Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Why do you keep an undemocratic institution like the House of Lords anyway? Seems anachronistic.

In large part for the same reason the UK has lots of other anachronisms - there's never been a revolution, or occupation, or "constitutional moment" to sweep away anachronisms and create a new, more coherent, orderly, rationalised system.

Practically speaking they are anachronistic and undemocratic (Blair toyed with elected "people's peers" ) but it is a counter-majoritarian weight in the system and they tend to do quite a lot of important amending/re-drafting work on legislation. The government does not have a majority in the House of Lords and I think, since the hereditary peers were largely abolished, no government has had a majority.

There are party political peers some of whom are just party hatchetmen - prominent donors, loyalists who aren't quite cut out for frontline politics. But it also includes quite a lot of institutional experience so there are lots of former cabinet ministers, former party leaders, a former NATO Secretary General (Lord Robertson), former European Commissioners (Lord Mandelson, Baroness Ashton, Lord Patten etc). It used to be standard for former PMs to move to the Lords (Ted Heath was an exception because he chose to remain as an MP - Theresa May is doing the same at the minute), but Blair, Brown, Major and Cameron have all stayed out of the House of Lords - I suspect this is because they don't want to have to file reports on their finances.

But there are also the crossbenchers who are non-partisan figures appointed to the Lords and are the second largest "bloc", obviously they have no whip or structure. They're all independents. These include former speakers, but also non-political figures so senior civil servants, retired generals/admirals etc, the former heads of the intelligence services, former senior judges, former BBC Director Generals, former regulators and BoE monetary policy committee members, some senior academics, medics, leaders of charities, business and trade union leaders etc - basically the traditional idea of the "establishment". There are also a few very prominent/able barristers in the House of Lords, normally as cross-benchers, so Lord Pannick who was the lead barrister against the government in all the Brexit cases is a cross-bench peer.

There's also the most senior bishops of the Church of England (the "Lords Spiritual" v the "Lords Temporal", which is everyone else). There's been talk of formalising peerages for leaders of other faith groups but I don't think that's happened - the Chief Rabbi is normally appointed to the Lords though.

Because they're undemocratic, the convention is that the Lords will not vote down legislation that was in the governing party's manifesto, because that was part of their manifesto pledges that people got to vote on. Otherwise they can and do inflict defeats on governments. The Lords also move more slowly (the government can't guillotine debates, for example, the Lords are self-regulating so government doesn't control their timetable/agenda) and most of the amendments that work their way into final legislation originate in the Lords. I can't remember who but one member of the Lords described their role as being "parliamentary worms" - they are given a bunch of rubbish by the Commons, which they then digest and work through and amend to return to the Commons something a little more useful

Anecdotally I know someone who, with other lawyers in his field, went to a meeting with four or five Lords amending legislation in their field. It wasn't anything official or getting testimony or anything like that, it was just speaking to practitioners to understand any legal issues/technicalities with the legislation - he was incredibly impressed at how much they knew the detail and how technical their questions where. In a way I think a lot of the stuff the Lords do is the stuff people think the Commons do or should do.

In a lot of ways post-Blair's reforms it's not a million miles away from how the Irish Seanad operates - so that includes Senators some are nominated by the Taoiseach, others elected by graduates of specific universities (a bit like the old Cambridge and Oxford MPs) and the rest are elected by "vocational panels" such as the "agriculture panel" or the "culture and education panel". Some are party political others are independent - there is an election element to the Seanad but only certain people can vote, in certain panels and there's control over nominations by those panels.

Edit: Oh and of course the other point is that ultimately the Commons - which has a democratic mandate - can overrule the Lords - which doesn't - and force legislation through. So if there's a determination to pass legislation Lords can block it but can't ultimately stop it because they are unelected while the Commons are elected.

Also got to pondering on Johnson lately with him trying to come across as such an environmentalist.... Is this just because he smells untapped opportunity in green industries that he can try and spin as brexit benefits...

I think that's definitely part of it - he's very big on selling the idea of a new "green industrial revolution" and thinks there are lots of jobs that can come from that. Also it's because the UK was hosting COP so it's a big way to project "global Britain" - remember the Integrated Defence Review talked a lot about Britain using "convening power" to advance its interests.

I think there is also a personal side to it - everyone knows and points out that his wife is very big on environmental politics and previously worked in an ocean preservation charity. But also his dad was a senior civil servant in the European Commission on the environment in the 70s, he did similar work for the World Bank aand has worked for various conservationist charities for the last 50 years as well as publishing numerous books on the envoironment. So I think it's stuff and concerns that Johnson has always been around - even if I suspect it's more the Prince Charles/conservative type of environmentalism.

