An elected second chamber has been the formal policy of the Lib Dems for as long as that party has existed, and of the Conservatives ever since they were able to pack off dear old John Major.
But it was certainly not Labour Party policy under the actively opposed Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Blair used to make the case against it from the Despatch Box, cheered on by his own side and catcalled by the Conservatives.
Oh, well, somehow that seems to have gone by the by.
But if this could not be managed by two parties with quite such a level of commitment to it, and very few of today's Conservative MPs were in Parliament before that became their party's policy as long ago as the summer of 1997, then its likelihood under Labour is decidedly remote.
Your claim this hasn't been Labour policy for long is technically true. Labours original policy was an honest commitment to abolishing the House of Lords altogether. Do you think that's better?
ReplyDeleteOr to quote from Michael Foot's 1983 'suicide note'; service.
We will; Take action to abolish the undemocratic House of Lords as quickly as possible... and, as an interim measure, introduce a Bill in the first session of parliament to remove its legislative powers - with the exception of those which relate to the life of a parliament.""
Well, as I say, at least Labour was honest back then.
Creating an elected Senate of course means abolishing the House of Lords.
That was not the "original" policy at all. A few short years before, Jim Callaghan had threatened to resign as Leader if it became party policy.
DeleteUnicameralism remains there in the Labour Party, if you know where to look for it: "If the Commons did its job properly, then there would be no need of a second chamber."
But the whole thing will almost certainly never happen, and least of all under Labour, which has never been keen on an alternative centre of authority to the House of Commons, the time of which it will never have any trouble taking up with other things.
Those two points are not unconnected.
Oh, and anyone who falls back on the "suicide note" line cannot be older than 13, and has never a read a book. Any book. Ever.
I remember you as a unicameralist. The name usually cited is Dennis Skinner but middle of the road Labour figures like George Howarth have been making the same case for years. The Commons would have to be able to do its job properly and then have to get on and do it. But if those things both happened, there would be no need for a second chamber.
DeleteTwo very big ifs there, though.
DeleteBut the principle is sound: the only reason why anyone feels the need of a second chamber is that the House of Commons cannot or will not do what we all know that in principle it ought to be doing.
It is just that I cannot see that ever changing.
David Lindsay writes:
ReplyDelete""But the principle is sound: the only reason why anyone feels the need of a second chamber is that the House of Commons cannot or will not do what we all know that in principle it ought to be doing.""
No that is not and has never been the reason for a revising chamber. It's to stop the Government of the day becoming too powerful. And to defend the Constitution. Its as simple as that.
As for "the principle is sound"; no it's not. Miliband's claim that it must be representative of all the regions is constitutionally illiterate.
An elected House of Lords means a puppet house run by the same vested interests who run the Commons (the point of inherited peerages was that they didn't owe their seat to the Prime Minister and thus were free to vote independently of the Government).
Unfortunately a puppet house is more or less what it's become since Labour abolished the independent hereditary peers.
Bless.
DeleteThat last line is particularly precious. Some of us remember them...
Remember, David, Tories are non-political. That is why the equally non-political BBC never asks them any questions.
DeletePeople who had seats in Parliament but only turned up when the Tory Chief Whip brought them in to outvote the regulars, voting for things they could not even name, were independent.
That was called "stopping the Government of the day becoming too powerful" and "defending the Constitution". We all remember how very independent of the Thatcher and Major governments the hereditary peers were.
Only a pleb would question this, you common little oik.
It did used to be comical, didn't it? Except that it wasn't funny.
DeleteThe House of Lords has now been regularly voting down Government proposals for many years.
Under the old dispensation, it did that, well, pretty much never outside periods of Labour Government, when what was otherwise a drinking club somehow sprang into political life.
It is also the best debating chamber in the world now. Having a largely bovine element, albeit one that mostly turned up only when told to do so by the Captain of House or whatever nonsense Bertie Wooster term they employed, did not make for a more elevated tone of debate in the past.
You are right, of course. The Tories always think that their own position is just common sense and the national interest. But they no longer have hundreds of reserve legislators who think that, although mostly without being able to articulate it.
I especially love the thick Kippers who hate David Cameron but want to have a whole House of Parliament full of him.
DeleteThey want to elect everything no matter how inappropriate, they not only want to keep PCCs but want the same things for schools and the NHS, that's Ukip policy. They want recall elections, open primaries, the works.
But they want to bring back the hereditary peers. I know Kippers are the most tribal Tories of the lot, but seats for life to people who only darkened the door to save Tory governments from tight votes? Seriously? Yes, seriously. If you can say "seriously" about people like that.
Then there was the claim that they were financially independent. Not enough to eschew claiming their attendance allowances, they weren't.
DeleteQuite right, says any good trade unionist. But that cut the ground from under the claim of financial independence.
There never was any ground under the claim of political independence. They were there precisely because that was what they were not.
And why should they have been politicaly independent? We are talking about a House of Parliament.
The present arrangements still reserve seats for the Conservatives, for the Lib Dems and for Independent politicians (which is not at all the same thing as being independent of politics, a ridiculous position for a parliamentarian), as well as for Labour.
By all means let that continue in whatever comes next. It anything ever does.
What do you reckon to Miliband's scheme to have the Senate meet outside London?
ReplyDeleteWhere, exactly? It would be Manchester, wouldn't it? It's always bloody Manchester.
DeleteHere on the East Coast Main Line, we sit down in, say, Durham, and we stand up in Kings Cross, right there in the West End, a stone's throw from the Palace of Westminster.
Distant? Yes. But inaccessible? Not at all.
Doncaster is also on the East Coast Main Line.
If the Senate is to be outside London, then have it in Cornwall, or on a Hebride. Why not?
Bishops?
ReplyDeleteThere will soon be no point.
DeleteThey were originally there for being great landholders, but that reason is now gone for everyone else.
In any case, in terms of perception (including their own), they had already redefined their role as the embodiment of certain doctrinal principles.
They held that, as Fathers in God, they were also Fathers of the Nation, in the sense of Church Fathers, a theologically precise concept such as was also employed to refer to the Synod Fathers lately gathered in Rome.
But, by no means only or even primarily in relation to the House of Lords, the whole understanding of Fathers in God is of course about to be blown apart in the Church of England.
If the Lords Spiritual now embody, say, gender equality, or the role of the professions in maintaining links between civil society and even the poorest or most remote communities, then there is no more reason to have them there than any of a host of other people.
The independence thing was never more than "I think they should be", at a push "they could be if they wanted to be" but no-one who paid attention could think that. They were financially no more independent than salaried MPs and politically no more so either. Look at how they used their seats. It was all a fantasy, they worked by some public school honour code that boiled down to always doing as they were told and never asking questions. The Lords are far more independent now.
ReplyDeleteBut you are right, this Senate will never happen. It will be blocked in the newly independent Lords. The old House would never have done that, not after the Tory leaders in the Commons had been bought off, which they would be. They themselves tried to do it in this Parliament. As you say, this has been their policy for 17 years already and not many Tory MPs have been there since before 1997, even fewer next year.