This amused me:

“Yes, some had been to Eton but they were able to master a brief of complex research material and metanalyses, understand the implications of the research in a short space of time, and then argue with authority and vigour.”

as it supposes that knowing someone went to Eton would make you think that was the last thing they could do.

No one wants peers guessing what the electorate or the editor of The Sun wants to hear and losing sight of their scrutinising function

OMG – no wonder people talk about “liberal elitism” – do you actually believe in democracy, Belinda?

If this article wasn’t so well written, I’d have thought it was PR exercise for the House of Lords.
Because Belinda Brooks-Gordon says nothing about the aberration of having a WHOLLY unelected House in a supposed Western democracy. About its costs, about its totally dysfunctional nature.

It’s a swirl of “wisdom, humanity, and common sense “, “hardworking driven clever individuals”, good honest men and women. Are they? Funny because we all thought it was a bunch of nasty mass-murderers, you know? Is that the point, I wonder….?
And I guess the author also thinks the Queen is a lovely old lady and Prince Charles quite sweet actually. Instead of some ruthless calculating professional politician.

The House of Lords showed how out of step they are with the real world when for years they refused to scrap (delaying the process) th emedieval and homophobic Section 28. And also, do you remember their tantrums over the Age of Consent? Or foxhunting?

This is my answer, which I believe is in common with all those who believe the word ‘democracy’ should mean a little more than hot air, to Belinda Brooks-Gordon’s article.

“Scrap the House of Lords”.
http://mymarilyn.blogspot.com/2009/01/scrap-house-of-lords.html

It may not have been perfect but the pre-1997 system was actually pretty effective. Unfortunately I fear ideology and a knee-jerk opposition to the aristocracy and C of E meant that the HoL’s positive features were overlooked.

“If necessary getting the library to carry out systematic literature reviews – Cochrane Collaboration style. ”

Dear God anything but that. I don’t want to pre-empt publication, but for a paper currently in press for an IEEE conference (“Implications and insights for human adaptive mechatronics from developments in algebraic probability theory” S. Hickey, A. Hickey, L. Noriega 2009) I went through 100 meta-analyses published in the so-called ‘gold standard’ Cochrane Review and found *not a single one* with any kind of accurate blinding of reviewers. The technique of meta-analysis as currently practiced is nothing more than a method of giving a pseudo-scientific gloss to pre-existing biases.

“I don’t want to pre-empt publication, but for a paper currently in press for an IEEE conference (”Implications and insights for human adaptive mechatronics from developments in algebraic probability theory” S. Hickey, A. Hickey, L. Noriega 2009) I went through 100 meta-analyses published in the so-called ‘gold standard’ Cochrane Review and found *not a single one* with any kind of accurate blinding of reviewers. The technique of meta-analysis as currently practiced is nothing more than a method of giving a pseudo-scientific gloss to pre-existing biases.”

This is why we are doomed to lose.

Thank you for writing this and saving me the bother, Belinda.

And of course one possible alternative to an unelected second chamber is to have a Parliament that is wholly elected but is constrained by a written constitution.

You’re talking about getting information into the system – that’s precisely what democracy is about. It’s a cybernetic feedback mechanism.

There is a case to make for having lifetime appointees scrutinise laws – after all, that’s essentially the system in the US, too, where the Supreme Court act in much the same manner – but you haven’t made the case. You’ve merely said that some of the individuals who currently occupy those posts appear to you to be OK. That’s not actually a particularly convincing argument.

OMG – no wonder people talk about “liberal elitism” – do you actually believe in democracy, Belinda?

It doesn’t necessarily need to be interpreted as that. Popular opinion is important but it may not be informed on a particular issue that requires research and understanding the evidence. And given the poor quality of reporting on science and medical issues (and in fact on most specialist issues) this doesn’t necessarily mean going by popular opinion on a given issue is the best way forward. Otherwise we’d be having plebiscites on everything.

this doesn’t necessarily mean going by popular opinion on a given issue is the best way forward. Otherwise we’d be having plebiscites on everything.

But you may concede 743 unelected people regularly having a say in the country’s legislation is a different kettle of fish altogether.
Why hasn’t any other country in the Western/democratic world in 2009 has anything like the House of Lords?

Sunny – that’s very true, but it’s an argument for representative democracy more than an argument for unelected peers. (It’s also an argument for much better science education – and education in general for that matter – in schools…)
Oh, and Claude, your own ‘argument’ was even worse. In particular, ranting about how the Lords cost £78 million or whatever your figure was. That works out at a cost of £100,000 per Lord if you want to divide it that way, which *if* they were all providing the scrutiny they’re meant to would not be an unreasonable figure, especially since much of that money doesn’t actually go to the peers themselves. And then you rant about a lot of silly names, and that’s about it.
My own view is that an unelected second chamber – or something like it – is probably necessary, but it needs *severely* slimming down, to a hundred at most. Possibly lifetime appointees could be elected by the public, or something similar. There should also be more formal limits on what they’re there for – there should be criteria on which they are allowed to ‘fail’ a bill, rather than just on their own whims.
That’s my personal view, but I’ve seen very little in the way of actual argument on either side that could convince me otherwise…

With all this talk about temporal peers being employed to put arguments and move amendments in support of their paymasters, why does nobody point out that the bishops are there paid by the Church of England simply to argue the case for its views and privileges and move amendments on its behalf?

#11 “ranting about how the Lords cost £78 million or whatever your figure was”.
£68,563,000 (net), as provided by Jack Straw in the Commons on 2 Nov 2006.
“Not an unreasonable figure”, you say.
Does their ridiculous attendance rate justify it?

but it needs *severely* slimming down
If you weren’t so dismissive (or ‘uppy’, perhaps), you’ll find that aside from “ranting about a lot of silly names, and that’s about it”, that was exactly the point of my post.

A simple comparative look at EACH and EVERY other country, shows that the size of the House of Lords is simply a joke.

Claude, note I said “*if* they were all providing the scrutiny they’re meant to”. And the size thing is one of many disconnected ideas thrown into your post without any actual connection between them.
And as for me being ‘dismissive’, coming from the person who said of my earlier comment “This is why we are doomed to lose.” with no elaboration, I think a little looking at the beam in your own eye is in order…

“Why hasn’t any other country in the Western/democratic world in 2009 has anything like the House of Lords?”

Why should we feel the need to copy what everyone else has if our system works? Our liberty is not contrained by the HoL, they can’t permanently block legislation.

Because #5 is literally incompehensible. I’d say ‘elitist’ but it may sound offensive.
If you exclude industrial doses of narcissism as one possible justification, it’s always baffled me why some people choose to write like that.
So here’s the elaboration.

[off topic] I wonder why people use elitist as an insult, sometimes. What, exactly, is wrong with striving towards being the best? [/off topic]

Richard @ 15, exactly. We Brits have never been conformists. Argue for Lords reform with substantive reasons if you wish, but “nobody else does it this way” is no argument at all.

I apologise. Maybe I’m misunderstanding here.

But, good Lord (excuse the pathetic pun), if such a large number of people from a website/group called Liberal Conspiracy oppose the idea of a democratically elected second chamber in Britain, an upper House without Barons and Lords, and Bishops and Party Cronies, what hope is there?

#15. Richard. It’s not a matter of “copying”, for goodness’s sake. How can you say “our system works”?
Have you been reading the news? The corruption scandal, following the 2006 Cash for Honours one.
The system does NOT work.
The House of Lords is half empty. Its average age and background is overwhelmingly unrepresentative of the country as it is in the 21st century and I defy anybody to deny that!
People can’t even resign, or be sacked from the Lords.
And you, liberal, labourite chaps, no doubt with the purest of intentions, don’t see it as wrong.
Oh well…

Claude, why do you think that “liberal” automatically means “must agree with me”? Surely that is the antithesis of being liberal?

I am fully in favour of reform of the way that Lords are appointed, and of reducing their numbers drastically, but a fully elected scrutinising house would be completely pointless. We need people who are not terrified of objective fact when faced with an electorate full of Daily Mail readers.

#19
Talking about not elaborating. Why exactly would a fully elected scrutinising chamber be “completely pointless”?
We need people with the guts to challenge the structures upon which Daily Mail readers thrive. Not tiptoeing about. That was done between 1997 and 2009 and look at the results!

Claude – #5 is perfectly comprehensible *if* you have followed the original post, which claims that peers can ‘understand meta-analyses’ and that the HoL library should provide ‘Cochrane-style’ summaries. If you understand what those terms mean, then my response, saying that those are not good things, makes perfect sense. If you *don’t* understand those terms, then possibly taking it up with the author of the original post would make more sense. That said, an explanation for the hard-of-thinking follows:

I don’t want to pre-empt publication,
It is considered bad form in the scientific community to talk about papers in public before they’re officially published, for a variety of reasons.

but for a paper currently in press for an IEEE conference
I have a paper due to be published at a conference. IEEE stands for Unimportant Acronym.

(”Implications and insights for human adaptive mechatronics from developments in algebraic probability theory” S. Hickey, A. Hickey, L. Noriega 2009)
I didn’t choose the title of this paper

I went through 100 meta-analyses published in the so-called ‘gold standard’ Cochrane Review and found *not a single one* with any kind of accurate blinding of reviewers.
I looked through a hundred of the things the author of this post says are good, and they’re not.

