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The UK loans-for-peerages scandal This does not look good for ol’ big ears, does it?
A “cash-for-favours” row threatening Prime Minister Tony Blair has sent his approval rating to its lowest level since he come to power in 1997, according to a poll published on Sunday. The controversy erupted this month when it was disclosed that several wealthy businessmen were nominated for seats in the House of Lords after lending large sums of money to the Labour Party
It is becoming harder and harder to figure out the difference between Blair and the sort of operators who held sway in the Prime Ministerial offices of Italy, Japan and parts of Latin America for much of the last 100 years.
I repeat what I said a couple of days back: I predict Blair will be out of Downing Street in 12 months from now. This stuff is starting to pile on him with increasing weight.
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He’s beginning to get that hunted look about him.
I wonder what the differenced is between him and Gordon Brown and Robert Mugabe, Nkruma and all the rest of them. From First World to Third World in 10 years.
With Brown’s redistributionist budget due out on Wednesday, they are going to go down in a huge explosion of hatred. I can’t wait. I want my Schadenfreude!
And it’ll carry on piling on top of him. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore; it only leads to the usual apathetic outlook on his government.
The media carries the story for a week or two, they ask the usual “how much longer can he stay?” question and it just fades away… It’s now like water off a duck’s back.
I’d like to see all the disappointed peers-that-never-were call in their £14m of loans. Then we might find out what bankrupt entity or individual had signed for them.
Enterprizing Tory bonzes could swell party coffers by selling ‘Indulgences’ to Labour sinners on both sides of the Cash/Lordship hole in the fence. When in power, simply renege….an action fashionable among law-givers.
Bring back herditary peerage.
Apparently one ZANULORD! Did!!!
He got the peerage, then called in the loan.
Well what ya gonna do Tony? Sue Me!!
We are not allowed to know who this is though, As the commentator, wary of his bank balance, mentions that he is a litigatious sod and it’s hard to prove.
To say this stinks is an insult to sewerage workers!
If this had been the Tories the hue and cry would be never ending. Brown paper envelopes to ask fatuous questions are as nothing to what this lot has got away with.
I loved Tessa’s “It’s not Unusual” line about paying off a £315,000 mortgage in a fortnight. If you think it’s not unusual love you dont live in the same world as the rest of us.
Please imaginary deity, that these fuckwits be out of office within the year!
RAB: “I loved Tessa’s “It’s not Unusual” line about paying off a £315,000 mortgage in a fortnight. If you think it’s not unusual love you dont live in the same world as the rest of us.”
Not least, that the whole transaction smacks of money laundering. An activity illegal under the money laundering regulations, where the mere suspicision of illegallity is sufficient to cause a report to the appropriate authority.
He got the peerage then called in the loan! Ha ha ha ha ha! And why not? He stuck it to Tony! OH, how funny! I guess Tony never expected to meet someone sleazier than himself. I say make that man into a proper lord immediately. He has the right stuff!
But we need to get rid of these toy life peerages. They are ridiculous. People calling themselves Lord Blether of Windermere and pretentious (and pretend) crap like that, as though they had some ancient and influential history with the area. What’s “Lord” Ali’s pretend ancestral affiliation, BTW?
All life “peerages” should be halted instanter and those that received them should be able to keep them until their death, but not have entry to the House of Lords. They are not lords. For the most part, they’re jumped up nothings. In the case of Margaret Thatcher, her real achievements cloak her in more glory than a pretend peerage.
The house of Real Lords has worked well for centuries.
Anyway, anyone in Britain can call himself a lord or a lady if they feel like it (until ID cards come in) as long as there is no intention to defraud. If you’re just having fun, it’s legal.
All those sleazy men who put up £14m between them in “loans” should take their peerages and call in their loans. This would bankrupt the Labour Party (Fleece Be Upon It) and ensure that some people with experience of succeeding in the real world were in the Lords. A winner all round!
Then when the Tories get in, if ever, they can ditch life peerages. After all, why would Dave’s relatives want to mix around in the Lords with jumped up little sleazes?
Don’t be too hasty to imagine Blair and silk-ilk will be out on their ears. They have found the way out of these matters of moral dilemmas: you just ignore them. Resign? Nah, that’s for old-fashioned politicians who believed in honour. Today’s superstar PM regards us all as well beneath him and his favoured friends, so it pays to just carry on.
Hell, even a general election can’t oust them.
What I was getting at (obliquely) was the hope that we should eventually find out who controlled this £14m sum. It apparently was not in the name of the Labour Party, otherwise its treasurer would surely have known about it. So, just who did open the bank account and sign the cheques?
Tony Blair could be here for another 12 months, but he could be gone within a week. It’s just a feeling, but talking it through with a friend today, I reasoned that there might possibly be a mutiny in the Cabinet along the lines of a threatened mass resignation. There comes a tipping point when the weight of scandal, sleaze and everything else makes the rats finally prick up their ears and scurry down the gangplank. No politician now can foresee a future hitched to Blair’s colours, and if the tip occurs it could happen overnight. They must now be thinking seriously about how to save their skins, and if so then all conventional bets are off. Blair could be scapegoated and the ministers could hail Brown, who is if nothing else puritanically untouched by sleaze, as the broom to sweep out the Augean stables overseen by the one “we have just killed”. It could all go very Greek very quickly. Perhaps that’s just hope talking; personally, the sooner Brown gets in the better, because then the sooner the state socialist debacle (sans Blair’s charisma to cover it up) will be awfully revealed.
If we don’t live in hope we don’t live anywhere.
Actually, Captain Coma, if it happens, I too see it happening quickly. They’ve always hated him and now he’s a liability to their careers. There’s never been any loyalty to him (except Tessa Jowell, who said she’d jump under a bus to save him – and then pushed her husband under a bus instead; nothing like hanging on for one more day).
I am looking forward to the video of Tony and the deeply corrupt Cherie Ceaucescu vacating No 10 in disgrace. It could well turn into a regicide, with champagne and nibbles at Harriet’s later.
You guys have it all wrong what we need to do is repeal Tony’s “reform” of the House of Lords and start legaly selling peerages. Give the crown a 1 Billion pounds and you can be a Duke, 500 million and Marquess, 250 mil an Earl etc. sell 20 titles or so and you could build the RN the two new cariers it needs.
Dear Verity
This is interesting – I just found it at Guido Fawkes’ blog:
“Incidentally on Betfair the “Blair Switch” market has seen the odds on Blair going this summer slashed in the last few days. The odds on him going between April and June have dropped from 8/1 to 4/1 and between July and September from 10/1 to 6/1. Guido has been backing him to go in September as a consequence of a stalking horse candidate coming forward or even a real election challenge at the Labour party conference. There is a mechanism in the Labour party constitution to allow this, 52 MPs rebelled in the Education Bill, Jack Dromey and the TGWU are getting restless, Brown’s smile is wearing thin – are we at the tipping point?”
If we’re right then that betting is pretty conservative. Fancy a flutter?
Forgive me for yawning on this particular one. Surely most of the peerages in existence were awarded because somebody gave or loaned money to the king/government. I don’t think I can give the Blairites much credit for inventing anything here.
Michael Jennings, who suggested giving “the Blairites credit for inventing anything here”? That isn’t the point.
Obviously, peerages throughout history have come as a reward for service to the crown – this is all over Europe, as well. Your reward for your loyalty and the service of your army was, you got a title. And later for discreet services rendered to elected governments – but never anything on this scale of abasement of an elected government ravenous to stay in office.
Most people are realists and know that loyal people who performed a valuable service are going to be rewarded, whether it’s in a corporation or a government. But on this scale of corruption? This is new.
The damage they have wrought in ten years is simply startling.
Well, if you want a yank’s point of view, y’all ought to sell peerages in the gift shops and duty-free lounges. Every left-elitist mid-atlantic trust fund baby will finally be able to afford the status symbol they’ve always craved to fill out their philanthropy CV, while the aristocracy in Britain becomes so common its meaningless.
All the real aristos know who is and who isn’t anyways.
