open Democracy News Analysis - Sorting out the Lords, David Marquand Anthony Barnett - Comments

Keith McBurney on "Sorting out the Lords"

Keith McBurney — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:11:06 +0000

Keith McBurney

Just stuff your name up front in the text. It seems to work no matter what.

Hey. i'm not after votes, just just action. But if you are that desperate, someone will be along to take the rest of your soul.

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Not logged in — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:24:07 +0000

Oh, and that last comment was from me, Britology Watch, by the way, Keith. Where can you actually log on so as not to be 'anonymous'?

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Not logged in — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:23:12 +0000

Fabulous stuff, Keith - pure poetry! I'd vote for you for the UI 'parliament' under STV, no probs! We could do with a few inspirational politicians, if that's not an oxymoron.

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Not logged in — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:05:50 +0000

From Keith McBurney

Come on guys, you are playing catch-up after the whistle has blown.
What is perplexing is that you know it, yet persist in scrambling around in the dust, throwing it in your faces to obscure the reality you cannot believe you have to face, yet do not in your seeming persistence by sticking your heads it in the sand.
There is no West Lothian Question that has not been answered. There is no English Question either right now - that's for you sooner or later. But you will not get your heads properly round to the arithmetic of the 50 million argument you wish to have until you recognise the GB of UK & NI and the GB of GB game is up, fini, ende and good riddance.
For all that, i suspect i do you an injustice, because i cannot believe your ilk are blind to the realities of time being the change that waits for none. If so, i accept your wrapping England in the Union flag for now to get on with what you must. I suggest however, that if we promote looking into our nations' aspirations we will all get to where we prefer to be sooner and - most importantly - together.
I have a vested interest in all of this. I am alive today because of English, Irish, Scots and Welsh others, as well as those of the self governing islands here and territories and diaspora abroad including our NATO allies.
Half the pilots of our squadron entry at the RAF College did not survive the 'Cold War'. So lucky me now draws the pension we all contibuted to in a 10% abatement of our independently abjudged but oft diluted and postponed salary.
I wish i could be more eloquent than those we lost, but in their name, those who have continued to die, and my leftover voice, what the **** are you playing at with the democracy we fought and died for along with millions of others since the first world war for everyone else but ourselves so that you of all people can make slow here, almost 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell!
It really is not good enough that so called academics can take such liberties with time, which is not at any of our disposals, to conduct an argument with yourselves.
For everyones sake, get out there with the people and desist from trying to convince what you falsely presumed to be your natural bedfellows. Get real: political parties have a vested interest in power for power's sake. Charter 88 and Unlock Democracy are not the first jilted lovers of what might be: we all are.
So let's not piss about playing their game any longer. Let's get it together sans parties. Let's do it together, nations' wide in our own Citizens' Constitutional Conventions. And bugger their authorisation and our money back to do so. We are, are we not individually and severally sovereign, or does that only apply to your like minded self-appointed gaurdians of governance however personable as we all try to be (said he, having drank our wine and enjoyed your conversation with each other when a place was found)?
So, stull your inferred definition of populism and Athenian antecedents. You got nowhere wholesale with New Labour because - although in the marginals they all love - you do not have anything other than an individual vote. Forgive me too, but the Sustainable Communities undoubted success ain't going to do the trick any better than Ombudsman, Freedom of Information Officers and National Audits until 'governments' can be oblioged to open our fiddled books. Am i alone in being amazed they are not public property and open to all in our interest, let alone the shy of facts opposition who should be clambering all over the executive for disclosure in our name. (Could it be they prefer not to presume to know what we all do? If so, why?)
What is the public purpose of it all if not ours? Who can say what that is if not the us that is we the people?
Who can gainsay that it is anything else but that?
Are you with we the people that are party to the solution, or do you wish to remain part of the problem?
Enjoy the ouzo Anthony: it is well deserved. I wish i had your ability to move the argument forward. Why not try the SNP and Plaid Cymrau as the only social democrats left! It would be a better experiment than the poll tax and suicidale pole-axing now you see it, now you do not 10p tax rate!
David M, apologies again for gatecrashing your conversation with Anthony at Oxford and here again. NB, the price of Union in England is Independence all round; the price of of Independence in Scotland is Union all round. And yes, potentially all the Irish. Think Council of the Isles. Think Union of the Isles. Go back some 80 years to the future. Goodnight UK. Good Morning UI. The real argument is about what sovereignty we will share, as share we must in mutual interest. Right now it is taking place behind closed doors. Have you been invited? We have not.
Think too the very freedom which can deliver liberty, equality, and humanity. Above all, think the us that is you too as the people. Popularism - you must be joking! This is the lives we have left. Do you wish the Scots to bail you out yet again! Fat chance GB of GB, Darling Alistair and Gauleiter Desperate Des. Come on, make our individual and several nightmares day.
David (aka Britology Watch), does this help?
For all our freedoms,
Aye Ours,
Keith
Daavid