The technique of meta-analysis as currently practiced is nothing more than a method of giving a pseudo-scientific gloss to pre-existing biases.
Meta-analysis is rubbish.

Happy now?

because we’ve already got one chamber that is running scared of Mail readers. Why do we need another one? I’d understand if you were advocating complete abolition, but you;’re not.

“We need people with the guts to challenge the structures upon which Daily Mail readers thrive. Not tiptoeing about.”

I agree completely. That would be utterly impossible in an elected chamber of any kind.

“People can’t even resign, or be sacked from the Lords.”

Actually they can. See Benn, Anthony Wedgewood and Douglas-Home, Sir Alec…

#22
I’d rather complete abolition than a wonky second chamber.

Why hasn’t any other country in the Western/democratic world in 2009 has anything like the House of Lords?

Every country has different traditions, I’m not saying ours is the best or the worst, but just because other countries aren’t doing isn’t in itself a sufficient enough reason. Most don’t have a history of democracy as long as ours.

But you may concede 743 unelected people regularly having a say in the country’s legislation is a different kettle of fish altogether.

To be honest, I was initially in favour of getting rid of it but I’m somewhat swayed by Belinda. The key point, as she says, is:

When we stop confusing accountability with electability we can import some of the balances from our electoral system.

It depends what the alternatives that being mooted are.

From the Independent, Wed 28 Jan 2009
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-big-question-is-the-house-of-lords-corrupt-and-is-it-time-it-was-reformed-1517796.html

“Since 2002, holding a peerage and being a member of the House of Lords are not necessarily one and the same. Most hereditary peers have lost their seats in the Lords, but continue to use their hereditary titles. Those that are in the Lords, whether they are hereditary or life peers, cannot be removed. The worst that can happen is that it can be privately communicated to one of them that he or she is not welcome in the club any more and should stay away.

Why can’t an offender be induced to resign?

No one can resign from the House of Lords, even if they want to. A local councillor who fails to turn up to a council or committee meeting for six months is automatically disqualified, but a peer who stays away from the House of Lords for years on end is still a peer. The most they can do is take “leave of absence”. While on “leave of absence” a peer is not entitled to attendance allowances, and has to give a month’s notice before coming back. Cathy Ashton took leave of absence when Gordon Brown appointed her EC Commissioner in place of Lord Mandelson. Viscount Cranborne, a descendant of Elizabeth I’s greatest minister, Robert Cecil, was so affronted by the introduction of the Register of Lords Interests in 2001 that he has been on leave of absence since 2001″.

Well then why don’t you advocate that instead of pointless duplication of existing functions? At least you’d be approaching logical consistency.

May I also point out that the usual argument in favour of keeping the Monarchy is also that the Royals are allegedly ‘better’ than professional politicians…

It is argued that they are more detached, hence more impartial and with less partisan interests at stake.
By the same token you could stretch it up to “feudalism isn’t so bad because at least they don’t feel they have to please the electorate, the lobbies and the papers”. Authoritiarian elitists state that we are to obey the benevolent wisdom of those who are more intelligent and enlightened than ourselves.

The argument against ‘sleazy’ ‘professional politicians’ is actually straight from the tabloiids book!

I don’t want an “enlightened leader” handpicked by a Prime Minister, by a Cabinet or by rights.

Jenny.

Two chambers don’t mean ppintless duplication. If they are both elected and more representative of society than the House of Lords currently is, they can serve a purpose and a half.

I’m not naive to the point of thinking that any elected Political Chamber will be truly representative of society. But the Lords composition today is just an insult to democracy. Granted the Commons are also overwhelmingly the prerogative of toffs, rich people, ex-public school boys, and white males. But, simply, the Lords are much much worse. Unbelievably so.

So, a fully-elected and slimmed down second chamber may fulfil different criteria of representation in the interest of regional balance, like in Germany or in the United States. By serving different terms from the Lower House (again, like in the US) they could provide further elements of checks and balances. In the interest of wider representation, it may also be based on a different electoral law.

Also, all this “we are British” is staggering.
By looking around and simply comparing with different countries and culture, one may learn something. There are positives and negatives. But no harm comes from wondering why Britain has to have a House of Lords and Barons and Spiritual Leaders Sent Over by Superior Heavenly Beings.

# 1: We need a second chamber.
# 2: The current system is a shambles and wide open to corruption.
# 3: An elected chamber would risk being a clone of the Commons, and would be open to the same political pressures.

The second chamber certainly needs to be a lot smaller, but that’s not the issue: how is it to be constituted? The creation of the Appointments Commission has helped to reduce the crony element, and if we were to retain an appointed upper house, then strengthening the Commission’s role and reducing or completely abolishing the party leaders’ input would be the way to go.

One way to reduce political pressure on an elected upper house would be to set a much longer term between elections than in the Commons – say, ten years.

Or, to make a really radical suggestion, we could have an upper house neither appointed nor elected, but filled by a system equivalent to jury service, so we all get to be lords for a month or so. Now THAT would be interesting!

I’ll gladly advocate complete abolition of the HoL. But the statement “We need people who are not terrified of objective fact when faced with an electorate full of Daily Mail readers” concerns me:

1) The electorate isn’t FULL of Daily Mail readers. Yes, it has a high readership and is incredibly influential but there are more voters who don’t read it than who do.

2) If the electorate was full of Daily Mail readers and they all endorsed the Mail’s editorial line, then it would be undemocratic and elitist to insist that a privileged group of experts know better.

3) Why aren’t they terrified of objective fact? Is it the confidence that comes with private education and a privileged class position that allows them to ignore public opinion? Does that tell you anything?

Jennie’s argument and Belinda’s article do come across as elitist – I can’t see any other way to interpret them. That’s not to say we should have an elected HoL – I agree that it’s pointless duplicitation & I also think it’s undemocratic to restrict our elected first chamber in such a way even if the second chamber is elected. Maybe I’d support a HoL that was genuinely representative of the population, with members elected from trade unions and other mass membership organisations. There would have to be quotas based on class, gender, race, sexuality, disability etc. It’d be better than what we’ve got. But frankly abolition would be much easier and better.

#30 – I like the jury service argument, personally, (providing there were quotas to make sure it is always reasonably representative and not just filled by middle-class people who can more easily take time from work) although I still think abolition is better.

Claude – why is ‘representative of society’ a good thing?
Representatve of society’s *interests* I can see, but the whole point of having elected representatives is that they’re not a cross-section of society, but the most able and best-informed, *as chosen by society*.
When I vote, I don’t vote for someone who will agree with me on every issue, no matter how uninformed or stupid I am. Rather I vote for someone who agrees with me on the issues I know enough about to make an informed choice, and who I believe to be competent, and then trust them to make the decisions I *would* make, had I the time and ability to be equally informed on every issue. In other words, I want someone *better* than me in Parliament, not someone as good as me.
I don’t think most of the people in the Lords *are* actually better than me, but I don’t think making it more representative of the country as a whole will improve that.

Tim, to take your points one at a time:
1) Politicians treat the electorate as if it *were* full of Mail readers, unfortunately. It’s an inaccurate perception, but one that seems shared by the leaders of at the very least both Labour and the Tories.

2) Drivel. The whole point of ‘experts’ is that they *do* know better. Whether any given ‘expert’ really *is* expert is a different matter, but if I am talking with someone with a doctorate in quantum chromodynamics, for example, I am prepared to accept that his (I use ‘his’ here not out of sexism but because the one person I know with such a doctorate – a local councillor – is male) opinion on quantum chromodynamics carries more weight than mine. Which doesn’t mean that his opinion on, say, entry into the Euro, is any more informed or carries any more weight than mine.

3) The argument being made (which I’m not endorsing) is that peers don’t have to play up to the prejudices of the electorate and can deal with the world as it is , rather than the world the electorate perceives.

#34 Andrew Hickey:
“When I vote, I don’t vote for someone who will agree with me on every issue” vs
“Rather I vote for someone who [...] then trust [...] to make the decisions I *would* make”.
…I know you think I’m thicker than you…but that makes little sense.

Also: and this is terrible, if you excuse me:
“In other words, I want someone *better* than me in Parliament, not someone as good as me.
I don’t think most of the people in the Lords *are* actually better than me, but I don’t think making it more representative of the country as a whole will improve that.
Oh. My. God.

No? It wouldn’t improve things?

So, why shout against a Chamber that is overwhelmingly, white, male and middle/upper class. Or overwhelmingly from a geographic area?
As long as they are “better” then me, that’s alright, isn’t it?

Erm…which was the political doctrine that advocates Andrew’s opinions, again? Can anyone help me remember here?

Oh good grief. Here we go again.

The reason the House of Lords votes down so much government legislation is that no party has overall control of it. In fact, if you analise their voting record, peers vote more on party lines than MPs. Why? Because the vast majority of them are appointed because specifically on the basis of their party loyalty.