Yank’s point of view – Yes, thank you for the depth of your knowledge of our 2,000 years of history and your infantile “solution” to an aberration. Aberration means temporary.
You might be better employed directing your clever solutions to the problems besetting your own country. As in your Medicare system and the extra trillions of dollars of debt, with no means of paying it back, your president has committed you to.
Do you have a licence to steal oxygen?
Verity, you really need to pop a Bex with a fresh cuppa and have a good lie down.
I’m with Michael on this one. The entire concept of a House of Lords has been odious from year dot. The only reason it has “worked” over the last few centuries is that the aristocracy twigged that it couldn’t halt the advance of the bourgeoisie and so decided to jump on board (while holding their noses about being involved in ‘mere trade’) lest the blue-blooded head-ectomies not cease with just Charles I. So the moral bankruptcy involved in it has worsened under Blair, big deal. There ain’t no baby in THAT filthy bathwater.
JJM
Too harsh, Verity. Mike’s idea is not a bad one. Not at all.
Taken together with a fully elected House of Lords, it would kill several birds. We’d have an upper chamber that speaks with even authority – and lord knows there’s been more than a few times in the last decade that this “undemocratic” body has been all that’s stood between us and His Blairness’s latest wheeze – and the sale of titles to any who could afford the high starting price would generate revenue HM Treasury. Everybody wins.
Oh no, wait. We’d have to jettison 2,000 years of history. Of course history and culture must be preserved at all costs. What a philistine I am. Apologies all round.
Blair’s Lordships-for-loot only makes explicit what has always been known. In a way, it’s a comforting thought, and a first-rate illustration on what the state is.
– Josh
The Economist has as the words “The Final Days of Tony Blair” plastered across its front cover this week. It might not be long now, although I’d rather see him pushed than jumping with a smug grin on his face.
What exactly has Blair done wrong? Morally I agree, he’s manipulated the code of conduct worse than Peter Mandelson’s mortgage application, but legally? Before casting stones at greenhouses the Tories, for example, need to come clean on how many millions they have on ‘loan’ to their bankers in Jersey (one of the rejected peers was a Tory nomination, don’t forget) and believe you me the Tory loans dwarf anything the Labour Party have. I daresay the Libdems also have a loan scheme in place and, knowing how secretive they can be, I am sure its quite a considerable amount too.
With this taken into regard who wants to be the first person to shout ‘illegal’ at Blair? The mainstream media will of course scream blue murder (mostly since their publishers already have their peerages and honours so they can afford to). Blair’s crime seems to be more that he or Lord Levy apparently guaranteed peerages for Patel, Garrard, Townsley and others, arrogantly presuming that the honours commission would pass through whoever they nominated. This certainly deserves a slap on the wrist but I don’t see it as a resigning matter, especially not since Conservative Party whips and CCO are ordering MP’s not to go on the attack over the controversy – heavens forbid that Lord Ashcroft’s £3.5m loan and Lord Laidlaw of Rothiemay’s loan (said to be far bigger) be revealed.
As for Blair’s resignation date,
That’s Margaret Thatcher’s time in office plus one day, or 11 years, 6 months and 26 days.
Julian, it’s not illegal, it’s sleazy. NuLabor is hoist on its own petard.
But John K, who even recalls that NuLabour were voted into power on the ‘no more sleaze’ ticket? If a week is a long time in politics then 2 months shy of 9 years in politics must surely equal the Jurassic Age?
To say that it is not illegal is just puff. The Lord Chancellor is marching about acting as if the Government is plugging a leak in SOMEONE ELSE’S BEHAVIOUR! People and the media appear to be lapping this up.
It is not even the Labour Party per se that has done this but the inner sanctum, No 10. It is not about illegal, but it is not just plain wrong but it was KNOWN to be wrong. The loans were taken with the express intention of avoiding disclosure ON PURPOSE.
Tony and Co intentionally set about to mislead and to conceal financial influence over the Labour Party and the Government. They set about to mislead The House.
