The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[Demitri_C]

I think he has done well for himself 

[choffer]

Hasn't she left him though? I'm sure I heard a rumour they'd split because he didn't like her lesbionics.

[blandy]

As this is the politically correct, lentil eating, yoghurt knitting, right-on, non sexist, Labour party thread, could we please keep discussion to bollltics and not the, what the Americans call "scuttlebutt"

i.e. please stay on topic. Thanks .

[MakemineVanilla]

Question of the day is whether it would be a good thing if the House of Lords blocked the cuts in tax-credit even if it was unconstitutional? 

[Rodders]

well we don't have much of a written constitution anyway. I know convention and all that, but to be perfectly honest, they lied about the tax credit malarkey before the election, so they've not got a great platform to be crying over it really.

If it got more people talking about reform and maybe actually establishing a more formal constitution that might also be a good thing. the system is full of far too much anachronistic shite anyway,

PR for the commons

professional experts represented in the lords please.

 

 

 

 

[snowychap]

Question of the day is whether it would be a good thing if the House of Lords blocked the cuts in tax-credit even if it was unconstitutional? 

Yes and I don't agree that it is.

Question of the day ought to be: why is so much (often very important) legislation carried out by means of SIs?

 

 

 

[Jon]

 

PR for the commons

professional experts represented in the lords please.

 

 

 

 

Agree on point 1.

As for the 2nd bit, i'm not sure. Are they to be elected, and if so, surely the 2nd chamber then becomes more powerful? (or should - what's the point of electing a 2nd chamber with no teeth?). Or if these 'experts' are to be appointed, who would be appointing them? If it's the govt, then they are obviously going to be 'politcial' appointments.

I'd prefer an elected 2nd chamber TBH, but on a non-party, 'expert in field' basis.

[Jon]

Question of the day is whether it would be a good thing if the House of Lords blocked the cuts in tax-credit even if it was unconstitutional?

As others have said, I don't see how this is unconstitutional.

I don't agree with the (existence of) H of L anyway. An unelected and unnaccoutable 2nd chamber filled with cronies and political sympathisers and donators pocketing big sums to sleep through the day is not what a 2nd chamber should be about.  

It should be reformed as per the above, and should be vasty scaled down to maybe 50-100 'experts'

[Rodders]

not elected no, but a nomination process within the particular trade / profession body - nominate a few heads with decades of experience who'll understand the consequences of various legislation. No party lines etc. Or something like that anyway

[HanoiVillan]

Remove the House of Lords altogether. A second chamber is not at all necessary, loads and loads and loads of countries do without one and we could too. 

[sharkyvilla]

I reckon the Lords should be filled up proportionally based on the GE vote, then the parties appoint their own Lords preferably based on intelligence and expertise rather than how much they pay them.  That way in theory every vote does count, yet you still keep the definitive result FPTP generally gives in the commons.  As for whether it was a good thing they voted it down, I think it was just because it was a really bad, unfair policy and it needed to be done.

[Rodders]

no way, you need a check / balance against the elected lot in chamber one. and FPTP is an horrendous electoral system, has created massive distortions in vote representation in every election.

[MakemineVanilla]

It seems hugely ironic that a hundred years after Lloyd George had his 'People's Budget' blocked by the H of L because it taxed the rich and gave welfare to the less well-off, that the reverse should happen where a withdrawal of welfare is blocked by the H of L.

The 1911 Parliament Act established the formal dominance of the H of C.

Attlee reduced the power of the H of L further with the 1949 Parliament Act to prevent the Lords blocking Labour's plans for post-war socialism.

The hunting lobby challenged the 1949 Act and failed in 2004.

The question is whether the H of L's ability to defy the H of C is a good thing when it suits us and a bad thing when it doesn't, or is the formal dominance of the H of C more important as a constitutional principle?

 

[ender4]

I like the idea of the HoL being made up of 50-100 experts... but who would decide which experts get a seat?

Also, i've decided i like Corbyn.