The crossbenchers vote on such an occasional basis as to be irrelevant in most cases. No-one is arguing that experts should not be consulted when developing legislation, but why do they have to sit in the Lords? Why should Lord Winston’s view be considered more valuable than another IVF specialist simply he has a Labour party membership card in his pocket and was arbitrarily given a life peerage ten years ago? Should we stuff the Lords with experts in every possible field and increase its size tenfold (at least)? Wouldn’t it make more sense just to ask them to sit on committees on an ad hoc basis?

The argument that elections lead to Daily Mail reactionary obsessives is a pretty undemocratic view to hold, albeit one that people on the “left” frequently vent. The reason the electoral system in the Commons leads to the media having massive influence is precisely because it is fundamentally undemocratic, with an exaggerated concern about the views of a select 100,000 swing voters in marginal constituencies. That is a problem with an electoral system not elections.

In fact, every white and green paper that has been published since 1999 has to a greater or lesser extent rejected FPTP as an option for electing the Lords. The latest white paper, whilst explicitly not rejecting it, makes it clear that FPTP would satisfy none of the criteria being looked for (and closed lists aren’t considered an option by anyone either – even Jack Straw rejects them these days. Only Billy Bragg is banging that particular drum these days).

If we had a second chamber elected by an open list proportional system we would retain its current great strength – no single party control – whilst removing all that is bad about it. It would entrench a progressive consensus in the second chamber, something which I would have thought the liberal-left would welcome.

Is the status quo really a goer? Gordon Brown has already abandoned the post-1997 convention of appointing Lords on a roughly proportional basis. David Cameron never signed up to that convention in the first place. If we stick with appointment then the Lords will become even more of a political football than it is now.

It is true that for the past decade the Lords has worked relatively well, but the extrapolate from that that appointment will work fine forever more is both naive and ignorant of how appointment has consistently lead to the Lords being the comfort zone of a reactionary establishment in the past.

No-one can deal with the world as it is. They deal with the world as they see it according to their position in society, their background and experiences. Doesn’t matter whether they’re an expert or not. I’d like to have experts advising where relevant but I don’t want them to be the decision-makers and I don’t want them holding positions in the HoL as they have their own interests to defend, being usually middle or upper class.

“I know you think I’m thicker than you…”
No you don’t. I’m not in the habit of judging people’s intelligence based on a handful of comments on a blog post. If you stop making assumptions about what other people think, and instead actually read what they say, you might find discussing things a lot easier.

As an example, reread what I said. I said I *don’t* (note that word) think that most of the people in the Lords are better than me (‘better’ here meaning more able to govern – fitter for the job), and that I don’t think that making the Lords more representative of the country would improve *that*. Just as an example, a representative Lords would include a 3% quota of BNP supporters – do you think that would improve things or make them worse?

By definition, a truly representative chamber would include a 50% representation for the 50% of the country who are below average in the skills needed to govern and legislate. What I *want* is a Parliament consisting of (assuming say 800 parliamentarians between the two houses) the 800 people best able to govern, and a system that ensures that if someone is genuinely one of those 800 people then they will get in no matter their class, race, gender, sexuality or whatever.

I do not for one second think that those 800 people would be anything like as unrepresentative as our current Lords (or indeed Commons) but nor do I think that making a governing body ‘representative’ with a quota system would be a significant improvement.

Please try in future to read the actual posts you’re arguing against, rather than some straw man you’ve set up…

arrrgghh!

“the 800 people best able to govern”

This IS liberal elitism because it assumes that the role of the state is limited to “good government” or some similar bs, rather than being an arena for competing class interests. There is no such thing as the “800 people best able to govern” and the people who are likely to be identified that way are people I don’t want anywhere near government!

James, thank you for putting forward a coherent pro-election argument…
And Tim, that makes sense, but isn’t quite what you were arguing before…

Tim, *your* reply assumes that ‘good government’ and supporting the interests of one class are mutually exclusive. I would disagree. The Atlee government, for example, is one that was clearly biased towards the interests of the working class, and was also a pretty fair approximation of a genuinely good set of people to be running the country…

Those who believe that wholly elected legislatures can’t scrutinise must think that laws passed in America, Australia and elsewhere are of poorer quality than ours. I have yet to see that case made. (Incidentally, why can small countries such as Scotland or New Zealand manage with unicameral legislatures, but large ones can’t? Why does Ireland have an Upper House?)

The arguments about “Daily Mail” readers (who seem to be assumed to have no minds of their own – is this generalised to all newspapers or is the “Mail” being credited with some mesmeric power?) are really a re-hash of the idea that the Left may on occasion take office, but never takes power. It really won’t do to argue that wicked Press Barons stop us getting our arguments across. There is also the problem that collectively we are a darn sight surer of what we are against than what we are for.

No one defends the present size of the Lords – this is itself an argument for reform. If we are to have an appointed Upper Chamber, why should the Government appoint it? (The Germans, who admittedly have a federal system, recruit their Upper Chamber from local politicians.) If the issue really is grandstanding for re-election, have the membership elected on long (e.g 12 year) single terms only, on a STV system. With a Chamber of 200 or so a third of the seats could be contested every four years. The voting members could then co-opt a further 100 or so non-voting “experts” who could be Archbishops, Poet Laureates, computer geeks, or whatever.

Mike, a lot of laws that get passed in the US are later knocked down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional – the Supreme Court, while much smaller, serve much the same function as the Lords in that respect.
I’m in general very in favour of some level of reform, but the question that really needs to be asked is “What are the Lords *for*?”
If their function is legislative, then election is the only way that makes sense, but then you need to justify having two chambers at all. If the function is a scrutineering one, you need to define the parameters of that scrutiny , and the best method of selecting members of the upper house would depend entirely on what those parameters were…

Andrew,
I don’t believe in liberal elitism. You do.
If 3% want to elect a BNP MP, it’s their right to do so. It is called DEMOCRACY.
It is then my task, and that of like-minded people to challenge the BNP on the grounds that their ideas are appalling and vile.

You see, when Poland first awoke from Soviet-style communism, they allowed a semi-free election where 2/3 of the seats were automatically allocated to the Communist Party and their allies and only 1/3 freely contested. That third was almost entirely snatched by the opposition.

Yet no doubt the Communist Party of Poland thought they were acting in the country’s best interest and thought they’d shield Poland from “bad” people….

The problem is that the Hof C has very narrow range of experience . Largely middle class, university educated, some office job with little responsibility , campaign in unwinnable seat and then be shoe horned into winnable seat by Party. Beveredge went to Eton, but his experience of poverty in the East End of London provided the material for writing his report which laid the foundations of the Welfare State.Attlee went to Hailebury but his experience of WW1 and working in the East End of London enable him to become one of the greatest Prime Ministers of all time.

The HofC seams to work on the assumption that if a little knowledge is dangerous, then it is best to err on the cautious side and be completely ignorant. The only MPs I can think of who have brought any worthwhile practical experience to their work areV Cable, Padyy Ashdown, Mercer( military affairs) , K Hoey( sports ), F Field ( poverty). At least the Hof L has people with some practical experience .

The greater problem is the lack of moral rectitude , self discipline, restraint ,honesty and humility born of learning from one’s mistakes in our politicians. The lack of experience leading to hubris in our politicians is demonstrated by them sending our forces to war, ill prepared and inadequately equipped because they lack combat experience themselves. I think many of those who entered politics after fighting in WW1 and 2 believed they had duty to build a better Britian. Many felt the better men had died and in order to try to assuage their guilt ,they had to lead and honest and fulfilling political life. For many, politics was an act of public service or a vocation. Nowadays politics has become a reasonably well paid career for the middle classes.

It is time we electors started to expect a high degree of moral rectitude combined with a touch of humility born of experience, from our politicians which also means putting country before Party at times.

@ Claude, #45

What voluntarist, unnuanced rubbish. Elections are not simply a matter of the better argument winning; they are much more complex than that.

Democracy, supposed rule by the people, is first of all not a free competition – as is plainly evidenced by the fact that so many MPs are white men, from a certain socio-economic background. There are many factors which speak for or against the election of a certain party, in a certain set of historical circumstances.

This is why when several countries emerged from fascism their electorate veered wildly to the Left. That this happens doesn’t prove your point.

#47,
come again?

Why do some of you have to speak (write in this case) like that?
Is it so difficult to write something that does not imply reading the same paragraph 12 times to get the gist of what you mean?
Are you sure it’s a sign of skills or is it a weakness as it betrays lack of substantial arguments?

Now, what on earth is Dave Semple trying to say?
I read what he wrote here on Though Cowards Flinch (http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/?p=489) and I thought I agreed. Now, he’s come up with “voluntarist, unnuanced rubbish” because I defended the notion of elected representative organs.

On #17, Jenny wrote:
“[off topic] I wonder why people use elitist as an insult, sometimes. What, exactly, is wrong with striving towards being the best? [/off topic]”
Because it puts people off! This is why the left has been consistently on the back foot against the Daily Mails of this world that you (rightly) lash out against.

What is so wrong about writing in a simple, frill-free way during a political debate? You’re not writing a Martin Amis book!

