Arising out of an exchange elsewhere, there would never be an
election for a British Head of State.
The nomination process would be used to ensure that there was only
ever one candidate, alternating between the preferred nominees of the two main
parties.
I do not mean one "viable" or "credible" candidate. I mean one candidate.
There would have to be some nomination
requirement, which in Britain would be a percentage of MPs.
Only two parties would ever have a high enough
percentage of MPs to nominate anyone, and they would just take it in turns.
There would never be an election.
Which country did you
think that this was?
Since we are always going to have coronations of one sort or the other, we may as well continue to have stylish ones.
Since we are always going to have coronations of one sort or the other, we may as well continue to have stylish ones.
It's like the preposterous Liberal Democrat/Labour vision of an elected House of Lords as championed by Tony Benn and Michael Foot.
ReplyDeleteAs if the House of Commons is just filled with independent- minded talent.
An elected Lords would just mean one entirely chosen by the central party machines, not the people, and loyal to the Liberal Elite donors, whips, trades unions and media owners.
We should have a fully hereditary House of Lords steeped in a thousand years of British history and based on the Burkean principle of a contract between the dead, the living and the unborn, perfectly embodied by the Hereditary peers and the constitution, our collective inheritance which it is their duty to defend.
The Government of the day could always create as many hereditary peerages as it pleased.
ReplyDeleteAnd until the advent of life peers, it did. Most hereditary peerages are of nineteenth or twentieth century creation.
The only party with a formal policy of a fully elected second chamber is the Conservatives, who have been of that mind ever since William Hague became Leader.
It was Tony Blair and Gordon Brown who stopped it, just as it had been Michael Foot who had done so in the 1960s. You are plain wrong about that.
Excuse me?
ReplyDeleteIt was Michael Foot's manifesto policy to abolish the House of Lords altogether in 1983. Read the manifesto. It's online to the day.
William Hague defended the hereditaries against Labour's abolition of them until Lord Cranbourne went behind his back to cut a deal with Labour and end 900 years of history.
Blair's act of constitutional vandalism had been Labour policy since Michael Foot in 1983.
As for the hereditaries, there were many titles predating the 19th century, but 19th century hereditaries remain far more independent than 21st century party appointees.
And infinitely more independent than anyone elected. They defeated Thatcher 386 times.
Labour's policy has been to have an appointed house only as a temporary measure on the way to an elected one.
The current hybrid House just can't be defended for long since it embodies no principle at all, other than parties choosing stooges.
Which is all that it ever did embody (and you are just factually wrong in much of that comment; I don't think that you quite remember the Blair years).
ReplyDeleteThe question is whether there is in principle anything wrong with an Upper House of "party stooges". In any case, that is the only Upper House that we have ever had.
You are right. I remember, like you do, Blair ruling it out at PMQs on Foot's successful old argument from 1968-9, that it would be a threat to the authority of the Commons. He was cheered by his own side and jeered by the Tories.
ReplyDeleteHague had been campaigning for an elected second chamber for 20 years even then, as Blair pointed out by reading from his youthful pamphlet on the subject.
"Would he agree with everything he said 20 years ago", asked Hague, "or with anything he said 20 years ago?"
Funny line but didn't answer the question. Blair had changed his mind on a lot. Hague the Thatcherite meritocrat still wanted to abolish the Lords. His party still do. Blair's still don't.
Exactly.
ReplyDeleteI remember it well.
David Lindsay writes:
ReplyDelete"Which is all that it has ever embodied"
If the Lords was only ever a "house of stooges" how is it that Thatcher only created three peers? And the hereditaries defeated her Government over 300 times in 13 years?
No
Thatcher created an awful lot more than three Peers.
ReplyDelete