That in itself is illegal – the trick here is that many people have now fallen for the cunning plan begun by New Labour in that it is not ‘illegal’ as per a specific, tight, narrow piece of legislation. We forget that it is illegal under our ancient, common-sense laws we have had for centuries. Who cares if it is ok by this tight legislation?
A loan is worse than a donation as it comes compete with a little dog-lead attached which can be yanked at will. It is disgusting in the extreme and makes the Tory “oranges up the bum” type sleaze seem positively mundane.
Today’s leader in the The Guardian could be paraphrased as, “Tony, for God’s sake, go!”
We’ll know he’s finished when The Sun runs with that. But for the moment they are spinning with genius… ‘Government brings forward party finance reforms’ – for all the world as if it had been someone else that did it and they are now cleaning up politics.
Tim, I thought Milligan was sucking his orange. Did I miss one?
Julian, an end to Tory sleaze was the keystone of the 1997 NuLab campaign, and I don’t think people have forgotten it. Where NuLab scores is that in 97 they convinced enough people that the Conservatives were sleazy, and they weren’t, so they won. Now, most people seem to think that all parties are equally sleazy: if they are not taking backhanders, they’re getting rentboys to poo on them. Thus the NuLab sleaze merchants are not suffering as badly as they should be. It’ll probably take a recession to shift these bastards, but I’m sure No More Boom and Bust Brown is working on that one.
RobtE
You’re contradicting yourself. The reason why the House of Lords has often been all that’s stood between us and His Blairness’s latest wheeze is because it’s not an elected chamber. If it were elected it, along with the Commons, would have had a thumping great Labour majority since 1997, filled with party members whose career prospects are dependent upon voting the right way. God knows where we’d be now if this wonderful thing called democracy reach the Upper House.
Pete_London –
If it were elected it, along with the Commons, would have had a thumping great Labour majority since 1997
Quite possibly, but not necessarily.
Admittedly, however, I was picturing an upper house with real legislative powers, along the lines of the US or Australia – powers to block the excesses of the lower house and/or the executive.
The only thing you’re saying, PL, is that the HoL is (or was) inherently conservative (as in opposed to change). I am pretty certain that no Samizdatista would be saying “thank heavens for the HoL!” if that same conservatism stood in the way of a laissez-faire government implementing welfare reforms that sizeable minorities disliked and snotty Lords blocked it out of a sense of noblesse oblige or somesuch.
Having any unelected body is no substitute for thorough popular acceptance of freedom and all its political and economic implications, and is no defence against popular acceptance of anti-freedom ideas. As I recall, some of the biggest advocates of progressive income tax are the born-rich because it shields them from competition by asset-poor high-income earners. Anyone who counts on the HoL to defend freedoms, even with the removal of the faux peers introduced, is a fool.
Btw, merely having all political bodies at the highest levels as composed of elected offices does not necessarily make that government system a democracy. Need we go through the Republic vs Democracy argument again!?
JJM
Small ‘c’ conservatism is a very useful characteristic of an upper house that aims to moderate, consider and review legislation from the more lively lower house. This allows new ideas to occur (not so likely from the upper) with a reduced chance of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, re-inventing the square wheel or other such things.
I would not put it past Tony Blair to allow this to occur, have the scandal and then use it as an excuse to fully trash the HoL and have fully elected members.
What is the difference betweeen peeragegate and, for instance, bunging other people’s money at the voters of Longbridge to ensure they vote the right way in an election?
The only difference I can see is that the rich chap uses his own money to get what he wants; most others use someone elses’s.
Peeragegate may be deplorable. But it seems to me simply another form of pork-barrel.
The Lords should either be elected – with no peerages involved, although peers would be able to stand; or it should be appointed, but there should be a limit as to how many a prime minister could appoint. Let’s say 10. That’s enough patronage for any normal prime minister, which lets out Tony Blair.
JohnK – no, you didn’t miss one. TimC’s mistaken (what do you know that we don’t know TimC?). Milligan had the tangerine in his mouth to produce semi-asphyxia. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a Plan B.