Mike, I do believe in democracy but my point was that not all parts of the extant House of Lords are broken and although I used the term ‘selected’ (by their trades, professions, etc.,) representatives could equally be ‘elected’ by these groups or the general public, but we should not import all the problems from the Commons.
I was simply surprised, over the years observing it close up, by the quality of a lot of work done at the HoL.
Marcus and Claude, yes such representativeness would mean inclusive of disability and race etc., (who qualify be being well-informed and able to do the job).
My main points were that:
1) we should not have a second house that is elected *on same basis* as Commons (because the Daily Mail, and Sun editors DO have enormous power to get their own will done – witness the clauses on extreme porn in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill – which was a newspaper editor issue rather than a democratic issue.
2) Representatives need accurate precis and analysis of research at their fingertips
3) We must not assume that elections necessarily confer accountability. There needs to be other systems in place for lawmakers to be accountable. That is why other safeguards should be in place (ie on absenteeism and other things like selection in the first place).

Our current elected system of Commons is a disgrace. For a start, in many safe seats with small party membership, candidates are effectively chosen by a very small number of people. this selection occurs before anyone is put before the electorate. Secondly, our first past the post means that a party can have a large majority in the Commons with a small proportion of electorate voting for them. That is not truly democratic.

In the post I worked from a starting point of what we have now, and safeguards to an extant system. If I was working from a ‘clean slate’ position about my preferred system – an elected system by PR with candidates serving for 12yrs (for only one term) would be one of my preferred systems.
There was merit in the government’s 2007 proposals, but they couldn’t decide how the system would be elected. Until PR is embraced I don’t think any system we have is truly democratic.

(For anyone who cares my name is the result of a compromise with a now ex-husband who couldn’t understand and didn’t like my wish to keep my own name. When I divorced I wanted to revert to my old name but my children wanted me to have the same name as them). It has nothing to do with class, or elitism but rather being young, naive, and not standing my ground in the first place, and to with being a mother in the second). Best not to judge a book (or a Brooks) by its cover.

A couple of months wouldn’t be long enough. I’d be in favour of a jury system if it was a five year paid position, say.

Agree with all you said in #50 Belinda.

Actually, Claude, the Lords is miles more diverse in terms of gender, race, and class than the commons. But don’t let facts get in the way of a good incoherent rant, will you?

Also, your anti-intelectualism is getting rather wearing. Do give it a rest, will you?

Claude “simple” =/= “illiterate and ill-spelt”. MY NAME IS NOT JENNY.

Claude “simple” =/= “illiterate and ill-spelt”. MY NAME IS NOT JENNY.

Here we are.

How Liberal. How Leftist.

Calm. Down.

Also wondering why pretty much everyone who comments on this issue seems to think that if someone doesn’t agree with their particular pet method of reform they are not in favour of reform at all.

There’s an enormous crowd of straw men in here, isn’t there?

Still, I think the jury idea is a good one.

OP: “It is obvious that no member of either House should hold another job while being a legislator.”

Obvious to you, but not to me. I like the idea that representatives have a foot in the world of work, which may inform their opinions without them becoming a mouth piece for a particular industry or service. I like the idea that representatives may have useful work skills so that they can still get a job outside of the lobbying industry when the electorate give them the boot *. I like the idea that representatives have time for another job — that case work is not a burden because councillors and voluntary bodies can get results without the benefit of HofC notepaper, and that representatives are not continually making new laws that cover situations that are adequately covered by existing laws. I love the fact that Winston Churchill spent six months each year in the build up to WW1 sailing with the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean — research or junket?

I despise politicians such as Patricia Hewitt who use their previous roles to gain employment as a lobbyist. That was a bad example, because I depised Patricia Hewitt anyway.

* Apocraphally, Alf Dubs turned up at the Job Centre after losing his parliamentary seat in London. When filling in the application form, reason for unemployment was “not enough votes”.

Claude – Dave at 47 was writing perfectly coherently. Sometimes precision requires the use of particular words. Certainly Dave’s comment was much easier to understand than yours, which while it used simple words, used them wrongly. It took me three attempts to understand what you meant because you used the simple word ‘imply’ to mean something other than what the word actually means. On the other hand Dave, who used some slightly longer words (though nothing above four syllables) got his meaning across perfectly well.
Political debate is not simply a matter of shouting slogans – to debate complex ideas (and any discussion of the Houe of Lords brings up hundreds of sub-questions that need to be dealt with, no matter what one’s position) often requires the complex expression of complex thoughts.

I probably disagree with most here about the size of HofL. When HofL is discussing a technical issue, I don’t want all 800-ish of them to turn up by obligation. I want the 100 individuals who are engaged in the issue to be present and the party voting fodder to be absent. Thus HofL needs to be big enough to ensure adequate voting interest in less controversial legislation and in the superficially mundane.

I don’t think that absentees should be removed. If representatives have specialist knowledge about bees and supercomputers, I expect their presence when relevant, but if they don’t feel able to contribute for twelve months, why exclude them?

My gut instinct is that HofL should be fully elected. But I don’t fully understand what HofL is supposed to do in 2009. Is it a chamber of intellectual consideration, an environment where the nuts and bolts of legislation are reviewed? Is it a chamber of moral consideration, taking a higher view? Is it a chamber of justice, that compares new laws with existing ones, without taking a moral stand? Until you define what HofL is supposed to do, arguments about representation are unimportant.

Charlieman, I do not feel that any member of either house should have ANY other job. To do the job well it has to be full time. They have to research, seek out information, speak to groups affected by the laws proposed, this all takes time. If any representative cannot live on the salary/expenses that are currently given then they are not representative of the vast majority of people who live on much less. I fear that outside interests means they are sometimes not aware that laws are being passed which are not needed, or for which there are already laws. It is an argument for the opposite of what you suggest.

Also, the job is such that the skills are transferable and it would be surprising if anyone suitably skilled to do the job in the first place, had trouble finding a job afterwards. However, like MPs it would be a chance that would have to be taken before taking up what is a privilege.

Churchill was an exceptional, unusual man. From my own limited knowledge of him, (gleaned from the Churchill Archives, chatting to the archivist, and a solitary meeting with his daughter when I arranged a school trip to the Archives) I think he did more than a junket. I would say it was more like 6 mths (luxurious) research.

Can we get back to the issue rather than arguing about who uses long words and who doesn’t? On the issue, I’m more on Claude’s side than anything, since I’ve continually rejected articles that sound like an academic thesis (shortened). But whatever, people have their own styles. There’s no need to get hung up over it.

For me the question isn’t if the Lords current situation is good or not, it’s whether electing them all is going to be any better? Remember, this is a Lords that put a stop to 42 days, that actively stood up against it. Could that happen with an elected chamber? Yes. Could it have not happened with an elected chamber? Certainly.

If you’re looking for solutions to the Lords problem then find the actual problems and solve them. Simply crying “Democracy!” and pretending that by making them all electable will make any difference to how corrupt (bribes can be bought regardless of method of presence in the Lords) some are or how good they are at the job.

Free Europe? Vote YES at http://www.FreeEurope.info !

@60, Dr B:
“They have to research, seek out information, speak to groups affected by the laws proposed, this all takes time.”

Thanks to the allowances for elected members, researchers conduct research. When politicians speak to bodies of study, it is typically for political rather than intellectual motives.

“If any representative cannot live on the salary/expenses that are currently given then they are not representative of the vast majority of people who live on much less.”

If a representative feels the need to earn more money, so what? If a representative wishes to maintain a presence in the family business? What about the champagne socialists, who can live a high life on their occupational salary thanks to family wealth? Do we demand “workers’ MPs on workers’ salary” in a parody of Militant?

“I fear that outside interests means they are sometimes not aware that laws are being passed which are not needed, or for which there are already laws. It is an argument for the opposite of what you suggest.”

My words have been transposed so no response. It will take too long.

“Also, the job is such that the skills are transferable and it would be surprising if anyone suitably skilled to do the job in the first place, had trouble finding a job afterwards.”

I concur. However, representatives must spend time away from previous jobs before they act as lobbyists. How do so many ex-health ministers (formerly human rights lawyers) instantly become experts in corporate law.

The Churchill comment was purely for debate: as an MP and minister he was an absentee, but he was professional about it. He lost enough elections to work it out. I think that we agree on Churchill’s “junket”.

Only a few short points.

Legitimate, accountable and representative – that’s what the composition of our parliament should be.

The House of Commons represents the widest (common) standard in each and the House of Lords should represent the highest (noblest) standard.

The two houses should avoid any unhealthy competition for primacy.

The houses should operate on a basis of relevance and fact.

Democracy and elections should not be confused.

If it was me, I’d say partial FPTP for the Lords based on county (Lord Lieutenant) and city (Lord Mayor) constituencies with a version of PR in the commons.

Back of the envelope calculations gives about 200 Lord Lieutenants and Lord Mayors – 1/3 of the Lords?

#62.Lee Griffin
“Simply crying ‘Democracy!’”?
No-one is so naive to think that a “new” chamber would be perfect and pristine and immune from corruption and dysfunctions. Obviously.

