the lords is rubbish but replacing it with another elected chamber is just asking for more dysfunction.
Wow, next they’re going to get rid of first past the post to introduce ranked voting. That would be absolutely incredible. But in a country that voted for Brexit, my hopes are low.
Brexit happened because the conservatives couldn’t be arsed sorting out their own affairs so made it everyone else’s problem.
We should not have a referendum on changing the election system. They should just change it, there’s no reasonable person that would have a problem with it, but there’s plenty of unreasonable people and uninformed people that would vote against their own interests if it was put to a referendum.
Brexit happened because the conservatives couldn’t be arsed sorting out their own affairs so made it everyone else’s problem.
The reasons for Brexit are complex, but I’d say if the populace were educated and raised to know how to inform themselves when needed, they would’ve realized the importance of the vote, participated, and voted to stay in the EU. There are a cascading amount of issues and while politicians play a big role, the population plays an equally big (or even bigger) role.
We should not have a referendum on changing the election system. They should just change it
Your concern is understandable. My only wish is that the change will be proposed and that there is enough political will to change it.
I think getting rid of the house of lords makes sense.
However let’s not vote because no reasonable person would disagree with me is a completely shit argument.
Well there’s a continuum isn’t there between asking everyone about everything and asking nobody about anything. So where are we on that continuum, because if the government just hold referendums every time they change any policy then they may as well not exist, and we might as well just have direct democracy (Which never works).
So why should we hold a referendum for this, but not hold a referendum for example increasing the pay of railway workers?
I remember last time we tried to change the voting system we got idiotic posters like this, and they worked.
And we’re even dumber now, so yeah I don’t hold out much hope either.
The LibDems tried to change the voting system, and got absolutely slaughtered for it.
Brexit and all the bullshit was just a repeat of the AV referendum with lessons learnt about how to trigger the Tories.
As a long term LibDem voter, mainly because of PR, this is one of the few issues I disagree on.
Another elected house isn’t desirable and I’m generally fine with it being a house full of experienced politicians and subject matter experts. I’d like to reform the appointment process to avoid the stuffing we’ve seen from Johnson and Truss. The Lords Spiritual should be ended as a group. I have no problem with community leaders being appointed, which may include religious leaders, but not as a fixed role in the house.
I see all of that as fairly minor reform. Not rip it up and start again.
Get rid of the 92 hereditary peers. Birth is not a qualification for government.
The legislation to get rid of them is already in progress they should be gone after this parliament ends.
What if the new elected upper house worked similarly to the Australian Senate? Our House of Representatives is the same as your House of Commons (except that it uses IRV instead of the undemocratic FPTP) with single-winner districts. But the Senate uses a proportional system (STV) electing 6 Senators per state for twice the amount of time an MP is elected for. So they’re relatively less concerned about the day-to-day shifting polls than MPs are, and you get a result that’s much more representative of what the people actually want.
In the UK context, it might be easier to sell PR in an entirely new house than it would be to update how the Commons is elected.
That voting scheme is what I’d like to see the commons be, but I see where you’re coming from with the idea of using a second house to bring the concept in.
On terms, I actually like the perpetual appointment aspect of the lord’s, but I do think it should have a retirement age, say 75. I think that’s one of the reasons I’m against making it an elected house because I don’t see how you make the two work together.
Personally I like the idea of a second house that is able to act as the house of review, thanks to its members having longer terms than the lower house. That’s a quality we have in Australia federally, but not in my home state of Queensland which is unicameral. It’s also something New Zealand lacks with its unicameral legislature (elected via MMP).
I think devolution of powers should be considered first. Ignore the Lords initially because they dont really matter in the grand scheme of things. When the Tories really wanted something they just submit it several times until the Lords couldn’t say no.
We have good examples with Wales and Scotland, and so geographically we should do the same to England and split into 3 regions.
Southeast, Southwest and North, where in this context the “south” stretches up to Nottingham. Move the Commons to either Birmingham or Leeds, and limit their powers to the overarching national policies that would normally also cover the UK. Voting for the province would be AV, and Commons would be PR or STV. Although we should probably devolve more powers, which would get more traction if we were able to have better representation.
I’d be very surprised if the government doesn’t fight tooth and nail against this amendment. Instead preferring a now is not the time style approach.
Or they could say… this wasn’t in our manifesto so we don’t feel comfortable bringing it forward 🥲.
That’s why referendums are a thing. They are not just for giving a load shotgun to the public while the tabloids are telling them to blow out their own foot.
Good luck with getting permission for a referendum on anything through parliament. You saw what happened last time. 🥲
Sortition for the HoL or it’s a waste of time.
I love that idea actually. Basically a lottery where you can randomly become a Lord for a couple of years, draw the salary, then go back to your regular life.