 

[blandy]

The question is whether the H of L's ability to defy the H of C is a good thing when it suits us and a bad thing when it doesn't, or is the formal dominance of the H of C more important as a constitutional principle?

I think that question makes some underlying assumptions - for example by saying "defy" it implies that they didn't "do as they are told". But the HoL isn't there to "do as it's told [by Cameron or whoever]" it's there to assess the merits or otherwise proposed legislation, before it becomes law.

The thing that it did and does (sometimes well, sometimes not well) is simply to review, comment, return, propose changes etc. to various stuff that comes from the commons.

The good or bad part /suits or doesn't suit caveat is almost entirely in the eye of the beholder (Tories will be raging, Labour pleased in this instance) and irrelevant. The judgement should surely be whether they improve the quality of legislation that gets enacted.

[Jon]

I like the idea of the HoL being made up of 50-100 experts... but who would decide which experts get a seat?

Also, i've decided i like Corbyn.

 

[Rodders]

I like the idea of the HoL being made up of 50-100 experts... but who would decide which experts get a seat?

Also, i've decided i like Corbyn.

 

definitely the tricky bit, make it as immune to lobbying and nefarious influences as is possible. Though given that the end result for whoever wins a seat is a reasonable degree of influence that'll be a hard bit. Perhaps, if any candidate has a history of actively seeking a candidature for any post large or small they are by default disqualifed ( to slightly paraphrase Douglas Adams I think )

 

 

[HanoiVillan]

no way, 

LONG POST ALERT!

One thing I've learned since beginning to stress in public that the House of Lords should be abolished altogether, is that it's so far from mainstream thought on the subject that it gets dismissed out of hand. 

Reading this thread, one thing you don't see is people saying 'the current system is great, why would you change anything?' Instead everyone has issues, problems with it - and everyone has a mildly different solution to 'reforming' the second chamber. Unfortunately, all of the suggestions I've seen offered here confer no great advantages on the current system, and none at all have the advantages of just abolishing the entire institution. 

 

professional experts represented in the lords please.

'Professional experts' are already represented in the House of Lords. Most life peers come from one of the five key areas, 'business', PR, media, law and finance. More 'professional experts' in these fields are in absolutely no way required, their voices are already too dominant. All of them have a very narrow range of life experiences and similar metropolitan backgrounds, and hence very similar priors on which to base their conclusions. If they have something valuable to say, then they should get elected saying it. I have far more respect for someone like Keir Starmer who actually sought election, rather than waiting for his CV to get him into ermine. 

 

I'd prefer an elected 2nd chamber TBH, but on a non-party, 'expert in field' basis.

Who is going to vote in an election which is nothing more than judging CV's? A bloodless corporate hiring decision? Political parties exist for a reason - we need some way of sifting people according to their beliefs. 

not elected no, but a nomination process within the particular trade / profession body - nominate a few heads with decades of experience who'll understand the consequences of various legislation. No party lines etc. Or something like that anyway

So the heads of trade bodies get to choose which legislation passes? Why not trade unions, or fox hunters, or ramblers, or musicians, or nudists, or indeed any conceivable group that could be impacted by government legislation? Why is the nation's pre-eminent quantity surveyor more 'qualified' to decide whether ecstasy should be legalised than a nightclub owner or a drug dealer? You see my point, I hope. It comes back to CV's - they aren't enough to judge someone's suitability for government. We need political parties. We need politics. 

I reckon the Lords should be filled up proportionally based on the GE vote, then the parties appoint their own Lords preferably based on intelligence and expertise rather than how much they pay them.  

'Expertise' we've already dealt with, but I like 'based on intelligence'! Mandatory IQ tests for all MP's! It doesn't seem very practical, or something that politicians are going to be desperate to introduce, and that's before we get onto the fact that 'IQ' is an almost meaningless number in the first place. Or is it that parties just decide amongst themselves who the most intelligent is? In which case, everyone will be competing to seem dumb so they don't have to move into the powerless second chamber. 

no way, you need a check / balance against the elected lot in chamber one. and FPTP is an horrendous electoral system, has created massive distortions in vote representation in every election.