However, for someone who claims to be a ‘liberal’, or a ‘leftist’, or who believes in democracy, the bottom line is that -if needed- a 2nd Chamber would have to satisfy basic democratic criteria -i.e. be elected. You’d have thought that the notion of democratic elections would be welcome in leftist circle as a minimum bottom line to start from. I was wrong. My own mistake.

On another level, it would be interesting to have a Second Chamber with an electoral system leaning towards PR. It would help to rectify the chronic excesses of First Past the Post in the Commons, but that’s a wholly different story.

The Lords put a stop to the 42 days not because they are Lords, for god’s sake. There were dozens of other questions at stake (thankfully, I add).

#58. Andrew
Dave was perfectly coherent? With the sentence “What voluntarist, unnuanced rubbish”?
But that’s because you are a clever man with mega ontological epstemological metalogical superlogical academic knowledge. What do you expect from a common thicko like myself. To ‘simplify ‘does not mean to ‘trivialise’ . It means that important issues are made ACCESSIBLE to everybody, and not just Martin Amis, Derrida and Foucault.
Then let’s moan that people are put off politics and read The Sun.
In the real world, outside the ivory towers of ‘Academia’, people (you call them the ‘hard-of-thinking’, thank you very much) don’t speak like the ‘better few’.

#53. JenNIE (so awfully sorry I mispelt your name)
Actually, Claude, the Lords is miles more diverse in terms of gender, race, and class than the commons. But don’t let facts get in the way of a good incoherent rant, will you?

My Liberal Leftist friend, if you think that a Chamber that still counts 102 hereditary peers out of 743 (people who sit there BY BIRTH, for Christ’s sake) is diverse and mine is an incoherent rant then I’m very happy for you and your Wonderland.

That’s 102 people. In terms of representation, imagine if 1 Brit out of 7 in the real world was a Baron or a Duchess or an Earl. That alone, disqualify any notion that the House of Lords is more ‘diverse’ than the elected Commons.

But I said it’s more ‘diverse’ in terms of “Gender, race and class”, I hear you say.
But you don’t explain why. And that’s because it’s, pardon my French, utter bollocks.

According to http://www.parliament.uk,:
there are 125 female MPs out of 646 in the Common (19.3%).
There are 148 female Members in the House of Lords out of a total of 743.
That means 19.9%…!
“Miles more diverse”…I can see why speaking in academic jargon seems like a more appealing prospect for some. Comfort blanket and all.

Claude, it doesn’t take an academic background to read a four-word sentence, and as a matter of fact I don’t have one (I don’t have a degree). Jennie, the other person with whom you’re arguing, works as a barmaid – I don’t think you could possibly get much more ‘real world’ than that. Given that your blogger profile says you work in ‘Education’ , I would hazard that you have far more to do with ‘Academia’ than either of us.

#68. Trust me, mate. I have nought to do with Academia.

Shall we not add appeals to authority (or in this case, a game of “more working class than thou”) to our straw men, gentlemen?

I honestly, genuinely, do not understand why using clear and precise terminology is something to be derided. I despair for the poor people you are educating, Claude, if you think that good spelling, use of logic, and proper phraseology is something to be discouraged.

@ Claude #67, in deference to Sunny’s wish that we don’t continue discussing how things are said and instead discuss what is said, allow me to briefly point out the following and then to move on. Past first year uni – and ONLY then – I have never studied political theory in an academic context. My a-levels were sciences, my degree was ancient history, my masters was ancient history and my pgce wasn’t political. So if I can understand Foucault, Althusser or any other overly verbose French joker, so you can you. But before you denounce all of us as utilizing the unfair advantage of our university educations, I should think you might want to investigate who you’re talking about.

Back to the subject at hand.

“Voluntarist, unnuanced rubbish” refers to your comment about the nature of electoral competition under a democracy, and to your supporting analogy as regards the choices of the electorates in former Soviet bloc nations after the fall of the USSR. With me so far? Not too many syllables for you?

If the BNP are successful, and people vote for them, it is not an uncomplicated reflection of what those people think. The nature of parliamentary democracy means that few parties attract support for all of their policies. Often there are parties whose policies are inimical to the people voting for them – think of the working class people who voted for Thatcher, even the non-NUM mineworkers. They all got shafted but by the time they realised their mistake it was too late.

How did this happen? Well, the media has a huge role to play. The recent wildcat strikes breaking out all over the country have been billed as a demand for British jobs for British workers – basically rehashing the words of a BNP press release on the subject. In reality, if Polish, Italian and other foreign workers were more organised (or less under the control of management – I think I read somewhere that they’re all effectively living in a compound in the recent instance) they’d be standing beside British workers protesting the attempt to ruin the terms and conditions of one set of workers by importing in another.

The press doesn’t mention this – and there are a variety of reasons for that. What they are doesn’t matter right now. Suffice to say that the upshot is this: elections will never be free so long as ‘free speech’ requires money to back it up, so long as the press is in the back pocket of the rich and so long as news values work to a conservative (small c) agenda. There is a lot more to it than that, and if you think you are up to it, I suggest perhaps reading Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks for discussions of ‘hegemony’, the means by which a ruling elite can maintain their control even though popular elections are held.

So the response to the BNP getting elected cannot merely be a counter-election campaign. Recognition of structural (i.e. not voluntarist, relating to human will) elements to the success of right-wing ideologies means that our counter-strategy must go far beyond elections. If our response is merely to gather together “like minded people” our response is never going to be enough to combat fascism; Italy and Germany both had democratic systems before they succumbed to fascism and it wasn’t for lack of opposition, nor was it simply to do with voter intimidation. Powerful sections of the bourgeoisie weighed in behind both Hitler and Mussolini, giving them the confidence and the resources to act.

A left-wing agenda will never command these resources, which are available because of the structural location of the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat, however organised. The relevance of all this to the House of Lords is simple: I want elections, and it is important not to be afraid of elections – but elections, and electioneering, will not deliver us a BNP-free House of Lords, nor will it deliver us a BNP-free London Assembly. Elections are more complex than simply “may the best man win”, hence, not voluntarist, as you seemed to suggest. We agree on House of Lords Reform insofar as I want it to be an elected chamber. The nuance of your argument is wrong, however.

Finally (for this is dragging on a bit), your discussion of the collapse of the communist parties in Eastern Europe, where people voted them out en masse, means little to this discussion. It’s no different from the electoral success of communists in countries – like France post-World War II – liberated from fascism. You lean on a population one way, without decisively re-ordering the class relations of society and eventually the same population will push the other way. This is very simplistic of course, but there is a solid idea behind it.

What appears not to being mentioned is experience and ability. Churchill was the cousin to the Duke of Marlborough yet his experience made him a great statesman . Eden was a baronet ,educated at Eton, read Persian at Oxford ,bravely supported Churchill before WW2, yet made a catastrophically bad judgement over Suez. Ernie Bevin was illegitmate; worked as a docker , founded the TGWU and is considered the finest Foreign Secretary since WW2; followed probably by Carington; an Eton educated lord. When someone said there were were too many public school boys in the Foreign Office , Bevin’s reply was ” They did alright in the Battle of Britain” . It would suggest Bevin judged someone’s character , not their birth.Carrington resigned over the Falklands. Whitelaw offered to resign when an intruder broke into the Queen’s bedroom Roy Mason , a former miner was probaly the most effective Secreatary State of Ireland . Guiness is quoted as saying “Mason kicked the f….. shit out of the Provos and was 3 weeks fom defeating them”. D Healey is considered the finest Secretary of Defence since WW2.

Surely what is important is that politics attracts people with wisdom , moral rectitude and who can make difficult decisions including putting country before party. These qualities can be found in people from any background.

The problem with all the leaders is their lack of any breadth and depth of experience.

Jennie and Andrew. Who said it’s a matter of “having a degree”? Amazing how you accuse others of doing a strawman! But nevermind.

So back to the House of Lords being ‘more diverse’…and leaving poor Antonio Gramsci alone, I pointed out some figures in #67.
Anything to say about that?

Claude: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5548997.ece

The main concern I have about a 100% el;elected second chamber – and in principle, I do believe in elections – is that we would lose the expertise that some appointees can bring. It would become entirely party-based and that wouldn’t be positive

However, we should certainly not having religionist functionaries there, for example, who I think contribute very little and have no expertise in anything other than irrational beliefs in imaginary friends

“However, for someone who claims to be a ‘liberal’, or a ‘leftist’, or who believes in democracy”

I believe in a working democracy, I don’t believe in enacting “democratic” procedures when they don’t result in a working democracy. A house of Lords that passes policy based on tabloids, as the government and therefore House of Commons does, is not a working democracy. As fraught with peril as having hereditary peers is, the evidence as yet is that they’re a wholly objective and reasoned body through which to filter legislation, good and (mostly) bad.

Let’s take the good that happens with the Lords and work out how to keep that while making them more democratically accountable. The interesting thing for me is that I can’t think of a way that this can be done without having another “undemocratic” body assessing them, or without another “democratic” body assessing them with party politics in mind.

“The Lords put a stop to the 42 days not because they are Lords, for god’s sake. ”

No, they put a stop to it because they aren’t weighed down by the need to please public opinion, and therefore are able to properly assess the impact of legislation in reference to all the relevant laws.

