I’ve made my views known on many occassions on electing the Lords and the disaster that this will prove to be for democracy in this country.
One of the main reasons why an elected upper house would be a disaster is because it would expose the House of Lords to the party politics that plagues the House of Commons where the party comes before constituents and principles.
Rather than electing the House of Lords, if we are to have an extra election then I suggest we elect the Prime Minister.
As much as it pains me to say it, the Americans actually do elections better than we do. In the US, the only thing stopping an independent becoming President (the closest office to that of Prime Minister here) is the fact that 95% of American people wouldn’t vote for anyone who isn’t a Republican or Democrat.
In the UK, it is impossible for an independent to be Prime Minister. Ok, technically it’s possible – the Queen asks the leader of the party that wins the majority of seats in the election to form a government. The leader then takes the office of Prime Minister although this is only convention – there is nothing stopping the leader of the party appointing someone else as Prime Minister. Similarly, it is only convention that says that the Queen asks the leader of the majority party to form a government – there is nothing legally stopping the Queen from asking any other MP from forming a government. But lets be honest, it’s not going to happen any more than the Queen is going to sack Tony Bliar, dissolve Parliament, call a general election and refuse to give royal ascent to the next illiberal piece of legislation the Labour Stazi foist on us.
The House of Lords is subject to the whims of Parliament. Should a peer – hereditary or not – act out of turn they can be barred from the upper house and/or stripped of their peerage by Parliament. To whose whim is the Prime Minister subject? The Queen can sack him but she won’t. His party could sack him but they won’t. A vote of no confidence could be called but Labour still has a majority in the House of Commons so the vote would be doomed to failure and the party would still hold power.
No, the only answer is to hold elections to the office of Prime Minister. This is the only way that any person eligible to stand for Parliament can become the leader of this country instead of restricting the position only to those who sell their souls to a political party.
Any idea that get’s us away from blinkered party politics is a good idea IMO. Wonko… you have my vote!
A most interesting departure… you are right about party politics, there are some half decent labour MP’s, but their ultimate adherence to the party line prevents them following their convictions through. It is a dangerous game when a minority government with a leader who sees the elected chamber as an irrelevence, also wants to neuter the upper chamber.
Labour wants all its totalitarian policies unopposed, never have we had a more dangerous gang of criminals holding the reins of power.
Hear Hear!
A brilliant piece as usual well done
There would be an elected element of the lords of around 10% of MPs which would be around 65. They would have their own ‘super’ constituencies (10 mp constituencies = 1 lord constituency).
The Parliament Act would be changed. At the moment they can completely bypass all the lords and don’t have to care about them. Under my proposals the Parliament Act would be modified.
It would be modified so it could bypass the unelected Lords but the elected Lords would still have a vote.
Having an elected element may create a danger of creating a House of Commons clone which is a bad thing because the job of the Lords is to hold the government to account.
I think that the elected lords should be purely independent and the elections for lords would not include political parties. They would also have to fund themselves because donations would be banned too.
This would probably create trilateral legislature rather than a bilateral legislature though but I think the government would be far more accountable than it is now because the opposition parties have failed to hold the government to account on anything.
Agree that the PM should be elected – but he should also be excluded from Parliament, as in the US, along with the Executive. In this country, Parliament ‘captured’ the king in the Civil War and so we have a PM and ministers who are also members of the legislature. Previously no office holder under the crown was allowed to take a seat in Parliament. If MPs were barred from offices of state the Govt would lose its power to whip them into line to support policies voted on by 25% of the electorate. Independent-minded MPs like Frank Field would flourish. The PM would become the Chief Exec of the UK. The Queen would remain as Head of State (chairman of the UK).
Can you please help to solve an arguement?
Is there some querky law whereby the Queen does have the power to dissolve a government at any time for any reason she may have. Yet if she does so she is compelled to resign as Monarch?
Close. To the best of my knowledge, the Queen is at liberty to dissolve parliament, sack the PM and sack the cabinet whenever she feels like it and then she gets to choose whichev elected MP she wants to form a government regardless of whether they represent the majority party or not.
However, she retains this power only on the condition that she doesn’t actually use it.
I touched on this a long time ago and the paradox that this creates. The Queen can legally exercise these powers whenever she wants but if she did exercise them parliament would legislate to stop her doing it again. However, if she refused to give the bill preventing her from doing it royal assent them it isn’t a law. You’re basically left with a pissing contest – the law says the Queen can do it, parliament says that they’re elected and if they want to stop her they can.