money, and interest to run for office.
As far as I know, there has never been a homeless member of Commons. There was recently a homeless Lord. Are there any poor people in Commons? Some Lords show up only for the per diem. In terms of wheelchair users, or left-handers, or of Gay people, the Lords are perfectly representative of the British population.
If a few Lords are poor, many have jobs. Some have grand jobs running old family businesses. Some still have the job of running some grand estate. Some sell insurance or run garages. Do any members of Commons do those things?
But of course you are right, most people say the Lords are not representative.
I thought I provided my reasoning. The Lords are selected (traditionally) by accident of birth or (in our epoch) due to their good works (or something). I also mentioned the caveat that the Lords are too male, too White, and too Christian. With that in mind, there as many Gay, limbless, blind, or poor Lord as there are in the general population.
The members of Commons are those who desire to run for political office. Although democratically elected, they are not representative. Although I have not run an analysis, more members of Commons are probably attractive, thin, rich, and college educated than the population that voted for them.
Or to restate, as I was perhaps unclear. The Commons are democratic (as they are elected from those who choose to be politically active) while the Lords (with my caveat) are representative (as they are selected randomly).