Discussion

Lords a-leaving: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

iberator: Win for democracy and fair representation of the working class!Being Noble is like saying 'i used to have slaves(even if not, then feudalism was the de'facto slave system too!) and made profits from it'Such people are enemies of humanity and democracy and markets. I hope one day they all just go.King and his small family is fine btw. Cultural reason:)

meitham: It’s not just about the seat they must lose their “lord” title

dude250711: Yep, getting rid of nobility is how USSR lived happily ever after.

stvltvs: Getting rid of hereditary nobility has worked out pretty well for the USA.

dylan604: Has it? By what metric are using for that? Two Bush presidencies off the power of the senior patriarch. Current president comes from family wealth. Most of the oligarchs come from family wealth. It's not until the recent tech billionaires that became first generation oligarchs.

theodric: The point of the hereditary peerage was the same as the point of having a non-elected Senate. Now both will have been lost in the name of "democracy" - a system of government that constantly fails to do either what is the desire of the people OR what is truly in their interests. From here on out it'll just be whoever manages to connive their way into power through connections, payola, corruption, island meetups, and so on. I strongly suspect this will lead to a worse government, not a better one.

tartoran: Why would a hereditary system work any better? Plenty of monarchies based on heredity ran themselves into the ground.

taylorius: Heredity is only one of many flavours of cronyism.

sb057: Also in the pipeline: elimination of jury trialshttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2x01yne13o

mindwok: British democracy and government is cool. It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitution, it's this organic thing that they've stumbled towards over the last ~800 years with small changes like this one gradually evolving them into a modern liberal democracy.

rvz: > British democracy and government is cool.Oh sweet summer child.The government there does not care about you and will promise anything to get another 5 years in power despite causing the issues the promised to solve in the first place.

Chinjut: The Senate is, while not the whole story, a significant part of the reason the government constantly fails to do what is either the desire of the people or what's in their interests. I wouldn't lament losing the Senate.

jfengel: The US Senate is designed to check and balance the House of Representatives. But that often puts the Congress as a whole in deadlock, meaning it can no longer balance the other two branches.When they could get anything done they delegated a lot of power to the Executive. Which worked ok, but eventually a "unitary executive" appropriated even more power, and the Legislature is powerless to prevent it.

pjc50: Unpopular opinion: deadlock is fine. