Countries gone to pot or just a potty!
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Knowing BoJo, I wouldnāt put it past him for it to be someone he shagged who is the daughter of someone he shagged
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His daughter.
would you put it past him?
Like the monarchy, the House of Lords in its current iteration has gotta go.
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I like the idea of an upper house that provides a sensible backstop / check to government policy but I cannot for the life of me get my head around the fact that to āget inā thereās no real process of checks other than being nominated and having a tick in the box by one person.
Or at least thatās the way it seems. What does HOLAC do exactly? Not a lot by the look of things
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They debate legislation and pass amendments back to the commons to consider. It should improve the quality of legislation but not if itās stuffed with grace-and-favour nodding dogs.
Yep.
Keep the upper house. Keep all the trappings.
Keep the name FFS.
Just bin the appointment system. Let the current lot die out and transition to a fully elected chamber over a couple of decades.
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Or, even better, fill it with celebs.
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Then it becomes an extension of the HOC and so invalidates its purpose. A better system would be a lottery every 4/5 years for those with a reasonable IQ / level of education. Exclude criminals, women and the Welsh and it would work brilliantly.
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Fixed
The sort of people you need in are experts in law, government (Sue Gray type senior civil servants), regional representation and relevant fields such as economics, science, medicine, ethics and so on.
Appointment them on a 2/3 majority of the commons and also allow them to be removed by the same margin if needs be.
Second chambers and select committees should be about checks and balances.
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Change its purpose then. An elected upper house works fine elsewhere.
That said, a lottery would be better than the current shitshow.
What would the electoral base be? If it is the same as the Commons, what is the point? If it is the same as the Commons, why are they secondary in power to the Commons?
The US House is rep by pop similar to the Commons, and each state gets 2 Senators to represent it (pity the poor House member from Wyomingā¦). The Canadian Senate has Senators who represent provinces, albeit appointed by the Feds. What different frame of representation would you see the UK using? If there isnāt one, there is little purpose to a bicameral legislature.
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These are all incredibly sensible questions, and I am sure many of you on here would come up with better answers than I could.
Base the upper house on the counties, create larger administrative regions that group together communities with shared issues. I dunno.
Go with the lottery idea!!
Whatever the model, these are not insurmountable issues, and hopefully an adult discussion could be had about moving on from a system where Charlotte Owen can be given a lifetime peerage.
EDIT; I meant to say, Iām obviously arguing from a position that a bicameral model is the way to go. Perhaps that discussion should be on the table also.
Yes, Iāve been drinking.
The Lords is so far gone that the system is essentially already a unicameral model, with a complicated procedure to finish legislation. To the extent that the Lords represents anything at all, you would have to say it is a lagged representation of elite interests - so a Lords controlled by a decade-plus of Conservative appointments can make life difficult for a Labour government using procedural delays. Open question whether or not that lagging function is desirable or not.
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Iām not sure the HOC is that strongly conservative unless we see a flood of people in Truss, Johnson and Sunak nominations.
If it is, Labour would probably need to get aggressive with the timings on legislation. Much of it the HOC can only send back a limited number of times before government passes it anyway.
All a bit late though isnāt it. Easy to stick the knife in when the buffoon is on his way down