Mike Lorrie’s comments were insulting to our traditions. The British people here don’t make fun of the rules governing the behaviour of the servicemen guarding the tomb of the unknown soldier, or other uniquely American traditions.
Lorrie’s comments were crude and silly because he was trying to lampoon something he doesn’t understand.
NuLab have made such a balls up of HOL reform that the only way to go is to have a fully elected upper chamber.
The problem with that is that the HOL will then have the same legitimacy as the HOC and the same party political affiliations.
The HOL is a revisionary chamber not the initiator of primary legislation. It is supposed to have the time to actually read all the rot coming out of the HOC and Brussels and amend it to the point where it hopefully makes sense. A fully elected chamber may be tempted to fight the HOC for supremacy.
As we all know under the American system if the Senate has a Republican majority and Congress is Democrat, legislation can just be blocked.
So how about this. A jury service type sytem for the Upper Chamber,(we’ll have to lose the title HOL though) appointed for a five year term from the whole electoral roll. True people power!
Verity – haha, ok it was a tangerine, I was wrong on both the type and orafice…on this occasion.
If it were Cherie Blair it would have had to have been a grapefruit!
This has been answered time and time again on Samizdata, as well as elsewhere. If you had an electable upper house, don’t you think that with Blair’s impeccable election record and the Tories uncanny knack of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory that by now any upper house would just become another rubber stamp for government policy? I bet that by now we would have ID cards if Blair had complete control of parliament, let alone a whole raft of other nasty authoritarian policies.
An unelected second chamber works. The only thing is, how to keep it out of T Blair’s grubby hands.
An unelected second chamber works.
Ah, yes. A very British response. Pragmatism over theory.
At the end of the day it comes down to this: The purpose of any government is to tell me what I must and must not do in order not to infringe on my neighbour’s civil rights. If a group of human beings is to tell me what I must and must not do then I, as a fellow human being, have a basic right in saying who will make up that group.
That means that if the upper house is to have any real power with regard to the lower house or the executive, then I have a right to contribute, via my vote, to determining who makes up that upper house. Ergo, an elected upper house.
RobtE – No. Because the HofL is not a legislating chamber. It’s not going to make any laws.
It is to rein in the House of Commons, which makes the laws (and how! Over 700 new laws since Mad Emperor Anthony twinkled in).
An unelected second house works, as long as it is not like the American system, where both houses propose laws. (Nothing wrong with the American system, but our is different.)
The hereditaries worked fine. Most of them – the ones who turned up at the House – took/take their responsibility seriously. It became diluted when they started this absurd “life peerage” crap. Even then, until the toxic Blair seeped through British public life and stained it, possibly forever, they seemed to take their responsibilitiy seriously enough to keep the Commons under control.
The poisonous Blair, in his cheap, carny. tinselly way has created over 570 new “peers” and now he’s selling more. Toxic schlock syndrome.
Where has the £14m that the Labour Party Treasurer didn’t even know about, gone? Given that the Labour Party is bankrupt, how will these “loans” (ROFL) be repaid?
Out of the toxic pond of Tony’s mind, up has bubbled a foetid solution! It’s only fair and democratic that political parties should be funded by … the taxpayers!
Keen idea! Why would any billionaire write off a loan made in return for a peerage when he knew he could send the bill collector round to the Treasury?
I was listening to Dr Chai Patel moaning about this on the radio last night.
He said he had spoken to Lord Levy, and offered to donate £1.5m to NuLabor, but Levy had asked him to make it a loan.
Cue alarm bells. If you are offering someone a gift, and they ask you if you can make it a loan, this clearly is a transaction which makes no sense on the face of it, and there must therefore be an ulterior motive. Dr Patel presents himself as a naive good hearted sort of fellow, who just went along with what he was asked to do, with no thought of a peerage. I say bullshit. We are not talking about a fiver here, he was offering NuLab £1.5 million as a gift, and they asked if they could have it as a loan instead. I say again, bullshit.