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Not logged in — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:55:50 +0000

I suspect Her Majesty may have had some input into the Bishops being kept on, and the government didn't have the courage of their convictions - or even the conviction - to risk incurring her displeasure by suggesting the removal of her ecclesiastical representatives from the House: after all, she's technically their boss. Maybe also, this is a sop to English nationalists such as myself, who would regard the ejection of the Bishops as a step towards full disestablishment and, by extension, an eradication of one of the few remaining anchorages of the British state in English institutions.

But it's just one more indication of the piecemeal nature of the reform process and the inability, indeed unwillingness, of the government to undertake the wholesale reform that is needed at a time in the government's 'lifecycle' where the emphasis is on damage limitation, and on clinging on tooth and nail to the hope of a parliamentary majority - or working minority - that only first-past-the-post makes possible. And one of the reasons why they're avoiding comprehensive reform is clearly that they'd have to confront the English Question: the issue of what sort of second house is needed, and what its official remit would be, is inseparable from the question of what sort of role there should be for the 'national-UK' parliament versus the four (or more) 'UK-national' parliaments, including one for England.

When you examine the question from this angle, a whole number of alternatives become imaginable, such as - for instance - the UK-national parliaments exercising a scrutinising and / or revising role in relation to proposed national-UK legislation (a combination of the present Commons committees and House of Lords scrutiny); and the national-UK parliament (or its Second House) examining and suggesting revisions to legislation originating from the UK-national parliaments, perhaps in line with a formal role to ensure compliance with a written constitution, which we'd have to have for federal arrangements such as this to work.

That's just one among a great many possible alternatives; and the government's dithering over the electoral system is another instance of them wanting to rein in the potential for the issue of Lords reform to snowball into the comprehensive constitutional reform that is needed: 'OK, we'll give them some form of "PR" - or possibly not . . . but we'll lessen the new system's ability to deliver radical change to the composition of the Second Chamber (demonstrating to people what could be achieved in the Commons, too) by re-electing only a third of the House every four years'. Plus ca change!

I've always assumed that the reason why more fundamental reform of the Lords was not pushed forward by this government was that they knew they'd have to introduce PR for the elections, and that any vestige of a credible case for FPTP for the Commons would then collapse. Perhaps this is the real reason why they're not proposing to go ahead with the White Paper proposals till after the next General Election: so they won't set themselves up for pressure to introduce PR for general elections till after they get a last shot at FPTP. That's one reason why the Tories probably won't be pressing for Lords reform this side of 2010, either.

David, aka Britology Watch

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Not logged in — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:45:31 +0000

David Marquand is absolutely right in my view to point to the dangers of populist plebiscitary forms of democracy. But I would argue that it was David Davis and his fellow-travellers who pointed in such a damaging direction rather than those who remained sceptical on democratic grounds.

On the Lords, the elected element should certainly be a sizeable majoirty of the revised Chamber, and elected by PR. Clsoed lists would surely open up the government to accusations of entrenching party patronage, and for that reason seem unlikely - the European Parliament elections hardly set a strong precendent for going down this route. STV would seem the logical way to go, particularly if you want to encourage voters to seriously consider the merits of the individual candidates rather than automatically vote along party lines.

If we're being imaginative, would a hybrid work? 80% elected by STV - 10% independently nominated, and 10% selected by random lot? Perhaps there would be difficulties with competing mandates?

And finally, why should C of E bishops have an automatic right to sit in the new Chamber - surely the idea of an established church is completely antithetical to a modern democracy fit for the 21st Century?

Michael Calderbank.(ERS)

Sorting out the Lords, David Marquand Anthony Barnett

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:35:51 +0000

As the Government announces plans for a reformed House of Lords, David Marquand and Anthony Barnett discuss whether a new chamber should be chosen by lottery.

David Marquand (Oxford): At first sight, the idea of ‘sortition’ for the reformed House of Lords (or Senators or whatever) is attractive. But when you reflect on it it becomes distinctly unattractive.Here’s why:

First (a minor – but still significant – tactical objection), It clearly won’t happen; and it’s a mistake for constitutional reformers to give the impression that whatever the Government proposes they will be against.