But also Johnson loves big infrastructure projects. It's not entirely new. From his time as mayor - he shrank the congestion charge area, but introduced Ultra Low Emissions Zones (slowly), as well as the Boris bikes (a lot of the work was done by Ken) and, I think, he still is the mayor who built the most cycling infrastructure.

More generally I think people focus too much on his columns where he needed to write something provocative and interesting for a conservative audience (Telegraph or Spectator) every week, and not enough on his eight year record as mayor because I think a lot of Johnson as PM is there in Johnson as mayor. Even just looking at the electoral map - before Johnson the Tories just won a few outer boroughs and very rich innner boroughs like Kensington and Chelsea. Johnson won by expanding the Tory vote. He won more minority votes and he build up support in the more working class outer borough suburbs and basically had a donut around the Labour vote. But it's basically the same trick/expanded coalition as in 2019.

[Tamas]

Johnson on a hospital PR visit:



I wonder if I'd be allowed to be without a mask?

[The Larch]

Why does he have his tie tucked into his shirt?

[Josquius]

And who is he trying to fight?

[HVC]

he always looks like he's waking up from a bender.

[Syt]

And who is he trying to fight?

Probably just another kid.

[Zanza]

@Sheilgh, re HoL: If your argument is that the HoL is an establishment/technocracy check on the government,the mechanism where the Prime Minister can just name new members without any oversight renders this point a bit moot. There seems to be nothing that stops him from stuffing the HoL.

Why is there no better mechanism to elect new members of the HoL periodically?

[Josquius]

@Sheilgh, re HoL: If your argument is that the HoL is an establishment/technocracy check on the government,the mechanism where the Prime Minister can just name new members without any oversight renders this point a bit moot. There seems to be nothing that stops him from stuffing the HoL.

Why is there no better mechanism to elect new members of the HoL periodically?

Technically its the monarch appointing them. That's meant to be a check. Of course recent events have rendered that one a bit shaky.

And ja. Reforming the Lords is one of the big two campaigns in making the UK a democracy.

[Sheilbh]

@Sheilgh, re HoL: If your argument is that the HoL is an establishment/technocracy check on the government,the mechanism where the Prime Minister can just name new members without any oversight renders this point a bit moot. There seems to be nothing that stops him from stuffing the HoL.

My argument is that they should be abolished and most of them guillotined, but we are where we are.

I think what I've said is roughly the purpose they serve now and the theory for their role, to the extent there is one. But the current House of Lords is actually pretty new - it's only with Blair's first government that the 700 or so hereditary peers were largely abolished. So then the argument/theory would be different and even more unsustainable.

But you're right - the Prime Minister can appoint new life peers and before then could recommend people for peerages and the monarch would follow that. That's how the Commons asserted its dominance over the Lords. You know the first Parliament act which happens because the Conservative dominated Lords rejected the "People's Budget" led to two elections where one of the key issues was that the Liberals wanted to legislate to stop the Lords from blocking budgets and reducing their power to just delaying legislation, both elections were won by the Liberals and Irish Parliamentary Party. The Commons passed the legislation and the Lords acquiesced - threatened by the Prime Minister threatening to appoint 1,000 Liberal peers. There were similar issues for Attlee trying to nationalise most major industries.

Having said that I don't think any PM has actually stuffed the HoL - the closest is probably Blair who made a lot of appointments to re-balance the Lords from its historically very conservative dominance, but also he got rid of all the hereditaries so there was plenty of space. There is advisory oversight and by custom Lords are only appointed at certain points (the most corrupt/lavish tends to be a Prime Minsiter's "resignation list") with a number of cross-benchers as well as appointments by the other parties. The most lavish is still Harold Wilson in his last two years when he appointed 135 Lords including his secretary (who was very formidable) - who later went on to pick the recipients of Wilson's resignation honours.

It's one of those things where everyone agrees the current system isn't great but there's no consensus on an alternative - in particular because the Lords keeps growing (I believe only the People's Congress in China is a larger legislative chamber). Decade on decade more and more are appointed (Cameron and Blair were the worst recent offenders), but ultimately none of them really want to give up their patronage powers.

I'd say there's a government or backbench sponsored proposal to reform the House of Lords probably every parliament, but it never passes. In general the public do not like and do not see the point of the Lords, but it's probably the bit of parliament that actually works most like it should in theory

Why is there no better mechanism to elect new members of the HoL periodically?

It depends what you want. Personally I'm not entirely sure why we need bicameralism at all. To the extent we do I think it's probably helpful to have one house with less of a democratic mandate than the other to avoid two equally legitimate but separately elected chambers standing off - as in the US or Italy.