“However, we should certainly not having religionist functionaries there, for example, who I think contribute very little and have no expertise in anything other than irrational beliefs in imaginary friends”

Is this based on reading what these people have to say, or the fact that they are religious? I find that some of the highest level religious heads in this country are very intelligent and very balanced. It is (as the OP said) the fundamentalists on all sides, that reside at much lower local levels, that are the problem. High level “religionist functionaries” have more in kin with philosophers than street preachers.

“So back to the House of Lords being ‘more diverse’…and leaving poor Antonio Gramsci alone, I pointed out some figures in #67.
Anything to say about that?”

Final post… Lords being more diverse is a bit of a fallacious argument. If their purpose is to be the objective rock upon which bad legislation breaks, then they need not be diverse, they just need to be right. If Commons is to represent the people of the country, it has to be diverse.

The OP has a good point (or was it a commenter?) that the Lords could do with more people representative of other fields in the UK, such as medical, but ultimately it matters not if they are listening to all the expert advice and figures, and coming up with the right answer.

It’s ensuring that always happens that is the key.

Side Note: Even if Lords did act this way and were 100% elected, who’s to say the “expert” advice and “evidence” is representative or unbiased? Perhaps the correct way to deal with that is to elect our scientists too to ensure such things? What about our judiciary, scandalous that they can go about sentencing people with no direct election based accountability. Call this democracy?!

#74. Jennie.

I checked the link you kindly provided.
But in #53 you said :”the Lords is miles more diverse in terms of gender, race, and class than the commons. But don’t let facts get in the way of a good incoherent rant, will you?“.

Trevor Phillips, in your link from The Times, only mentions race.
As far as gender is concerned, I already pointed out, and gave you the figures from the Parliament’s own website, that your statement is heavily inaccurate.
As far as class is concerned I already pointed out that 1 Lord out of 7 is from Britain’s nobility and aristocracy, a Baron, an Earle, a Duke. 1 out of 7. That alone, makes the House of Lords unrepresentative in terms of class.

And I’m sure the remaining 6 out of 7 are not teachers, miners, nurses, call centre workers and shop assistants (then again, they aren’t in the Commons either, but I never said otherwise).

Then there’s the question of age. The average age in the Lords is 70. That’s SEVENTY. The average age in the Commons is 50. That’s FIFTY.
According to the Office of National Statistics, the average age in the UK is 39.

Jennie, do you still think the House of “Lords is miles more diverse”?

[80] Claude, I doubt there’s a legislature in the world whose members’ average age isn’t greater than that of the people it serves. If you think the most important feature of legislatures is democratic mirroring, then you presumably support the “jury service” model of selection.

One difficulty with that is perhaps that such a Lords would pass a Bill restoring the death penalty and then send it to the Commons…

Jury service selection might not be a terrible idea; selection by lot is one of the oldest forms of democracy. Of course the problem then becomes not that they’re all insiders, but that they could potentially fall victim to the politicking of wily Commons’ politicians who have been around for decades.

As for whether the Lords might send such a law to the Commons, if in theory this jury service style House of Lords had powers to create legislation (and there’s nothing to suggest it should), then perhaps the “3 readings” rule could be adapted to the Lords – if the people filling it were selected every 2 years, then perhaps three Houses would have to endorse it.

Makes it a little less likely, I should think, that the death penalty would rear its ugly head. Now I’ll be the first to admit, this is all wild speculation, but in my defence, Mike started it!

#81. Mike K
Yours is textbook strawman.

I didn’t say that there should be “a legislature in the world whose members’ average age isn’t greater than that of the people it serves”. Where did I say that?

This is an extremely manipulative, and frankly tiresome, way of debating.

I also pointed out that the Commons are on average older than the average UK age. But 50 is one thing. 70 is another.

When the “representative” of a nation are overwhelmingly a lot older than your national average, a few issues arise. That may explain why the Lords have traditionally opposed social issues related to sexual equality, for example.
The chances are that most (I said most, not all) of these people may hold extremely old-fashioned views. Even if they consider themselves modern they may not have a full grasp of what the country needs if it wants to move forward.

I just read that the Italian Senate (and everybody knows Italy has been dubbed a ‘gerontocracy’) has an average age of 58. I am seriously surprised. I was expecting them to outdo the Lords. Even they didn’t.

On the other hand, it bears mentioning, Claude, that the average age of the US Senate, an elected body is 62 – which is closer to the Lords than to the Commons.

But still much younger than the Lords. Thanks for pointing that out, Dave.

With age, wisdom.

Who would you rather as Chancellor of the Exchequer? Osborne or Cable?

On the other hand there are some limits – you don’t get senility with youth.

“Jury service selection might not be a terrible idea; selection by lot is one of the oldest forms of democracy.”

Again…why is “democracy” in it’s purest form the best way to govern a country?

The jury system, in my view, should be used much much more widely in policy development. I would like to see select committees, for example, use them as a matter of course. I’d like to see Citizens’ Assemblies regularly established to deliberate on major, politically difficult issues.

What they can’t do is replicate the role of the current House of Lords in anything like a satisfactory way, particularly if – as has been suggested – they get put in office for five year terms.

You think the current House of Lords is corrupt? Put 500 random people in it with no vetting and then see what happens.

The power of the jury system is that the individuals who sit on them do a relatively short job and then go back to their lives – they remain rooted. Give them five year terms and make them accountable to nobody and they will form their own little Westminster bubble far quicker than any group of politicians ever could. Much maligned MPs spend huge amounts of their time talking and dealing with constituents – what grounding would a juror have under that system?

Incidentally, the equivalent of the Supreme Court in the UK is not the House of Lords, but the Law Lords – a body which is slowly being decoupled (and physically moved to the other side of Parliament Square) from the House of Lords. It should be pointed out that this is expressly not a “constitutional” court, yet confusingly has a legal duty to uphold the “rule of law” – a thing which Parliament in its infinite wisdom sees fit to not define.

Nobody said no vetting, and nobody said that they couldn’t be sacked. It’s a good job nobody here is allergic to straw, isn’t it?

How strict a vetting process would you make it to ensure it would be less corruptable than the status quo? You can’t set up a random process and then marry it instantly with a massively rigourous vetting process – why not just have elections and be done with it?

I don’t understand the straw reference – is it something to do with something you are clutching at?

I don’t know! But you know what? Just because I haven’t thought up every single possible nuance of a theory which was only brought to my attention BY SOMEBODY ELSE yesterday does not mean that your pet idea is better.

James: What evidence is there that electing the Lords will either a) stop corruption or b) ensure objectivity?

I’m not saying the current system does either, but I’m interested as to where the evidence is that this new way you propose would actually change anything. Honest question, not loaded.

This discussion is interesting in a few ways, one of which is the notion that our elected representatives do the best job they can, they are competent at doing it, and they are not interested in making decisions on the basis of political expediency rather than the merits. How very quaint!

The argument that elected is better than unelected is also amusing in a country where nearly half don’t bother to vote because they believe there is little point, and where a ruling party can have so much power even though only a fifth of the electorate voted for it.

We need people who are a bit more interested in doing the right thing, and we need restrictions on them so that if they get it wrong they can’t screw up too much. It would also be nice if they were more interested in the concerns of the electorate.

On the whole, in the area I’m interested in, I think the Lords do a good job and I’m grateful for them being there. We need people scrutinising and amending legislation who are relatively immune to the ‘mob’, or the Daily Mail / Sun mentality, or whatever you like to call the whims of the people.

As for the cost of the HoL, it’s trivial in the scheme of things: for example, it’s about 1% of the estimate of the idiot ID scheme, which won’t work and which will inevitably be found to be unlawful by the ECtHR and cost us a good deal more, and it’s about 0.6% of the NHS IT programme, which again isn’t working as advertised and is already costing more than the original estimate; or about £3 per UK household pa. In those terms, I think the cost isn’t a big concern.

How about a more radical proposal along the lines David Friedman proposed for the US congress, http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2008/11/proposal-for-representative-government.html :

“1. Anyone who wishes may be a congressional representative.

2. Any voter may choose any representative to represent him, but only one at a time. A voter is free to switch from one representative to another on 24 hours notice–less if the relevant technology makes it practical.

3. A representative casts a number of votes in the house, or on committee, equal to the number of voters he represents.

4. Any representative representing at least 240,000 voters gets a seat in Congress, can introduce bills, speak on the floor of the House, act as a representative now does. Representatives with fewer than that number of votes can group with other such representatives to satisfy the requirement, giving them one seat which they can share among themselves in any mutually acceptable fashion. The limit can in the future be adjusted to keep the total number of seats in the house at about its present level.”

That way we would have a genuinely representative upper house (forget PR, every vote counts in every single vote in house!). It hasn’t been tried so we can’t be sure it would be work, but it would certainly have a different composition to the Commons. And people would like the ability to change their vote instantly from one representative to another, in accordance with their attitudes on current legislation.

Re: #95
That system seems (to me) to contain the following flaws:

1) for it to function in a manner that is truly representative, *all* voters *must* pay *constant* attention to it, *and* *constantly* amend their choice of elected representative.
Given the nature of our species, and the widespread disengagement from politics (and voting) in ‘the West’, this seems to me to be rather unlikely to occur.