Second (and much more serious): The main point of having an elected Second Chamber is to give it democratic legitimacy, so as to make it a stronger check on abuses of power by the elective dictator who controls the Lower House. Whatever may have been true in ancient Athens – not really a democracy, remember, since slaves, women and foreigners couldn’t participate – in today’s world democratic election is the only source of democratic legitimacy. An upper house chosen, in effect, by chance would be less legitimate than the Commons, not more. It would be a permanent focus group, as far removed from true democracy as the Government’s proposed Citizen’s Summit.

Third, PR elections to the Upper House – and it is surely inconceivable that it would be elected by First Past the Post – would mean that the Upper House was more legitimate than the Lower. I don’t think such an absurd imbalance could last for long. Sooner or later (and I think sooner rather than later) PR for the Upper house would force the Government and Opposition of the day to agree on PR, or at the very least AV, for the Commons. With every passing day the absurdity of FPTP for the Commons becomes more glaring. We now have PR elections for London, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales: that already makes FPTP for the Westminster Commons a massive anomaly.

The best way to get rid of the anomaly is to make it even more glaring – which PR elections for the Upper House would do. To put the point in another way, the most important single objective for democratic reform is PR. That would, at a stroke, deprive the executive of an automatic single-party majority; end the dreary game of triangulation; liberate currently unrepresented currents of opinion like the Greens; and enable a politics of pluralism and negotiation to take root in this country. A Senate elected by PR would be really big step in that direction; it would be madness to throw that chance away.

Fourth, between the lines of your comment there is a very dangerous suspicion, not just of the particular political parties we have in this country, but of political parties as such. But representative democracy depends, among other things, on political parties. The alternative is plebiscitary democracy, which isn’t really democracy at all, but populism – a totally different thing. The greatest obstacle to democratic reform in this country is, of course, the deep-seated majoritarianism of our political class. (Itself, incidentally, a weird kind of plebiscitary thinking). But the second greatest is the sour, resentful, chip-on-shoulder populism that pervades the tabloid press and that provides rich fodder for xenophobic demagogues of all kinds – notably on asylum seekers, and on virtually all aspects of the EU. We, above all, should recognise that the people can be wrong as well as right, that democratic government depends on responsible citizenship, and that the practices of citizenship have to be learned.

Anthony Barnett (London OK): David, I'll respond to you four points in reverse order. We agree completely about the need to overcome sour populism. Very well put. There is a lot of it about in response to David Davis, who has taken a serious issue to the public, and a lot of learning in the hardest and best sense is needed. To achieve this we need lively political parties, again I agree. The pamphlet Peter Carty and I wrote on this, The Athenian Option, which is about to be republished as a book advocates a stronger, party based Commons as the only legitimate source of legislation. But we also need more public interest in and identification with the legislative process. The proposal that a second chamber selected by lot, whose role is to assess legislation in clear, specified ways, is designed to increase intelligent interest in politics, not turn it into a game.

I'm strongly for PR for the Commons for all the reasons you say. Will a form of PR in the upper house lead to this? Not automatically. We will see what system is put forward. I suspect a closed list system, even though James Graham says they can't to do this (I hope he's right). How the candidates are selected is crucial to your argument here so let's hold fire on this one.

On your second point about democratic legitimacy, this all depends on having a clear description of functions and roles. The current situation where the Lords both originates legislation and is used by the government and drafters as a second tier of writing primary legislation, is very confused. It is slightly more of a check on the executive than the Commons - but that is not saying much. What the Commons is now going to do is to rewrite the way the second chamber is composed without having a serious assessment of what its functions and role should be. This is wrong. Matt d'Ancona wrote a good column on this in the Telegraph praising Frank Dobson on this very point.

Could an Athenian option happen? The lesson of the last ten years is that for reforms to work they need to be undertaken in the spirit of reforming the whole - piecemeal is becoming disintegrative, and indeed increasing the sourness and depletion of the democratic spirit. I think it is essential to approach constitutional change now in an inventive fashion that will appeal to people's imagination (including the need for an English parliament as you have said, but is that more likely than rethinking the second chamber?). The proposal is not put forward in a spirit of impossibilism, as you suggest, but on the contrary. We are now going to completely reinvent half of our parliament. Great! What is the best way of doing this, taking advantage of the opportunity to look at the system as a whole?

For more on the political uses of lotteries, see the Sortition series from Imprint Academic, which is republishing The Athenian Option by Anthony Barnett and Peter Carty.