The House of Lords doesn't provide 'checks' really - in six or nine months, the changes to tax credits will have been forced through by the Parliament Act. It wastes a bit of government time, that's all. 

I like the idea of the HoL being made up of 50-100 experts... but who would decide which experts get a seat?

Also, i've decided i like Corbyn.

 

 

definitely the tricky bit, make it as immune to lobbying and nefarious influences as is possible. Though given that the end result for whoever wins a seat is a reasonable degree of influence that'll be a hard bit. Perhaps, if any candidate has a history of actively seeking a candidature for any post large or small they are by default disqualifed ( to slightly paraphrase Douglas Adams I think )

 

 

It's an amusing idea. But in reality, people who have no interest in politics make terrible politicians, much in the same way people with no interest in football make terrible footballers, people with no interest in fashion wear shit clothes etc etc. The country really does actually need to be run by competent people with an interest in what they're doing. 

 

On the other hand, we could abolish the chamber. 'Checking' and 'balancing' of exactly the same strength the Lords provides, or even stronger, could be provided by stronger standing committees that had real power. Doing so would have three major advantages:

 

1) It would remove one of the major sources of corruption in the UK political system (as opposed to increasing the value of that corruption, which is what would happen with a smaller-but-still-appointed second chamber). 

2) It would force MP's to take voting seriously. Last week we had the absurd spectacle of Heidi Allen, Tory MP, being roundly applauded in the Guardian and elsewhere for giving a 'brave' speech condemning the tax credit cuts, before she marched through the lobby voting for them anyway. Why did she do this? It allowed her to 'make a stand', while not totally irritating the whips. Why could she deceive her constituents in this way? Because she knew the 'adults' 'upstairs' would step in. 

3) It isn't necessary. It has no real benefits. Countries can, and do, survive absolutely fine without second chambers. Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Slovakia, South Korea and Sweden - what do they have in common? They're all democracies, and they all have unicameral legislatures. 

 

[MakemineVanilla]

The question is whether the H of L's ability to defy the H of C is a good thing when it suits us and a bad thing when it doesn't, or is the formal dominance of the H of C more important as a constitutional principle?

I think that question makes some underlying assumptions - for example by saying "defy" it implies that they didn't "do as they are told". But the HoL isn't there to "do as it's told [by Cameron or whoever]" it's there to assess the merits or otherwise proposed legislation, before it becomes law.

The thing that it did and does (sometimes well, sometimes not well) is simply to review, comment, return, propose changes etc. to various stuff that comes from the commons.

The good or bad part /suits or doesn't suit caveat is almost entirely in the eye of the beholder (Tories will be raging, Labour pleased in this instance) and irrelevant. The judgement should surely be whether they improve the quality of legislation that gets enacted.

As Cicero wrote back in the day, the only worthy test of a political system is its power to resist tyranny whether from the mob (democracy) or the king.

By this measure I think it can be claimed that the Lords served its function in this respect, in that they have not challenged the right of the government to reduce tax-credits but only the way they have implemented that decision.

Expecting people used to a certain income to suddenly adjust to less in April verges on tyranny and as the Lords have decided, it would be more reasonable to stagger any reductions.

In that sense I think it can be concluded that our system is working fine.

 

 

[tonyh29]

Question of the day is whether it would be a good thing if the House of Lords blocked the cuts in tax-credit even if it was unconstitutional?

As others have said, I don't see how this is unconstitutional.

I don't agree with the (existence of) H of L anyway. An unelected and unnaccoutable 2nd chamber filled with cronies and political sympathisers and donators pocketing big sums to sleep through the day is not what a 2nd chamber should be about.  

It should be reformed as per the above, and should be vasty scaled down to maybe 50-100 'experts'

I agree with the bit in bold

the experts bit could be a sticking point .. Experts also have a tendency to be bought for money and I'm not sure you could maintain their impartiality