The whole transaction stinks. The only reason anyone would ask for a “loan” when they could have had a straight gift must be to cover it up in some way. If Dr Patel (I take it he actually earned the doctorate, rather than just buying it off the internet, but you never know) could not see what was going on, he is far too stupid to be a member of the Upper House of Parliament. But he is far from stupid. He must have realised that what was being proposed had to be some sort of dodge, and he went along with it. He is as corrupt as NuLabor in this.
I have also heard that Charles Clarke went out of his way to attack Jack Dromey for raising the question of this appalling scam. What a vile bullying piece of filth Clarke is, and how appropriate that this blustering oaf is trying to ramrod the ID card bill and every other piece of liberty destroying legislation through Parliament. I know he can’t help how he looks, but in his case he is as morally ugly inside as he is mirror crackingly ghastly on the outside. The sooner this corrupt collection of moral imbeciles are drowned in a vat of boiling cats’ piss the better.
“The only reason anyone would ask for a ‘loan’ when they could have had a straight gift must be to cover it up in some way.”
Precisely. Apparently loans, unlike gifts, don’t have to be declared. I find it hilarious that Dr Patel is trying to portray himself as some kind of noble truth-seeker. When this story first broke his original complaint was along the lines of “Ok, I’ve handed over the cash, now where’s my peerage?”
Nobody’s taken me up on my “Jury Service” idea then I see.
I know a bit about Juries. Many years ago I as responsible for summoning them and much more recently, sat on one.
When I was summoning them, we, in The Crown Court would worry about the calabre of Juror. Given the ease that you could get exemption or defferment in those days, we felt subjectively that the pool was mainly the low paid or unempoyed or the too stupid to get out of it.
But the stats proved that they generally got it right, as to the guilt or innocence of the defendants.
So when I actually sat on a jury I was moved by how seriously randomly selected ordinary people took the task of deciding the fate of their fellow humans.
We banged the drug money laundering bitch up though!(Well I was the foreman).
So, really. Why not an electoral roll system, randomly generated Upper House?
That will really engage the People in politics when they see with their own eyes the crap that “the self chosen” are slipping by them every day.
The United States Senate was set up to copy the good characteristics our founders recognized in the House of Lords.
To gain these ends in a nation where peerage and nobility is forbidden, they made other arrangements for a non-elected house that had the effect of creating an elected peerage.
Bear in mind that the House of Representatives has no loyalty to the ‘several states’. The districts are based on population and the states could cease to exist and nothing would change. Their institutional loyalty is entirely to the national government and to reelection.
In the original constitution, prior to that most hideous of amendments, the 17th, the Senate was composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof”. The intention was to distance the Senate as far from a popularity contest as possible within the constrains of democracy. The Senate’s institutional loyalty was not to the national government but to their individual states. But, starting with the 17th amendment, the Senate was “composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof”.
I think most people can guess the result. With the Senate controlled by the winners of a popularity contest, we lost a major check and balance. Constitutional historians have completely neglected the founder’s intent when they divided the legislature into two houses. The check on big government was that the upper house would owe its power and allegiance to the state’s governments. By balancing the national and the states’ government advocates in two houses, they planned a balance to prevent either a too weak and a too strong national government. A further benefit of the system was that the senators were generally known personally and very well to those selecting them.
Thanks to the horrendous 17th amendment, we now have this bloated, cancerous federal government smothering us. It didn’t have to be. And it still doesn’t if we repeal it. We repealed the most of the18th, we can repeal the 17th.
Recommendation to the UK, don’t elect the HoL via popularity. Maybe RAB’s idea would work if you could prevent political parties from bribing or intimidating those selected to legislate in the upper house.
Midwesterner,
I agree with you. Was not the template for the American Constitution the British one? The Founding Fathers saw the President as an elected King, the Senate stood in for the House of Lords, and the House of Representatives for the Commons?
Obviously, they started from the position that all citizens had the right to vote for their Representative, which was not the case in the unreformed House of Commons, but nonetheless the American system seems to be an attempt to improve upon the British system, whilst keeping its essential elements. That makes sense, the Founding Fathers all started out as British.
As to the idea of a random House of Lords, that in effect was the old hereditary House was it not? Peers sat because of something a long dead ancestor had done. There was no particular reason that they should be there, but as a revising chamber they seemed to do a good job.