Edit: Incidentally for Tamas - I spent most of today furious about a story about a planning inspector refusing permission for the demolition of five old homes to build 57 new homes in Watford. The reason was due to uncertainty over the welfare of bats "which may or may not be living" in the five old buildings. "Although the survey did not find any evidence of bats [... as the planning inspector] had insufficent evidence to be able to be satisfied the [demolition] would not have a harmful effect on protected species, he refused the scheme."

This is part of my growing conviction that everything important in politics and economics in the West comes back to housing and labour exploitation - my late Marxist turn to material conditions

My predeiction for the bat housing plan is that there's a strong possibility the government might try to step in and approve the development, after which the Guardian, Labour party and everyone I follow on Twitter will go insane about Tories wanting to kill (possibly non-existent) bats. Then we lock into a couple of weeks of Geronimo adjacent bat-killing lunacy

[The Larch]

GB News, getting slightly carried away, but proudly wearing their poppies.

[Josquius]

Surprised that is still on the air. Wonderful schadenfreude to be had in its amazing success

[Tamas]

Edit: Incidentally for Tamas - I spent most of today furious about a story about a planning inspector refusing permission for the demolition of five old homes to build 57 new homes in Watford. The reason was due to uncertainty over the welfare of bats "which may or may not be living" in the five old buildings. "Although the survey did not find any evidence of bats [... as the planning inspector] had insufficent evidence to be able to be satisfied the [demolition] would not have a harmful effect on protected species, he refused the scheme."

This is part of my growing conviction that everything important in politics and economics in the West comes back to housing and labour exploitation - my late Marxist turn to material conditions

My predeiction for the bat housing plan is that there's a strong possibility the government might try to step in and approve the development, after which the Guardian, Labour party and everyone I follow on Twitter will go insane about Tories wanting to kill (possibly non-existent) bats. Then we lock into a couple of weeks of Geronimo adjacent bat-killing lunacy

That's like the best excuse ever, applicable to all walks of life. "I am not going into the office because there may or may not be bats in there."

What an absolute farce.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - it's a useful excuse for the next thing I should go to but really don't want to: "I don't have enough information to know that this won't harm an endangered species. So I need to stay at home."

[Richard Hakluyt]

The palace of Westminster is probably home to many bats; which may explain Johnson's absence from the corruption debate yesterday.............to think that many are spinning it as moral cowardice 

[Tamas]

Wow the widespread corruption is just ridiculous. I wonder if this information was available earlier just the press was too shy to cover them?

Remember, these are the guys doing it openly enough to actually pick up these gigs as second jobs. They are the most visible amateurs.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/09/iain-duncan-smith-accused-of-brazen-conflict-of-interest-over-25000-job

Iain Duncan Smith accused of 'brazen conflict of interest' over £25,000 job
Ex-Tory leader chaired government taskforce that recommended new rules benefiting firm he was employed by

Iain Duncan Smith is facing questions over his £25,000-a-year second job advising a multimillion-pound hand sanitiser company after he chaired a government taskforce that recommended new rules benefiting the firm.

The MP and former Conservative party leader chaired the Task Force on Innovation, Growth, and Regulatory Reform, which reported back in May after he and two other MPs were asked by Boris Johnson to recommend ways of cutting supposed EU red-tape.

However, the fresh spotlight on moonlighting by MPs has now prompted questions about the taskforce's recommendations that alcohol-free hand sanitisers should be formally recognised as suitable for use in the UK.

The report made no reference to Duncan Smith's relationship with Byotrol, which provides the NHS with 92% of its non-alcohol sanitiser. It retains the former Tory leader as an adviser for £25,000 a year, according to his declaration in parliament's register of members' interests.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/09/geoffrey-cox-under-pressure-to-quit-for-working-from-caribbean

The Tory MP Geoffrey Cox is facing mounting pressure to quit on Thursday night after it was revealed he pocketed nearly £1m moonlighting in the past year and voted in the Commons while working as a lawyer in the British Virgin Islands (BVI).

In pointed remarks, Boris Johnson's spokesperson said MPs must be "visible" to their constituents and that the prime minister "thinks an MP's primary job is to serve" those who voted for them.

Labour and some of Cox's own disgruntled colleagues also vented their fury at the former attorney general amid growing anger over MPs' second jobs. Last week the former minister Owen Paterson quit the Commons after an "egregious" breach of lobbying rules for work conducted on behalf of two companies that paid him more than £100,000.

Cox, 61, declared his extra earnings as a barrister and did not break any rules. But he faced fury for the many hours spent on work unrelated to the Commons and the £150,000 he was paid for giving legal advice to the BVI in relation to corruption charges brought by the UK Foreign Office.