And what happens to people that earn more than a MP? Lots of qualified people earn more than than a MP, so they would need to self exclude, develop political aspirations that would make up the loses (read consider corruption), or sacrifice their personal wellbeing to serve in parliament.
They could refuse, continue doing their job on the side, or just take the temporary pay cut to enjoy a close to do nothing job for a few years. I don’t think that’s anything to be concerned about. An MP gets over £90000 plus expenses, that’s triple the median salary. If those that earn more want to self select themselves out of power, they can definitely do that. That’s only about 4% of the population.
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https://uk.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries https://uk.indeed.com/career/surgeon/salaries
I don’t think you realise how much £91000 + expenses actually is in the UK.
And currently the house of Lords is a bunch of old geezers that don’t know anything about anything, so yeah, taxi drivers and farmers would be a welcome change. They actually talk to normal people once in a while.
And again, if they feel like serving the public when shaping policy about their profession is important enough, they should be happy to take a pay cut for a few years for the greater good.
And currently the house of Lords is a bunch of old geezers that don’t know anything about anything
Look, I’m not British and frankly do think the Lords is silly. But I can name three members of the House of Lords, and 2 of them at least demonstrably deserve to be there on political merit, whether or not you agree with how they vote. I have no idea what the ratio is across the whole of the Lords, but at least not all of them “don’t know anything about anything”.
Don’t get me wrong, I prefer the Australian model where Senators are elected with a proportional system and serve for terms twice as long as lower house MPs. And the Canadian model of “lifetime” (subject to retirement age) appointments also has merit. It’s just that not ever single Lord is completely undeserving.
The three Lords that I’m familiar with, fwiw, are David Cameron, David Willetts, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
It’s a great idea until you remember the English populace and their voting history.
I think keep the HoL (but maybe rename it), abolish peerages, have a fixed term, keep the appointment commission but have half of the members of that sortified.
IMO sortition with a minority of appointed cross-bench experts is the ideal solution. The cross benchers are generally excelent and worth keeping.
I generally love the Libdems, but honestly, who looks at the house of commons and says "yeah, that’s working well. More of that please "
Maybe let’s sort out some of the fundamentals before this, else it’ll be more chaos.
Reform the Lords (properly) now, take ten years to restore faith in the democratic process and then this would be a good idea
From an outsider, I have to ask - is the house of Lords really all that necessary? Wouldn’t it be a good option just to remove it?
The argument in favour of the lords is it allows scrutiny on laws without party politics - if something is stupid but popular their job is to say no, when the commons would want to push it through to increase their reëlection chances. Replacing them with an elected chamber is just as bad as completely removing them in that case.
There’s also bishops from the Church of England in there having a say in what happens like it’s still the Middle Ages.
The only other country where senior religious figures have that kind of say is Iran.
Yeah, I agree that’s not great but it’s still not a reason to risk rushing in to making it worse
Personally I think the fact it’s unelected is great, but the way people get into it isn’t so great, so would rather have reform but keeping it unelected or at most indirectly elected, with voting rights going to MBE holders (or a pool of MBE holders elected by the commons in some format which accounts for party makeup of the commons) or all Livery Company/Professional Association leaders or some other group which should know their stuff better than both the people we currently have in the lords or career politicians
Well, depending on how they’re elected - these sorts of systems can be democratic and effective, but they have to be designed well
Doing something like the staggered terms used in the US senate is a pretty good way of reducing that sort of effect
The Australian system seems to work pretty well if the electorate is smart enough to not give a major party a sweeping majority which seems to be the case since the Whitlam dismissal,so regardless of who is in power in the lower house they have to negotiate with minor parties to get legislation through the senate unless both the major parties agree on something.
The point is there nearly always has to be some discussion and negotiations.
The senate elections are staggered as well with only half up for reelection at every lower house election.
In Sweden, all proposed laws basically go through an investigation by a group of civil servants, which I believe could be said to fulfil the same objective.
According to Ian Dunt’s How Westminster Works and Why It Doesn’t, the HoL is the only place where high quality scrutiny of legislation actually takes place. It shouldn’t be that way, in theory that should be something MPs do. But MPs aren’t taught to scrutinise legislation, often are not lawyers, and have what is basically a full time job on top of that running constituencies and lobbying on behalf of their constituents. So actually the HoL is currently very necessary.
An elected HoL would probably require a referendum, something we’re all a bit burnt out on, so this probably isn’t going to go anywhere.
There’s no constitution. We can do whatever the fuck we want. We are so fucked.
More populist band aids that will only give an illusion of change to distract us from the fact that the system doesn’t serve the people, and never will - it was designed not to.
More elections in a clearly corrupt system will only ever serve the establishment.
When can we replace land lords with home bitch?