One thing which must have surprised el Phonio is the way in which the House of Lords keeps biting him in the ass. Having got rid of most hereditaries, and packed the House with his placemen, he must have expected an easy ride. Instead, the Lords has a new self-confidence, and is proving a much more effective bulwark of liberty than the dreary bunch of nonentities which infest the Commons. Do you ever listen to PMQs? Some of these knuckle draggers can barely speak. The fact that they have been elected does not in itself mean they have any merit or ability, as this shower of dross proves every week.
John K,
My understanding of British government is filtered through my US perspective. But, based on what they’ve done over the last few months, would you really want to make a significant change in the HoL?
The only change that I can see would be the same one I propose for the US, namely to go back to our respective constitution’s original intent. The balancing of powers.
To that end, we should repeal our 17th amendment. You (assuming your from the UK) should consider banning the House of Commons in the form of ministers selected therefrom, from defacto appointing the Lords.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that the balance your Parliament sought to achieve was between the Crown and nobility represented in the HoL, and the people represented in the HoC.
In the US we substituted the states for the nobility, historically it’s not an entirely disimilar function, and it worked quite well until it was changed.
Amazing what people can do when they don’t have to go back to their appointer for renewal, isn’t it?
But, based on what they’ve done over the last few months, would you really want to make a significant change in the HoL?
To be honest I wouldn’t. As a revising chamber the Lords works well, the only problem is that the government is so far up its own arse that it will not brook any revision to its quasi-fascist authoritarianism, and simply rejects all amendments.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that the balance your Parliament sought to achieve was between the Crown and nobility represented in the HoL, and the people represented in the HoC.
That’s how it ultimately worked out, though of course no-one ever sat down and planned it, the system evolved over time.
The problem we have now is that the Prime Minister is in effect the King, and he rules through the Commons. Thus there is no seperation of powers, so long as he has the support of his MPs. Phony Tony is losing this.
Given the power of the PM over the Commons, it is clearly unconscionable that he also has the ability to pack the House of Lords, especially if peerages are given as a result of secret “loans” which are later written off after the peerage is granted. This is an utterly corrupt practice, and reveals Bliar for the morally bankrupt trash he is. But because of the way our system works, the only way to get rid of him is when his own MPs turn on him, as the Conservatives did with Thatcher and Duncan-Smith.
That’s the problem with our system. If you were to sit down and design it, you would never come up with what we have got. Nonetheless it is flexible, and it works so long as the Prime Minister does not treat the Constitution as an outdated hindrance to his personal ambition. I think all PMs tend towards authoritarianism, but Bliar has taken the trend to dangerous new depths, and under our system there is precious little to stop him until his own MPs knife him in the back.
Well, yes, John K, but when? They know that the personally revolting and incompetent Brown’s unelectable. They hate Blair. The bile’s coming out their ears, but they know Gordon Brown couldn’t win an election of midges on the surface of a pond. They have no one else. They’re going to continue to back the Gargantuan ego of Tony Blair.
I’m not so sure Brown is unelectable.
Let’s say Princess Toni goes in 2007 or 2008 (it should be to Holloway for corruption, but let that pass). Brown becomes PM. He will enjoy a wave of popularity just because he is not Bliar, as Major did when he became PM. If the economy has not gone into recession, Brown will call a quick election, where he will beat the boy Dave. The Conservatives need a 10% swing to get a majority, and that isn’t going to happen.
The Brown government will not go well. He has completely squandered the economic legacy hard won over 18 years by the Conservatives. He has spunked away more money than any Chancellor in history, for absolutely nothing. I want him to be PM when the shit finally hits the fan. The Conservatives, I hope, will have ditched Cokeboy for a leader with a backbone, and will be in a position to win the 2011 election from the discredited wreckage of the Brown government.
It’s 2006 now; maybe only another 5 years of NuLab idiocy to go. That’s the best I can offer I’m afraid.
John K – How depressing! Blair will have done much further damage to Britain by 2008. In fact, there may be nothing left of our country by then.