2) the instantly-transferable nature of each voter’s allegiance seems to leave the whole system open to de facto hijacking by scare-stories whipped-up by the more unscrupulous elements of the Press.
I think that any Chamber constituted along the lines proposed would be very, very likely to pass laws that are extremely ill-considered, and little more than knee-jerk reactions to pander to whatever whims the Editors of the Gutter Press have decided to pursue this week/month/quarter.

The system seems to me to contain all the worst flaws of ‘popular democracy’, and NONE of the safeguards against ill-thought legislation cooked-up in response to e.g. media hysteria against Muslims/immigrants/foreigners/’pædo scum’/benefit scroungers/terrorists/Agents of Goldstein.

UPDATE:
Having just looked up David Friedman on Wikipedia (the ‘source of all truth’, I know), I really should not be surprised about the presence of what I perceive to be these ‘deal-breaking’ failings in his system:
Is it really ‘surprising’ that an ‘anarcho-capitalist’ would propose a system that effectively gifts the Keys to Power to a tiny cabal?
A cabal that is composed *solely* of those people who are wealthy enough to own (or to bribe the owners of) mass-circulation media outlets.

Democratic? Representative?
No.
Oligarchic.

Gem, why such a low esteem of the people and such an exaggerated sense of the popular press? Switzerland has had a system of popular democracy for years without the world falling in. Are we really all that different? All this system does is aggregate people’s votes towards their representative, thus saving on having referendums on everything. But by your logic, we don’t really have any option BUT to have an oligopoly, of which you would prefer some elite that is able to decide what the public’s interest really is, though obviously as elite that more or less agrees with you.

James Graham in The Guardian today: “The Lords should be elected”.

“The truth, whisper it, is that the current semi-reformed Lords suits the government very well indeed. Oh, it occasionally votes down government legislation, but this happens much more occasionally than you might think thanks to the Conservative peers’ shockingly low attendance records. The current system lets the prime minister make whoever he likes a minister and he can always offer a place on the red benches to any errant backbencher in need of “retirement”.

I didn’t go completely mental.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/03/lordreform-jackstraw

Despite all the comment generated, the government are backing off from preventing second jobs and other paid roles. Yet it is these jobs and paid posts that are at the heart of the problem. How can any government root out sleaze when second jobs and paid posts are allowed? No member of either house should have a second job. If they can’t live on the salary they should do the higher paid job and not pretend to be interested in public *service*.

The David Friedman suggestion is interesting, but it does presuppose a whole new layer of jobs providing the feedback loop to keep every citizen informed in much the same way as the financial services sector provides regular detailed reports and tracking data on the performance of companies. If this can be financed effectively then it could work, but until then it’s idealistic wishful thinking.

It seems to me that providing the feedback is one of the current responsibilities of our elected representatives which they fulfill to high levels of variability.

I agree that the level of commitment and service provided is a measure of differentiation between the parties equal to that of their policy objectives, but it must be more realistic for politicians on each of the different sides to combine their multiple roles and functions than to force them all to conform to an exclusivity bond for a geographically defined constituency.

Perhaps we do need to expand the representative capabilities of parliament instead by evolving new types of indirectly accountable democratic houses of Parliament, according to professions etc (such as the mooted Supreme Court of Law Lords).

@Nick (#97)
“Gem, why such a low esteem of the people and such an exaggerated sense of the popular press?”

Because I have lived in England all my Life®, and remember various instances when the Gutter Press has whipped-up a Mob mentality among their readership.
The actual physical attacks in Portsmouth on people *suspected of* being pædophiles spring immediately to mind – as do the various degrees of hysteria aginst muslims/immigrants/’Terrorists’ etc that I mentioned in my initial post.
There are, of course, also many many exapmles from other countries where a combination of a mob mentality and the pushing of a ‘blame the Outsider’ meme by those in power/with powerful representation in the media have produced results that might be deemed societally ‘sub-optimal’.
Hence my use of the phrase “knee-jerk reactions” to describe the sort of Laws that I think would emerge from any chamber constituted along Mr. Friedman’s lines.
The Third Reich? Rwanda in the 1990′s? The attitudes to (and treatment of) ‘gypsies’ prevalent across much of Eastern Europe?
I don’t want ANY such feelings enshrined into my nation’s Laws, thank you.

“All this system does is aggregate people’s votes towards their representative, thus saving on having referendums on everything”

Firstly, perhaps you can remind me of the last time that we had a referendum? I mean, because they occur so ‘often’ and on so ‘many’ issues, I cannot remember the date on which the last one was held.
Presumably, the stress and inconvenience of constantly re-arranging my routine to participating in plebiscites “on everything” has caused me to suffer from some kind of short-term memory loss.

Secondly, and more importantly, read points 1), 2), and 3) of Friedman’s proposed system again (on post #95).
It specifically empowers ANYONE to stand as an MP;
It specifically empowers ALL voters to SWITCH THEIR ALLEGIANCE at 24 hours notice, or LESS “if the relevant technology makes it practical”, and;
It specifically accords each MP a degree of Power that is directly proportional to the number of voters by whom they are currently backed.
This system is called ‘Block Voting’.
The Friedmanites in the Thatcher regime described this system as ‘undemocratic’ in the context of votes within Trade Unions.
Why? Because if one Union rep has 6 million members ‘behind’ his vote, then it matters not one jot what the other 59 Union representatives on the TUC think, if their total membership adds-up to even ONE member less than 6 million.
By bruiting the ‘undemocratic’ nature of this voting arrangement, the Thatcher regime was (with the help of its cheerleaders in the Press) able to build public support for its anti-Union ‘reforms’ of the 1980′s.

Now imagine that a Parliamentary vote is coming up on a proposal on, say, Human Rights legislation, or on anti-’Terror’ legislation, or on immigrants’ rights to work legally within the UK.
Then imagine how such an issue is likely to be spun by the swivel-eyed elements of the Right-wing press.
Imagine further that they can specifically regale their readers with an editorial along the lines of the following paragraph:
‘Our Enoch is the ONLY man who talks COMMON SENSE on this issue! He is the ONLY MP prepared to BACK BRITAIN. It is your PATRIOTIC DUTY to switch your vote to Mr. Powell, so that he can see-off the LIBERAL ELITE of CHAMPAGNE SOCIALISTS who are responsible for turning this once-great nation into a POLITICALLY CORRECT NANNY STATE.
The TRIBUNE says let’s put the ‘GREAT’ back into Great Britain – switch your vote to Enoch Powell’.

Do you see now why I don’t like Mr. Friedman’s proposal?
Or does it become more clear if I alter that paragraph to change the words ‘liberal elite’ and ‘champagne socialists’ for the word ‘Jews’, and the words ‘Enoch Powell’ for the words ‘Oswald Moseley’?

“But by your logic, we don’t really have any option BUT to have an oligopoly, of which you would prefer some elite that is able to decide what the public’s interest really is, though obviously as elite that more or less agrees with you.”

That is counterfactual rot – and you KNOW that it is.
If you wish to persist with this slanderous claim, pleases quote evidence from my original post (#96) that directly and unambiguously supports the substance of your allegation – and ONLY that allegation.
Otherwise, just drop it, ok?
Because, on a message board, our posts remain in plain sight, for all to read – and to stoop to such obviously baseless mudslinging not only weakens your own current position; to persist with it *could* get you a reputation as a person who knows that their beliefs are logically indefensible, and so resorts to bullying instead of debate.
I am sure that you are *better* than that.

Cheers,
Gem.

- “But by your logic, we don’t really have any option BUT to have an oligopoly, of which you would prefer some elite that is able to decide what the public’s interest really is, though obviously as elite that more or less agrees with you.”

That is counterfactual rot – and you KNOW that it is.
If you wish to persist with this slanderous claim, pleases quote evidence from my original post (#96) that directly and unambiguously supports the substance of your allegation – and ONLY that allegation. -

Wow, I seem to have got your attention. You also have a surprising line in sanctimonious cant, considering your own post had some of its own mudslinging complete with intonated scare quotes (“is it really ’surprising’ that an ‘anarcho-capitalist’ would propose a system that effectively gifts the Keys to Power to a tiny cabal.”). But I will try to answer your question.

You think unmediated majority rule will have terrible consequences like the rise of the Third Reich or the Rwandan genocide (I don’t recall a referendum or direct vote of any sort marking the beginning of these). The alternatives to majority rule are:

- anarchy (perhaps a good option, but hasn’t been made to work yet)
- oligarchy (rule by minority), unless you want to suggest something radical like monarchy!

Now you can certainly dress up those options a bit. You can have a complex series of elections that mediates and moderates the majority’s voting, but that only really offers a particular platform for a minority to become engaged in and exploit – and within a few generations you have yourself a political class. Or a far-sighted elite might have put in constitutional constraints on the democratic assembly. This seems to have some benefits in the US, and it might be in this context that Friedman is endorsing this particular voting structure in congress (they would still be constrained by the US president, the US supreme court and the legislatures in each state).

The question is, given those constraints, why do you want an elected house that isn’t representative of the majority, especially considering we already have a highly unrepresentative elected lower house? Why have just another platform for establishment appointees or machine politicians? Why not try a really representative democracy for a change. Who knows, you might find the collective choices of all the people in the country to be more sensible than what the establishment comes up with.

If you don’t think that, you must be an elitist and not a democrat – as you think people can’t run their own government. That is not a terrible position to have. I have plenty of friends who are elitists! And obviously, if you were to have an elite, you would want one that agrees with things you want like human rights and no mob lynchings of paedophiles (on which points, I am sure we substantially agree). And thats the substance of my claim.

Incidentally, you won’t have to worry about newspapers stoking up hatred for too much longer; they are dead in the water: http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2009/02/and_now_the_end.html

@ Nick (#102)

“Wow, I seem to have got your attention.”

People who use lies to promote exclusive rule by the wealthy tend to get my attention.
So do people who fail to use reasoned debate, but instead resort to calumnies and obfuscation.

You have signally failed to quote ANY statement from me that supports your deliberate misrepresentation of my position.
Presumably because you know that I have irrefutably demonstrated the fatal flaws of your proposed system.
So, you can not defend your system from the demonstration of its glaring flaws by using evidence or reason, and you have resorted instead to baseless calmunies and other obfuscatory tactics, in the hope that anybody reading this debate will decided that ‘Gem is clearly a Bad Person, so Nick’s system must be very good’.
Which is a logical fallacy.
i.e. no matter what lies you can make people believe about me, your system will STILL contain the flaws that I pointed out.

“You also have a surprising line in sanctimonious cant, considering your own post had some of its own mudslinging complete with intonated scare quotes (“is it really ’surprising’ that an ‘anarcho-capitalist’ would propose a system that effectively gifts the Keys to Power to a tiny cabal.”).”

So, how else would you characterise an ideology that proposes the complete abolition of the State, and proposes to replace it with for-Profit provision of everything, including Law Enforcement?
THAT system restricts access to legal protection & redress in the civil courts to *ONLY those that can afford it*. It’s been tried throughout History – notably in the Roman Empire, and in the Feudal/Aristocratic system.
Neither produces a society that I would call ‘fair’, ‘representative’ or ‘democratic’.

“But I will try to answer your question.
You think unmediated majority rule will have terrible consequences like the rise of the Third Reich or the Rwandan genocide”

1) you are NOT proposing unmediated majority rule (aka Direct Participatory Democracy) – you are proposing a system whereby voters switch their allegiance constantly between representatives, to whom they cede their voice on EVERY ISSUE.
Apart from the fact that, for this system to be at all ‘representative’, ALL voters would HAVE TO keep CONSTANTLY abreast of EVERY issue under the sun and the full details of EVERY proposed Law – the obvious flaw in which system you attempted to misattribute to me with your counterfactual implied representation of my beliefs.
When did you do THAT?
When you characterised your proposed system’s operation as “thus saving on having referendums on everything”. The implication being that my proposed system (WHERE did I mention any such thing btw?) requires constant attention from every voter in the country whilst yours ‘does not’ – whereas, in fact, it is YOUR system that requires such constant vigilance and participation – from every voter in the entire country – for it to function in a representative manner.

2) Actually, and although this is immaterial to the discussion of your system, unmediated majority rule DOES produce trerrible consequences. Ask the citizens of Ancient Athens (whether or not you include those who were deemed inssufficently wealthy to have the vote).

“(I don’t recall a referendum or direct vote of any sort marking the beginning of these).”
Did I say that they DID?
NO, I didn’t. So WHY are you asking this? Attempting to obfusce the issue, perhaps?
I challenged you to back-up *your* slander of my proposed system (the fictitous one that you decided to make up, and whose details you have yet to outline) with the obviously counterfactual “thus saving on having referendums on everything” by recalling the date of the most recent referendum, on ANYTHING, that has been held in England.
I note that you have signally failed to do so. Because to do so would demonstarte that we do NOT have “referendums on everything” at all.
The last one that I can recall was in the mid 1970′s, over our membership of the EEC.
A point of which you are presumably aware – along with the fact that mentioning referendums in the first place was a massive error on your part, as it highlights the obvious flaw in your proposed system.

“The alternatives to majority rule are:
- anarchy (perhaps a good option, but hasn’t been made to work yet)
- oligarchy (rule by minority), unless you want to suggest something radical like monarchy!”

And here you stoop to a False Dichotomy.
I have spent my entire Life® living in a Representative Democracy.
Why haven’t you mentioned such a system in your list of alternatives to
‘majority rule’?
Oh yeah, because it’s the one that produces the least-ghastly societies, and so you don’t want to remind our readers of its existence, because anyone who reads this will see that it is far better than your proposal.
Anarchy, by the way, is the mode of ‘government’ that existed before even Tribal ‘civilisation’ – it can NOT be made to ‘work’.

“The question is, given those constraints, why do you want an elected house that isn’t representative of the majority, especially considering we already have a highly unrepresentative elected lower house?”

NO – the questions are:
1) if your system is so ‘great’, WHY do you have to stoop to calumnies, obfuscations, and outright Lies in order to try to defend it? Because it ISN’T ‘great’ at all?
2) WHERE have I advocated an elected House? I haven’t.
3) WHY would an elected House HAVE TO BE ‘[not] representative of the majority’? It WOULDN’T!
4) YOU proposed Mr. Friedman’s system for the second chamber here.
I have shown WHY it would produce an unrepresentative chamber that enacts ill-considered legislation as a knee-jerk reaction to the lowest-common-denominator fears whipped-up by those wealthy enough to own the media.
I have demonstrated WHY your system would be unrepresentative (because it hands power to the rich, and ONLY the rich) – so WHY do you continue to propose it?

You can NOT show that my logic is flawed (or you would have done so already).
If you wish to defend your proposal, try showing WHY your system would NOT produce the results that I described.
You’ll have to hope that nobody here can remember even the Dangerous Dogs Act of the early 1990′s – when the tabloids whipped-up disproportionate fears among their readership, and so the unpopular Major Government rushed-through ill-considered legislation in order to be seen to be doing something. A knee-jerk response. And a bad Law.
And one that isn’t even as terrible as the earlier examples of mob-rule that I cited.

“Why have just another platform for establishment appointees or machine politicians? Why not try a really representative democracy for a change.”

Another False Dichotomy. Also, I refer you again to the points I raised about your system – it is NOT a ‘really representative democracy’.
“for a change”? For how long did the Feudal/Aristocratic system last?
And WHY did our ancestors fight so hard to change it?

“Who knows, you might find the collective choices of all the people in the country to be more sensible than what the establishment comes up with.”

History knows.
As in the well-documented historical examples of mob-rule whipped-up by artifically-created and counterfactual Fear that I cited for you.
I aver that your system would make us end up in a ghastly dystopian nightmare, where those lucky enough to be born would rich have Everything That They Could Ever Desire – and the rest of us would be forced to live out our nasty, brutish and short lives in crime-ridden slums.

“If you don’t think that, you must be an elitist and not a democrat – as you think people can’t run their own government.”

Another False Dichotomy.
And one that shows that you have never studied any history. Fool that I am, I HAD thought that EVERYBODY knew what happens to those societies that ignore the mistakes of history.
Actually, to be fair to you, that is not the *only* thing that your statement could be deemed to show.
It *could* also show that you are trying to make a ‘Straw Man’ of me – deliberately lying about me to try to distract our readers from the fact that your system would produce a ghastly dystopia – one that effectively hands all power to those rich enough to own the media.

“And obviously, if you were to have an elite, you would want one that agrees with things you want”

‘Obviously’?
Please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

“And thats the substance of my claim.”

So, your claim is built upon False Dichotomies founded on a counterfactual
calumny. And on weasel words.
Not what I ‘d call the ‘strongest’ foundation.

And, in both of your replies to me, you have FAILED to produce *any* evidence – or reasoning – to show that my fears about your system are incorrect, let alone that they are unfounded.
WHY?

“Incidentally, you won’t have to worry about newspapers stoking up hatred for too much longer; they are dead in the water:”
1) Newspapers have been pronouinced ‘dead in the water’ umpteen times, and yet they are still with us, and still selling MILLIONS of copies every day.
How many households in this country do not ever read a newspaper?
2) ARE you trying to obfuscating again? (My apologies if you are not).
3) Did I say that your system hands power to people who own only newspapers?
NO.
I said that it hands power to those who own MEDIA OUTLETS.
Newspapers, TV, Radio, Magazines, Websites.

If you disagree with this statement about your proposed system, you need to show WHY it does NOT hand power to such people.
I have shown why it DOES.

Over to you.

Gem.

“in the hope that anybody reading this debate will decided that ‘Gem is clearly a Bad Person, so Nick’s system must be very good’.”

Gem, I think anyone reading this discussion could only conclude you had a little too much coffee before jumping in to comment. I am not obliged to answer your comments, but I will apologise if you were offended by my claim that you supported an oligarchy (of which I count representative government to be one, albeit an attenuated sort). I thought, judging only by your playful dig at David Friedman, that you wouldn’t mind a poke or two back. But I misunderstood the tone of your comment and so I apologise.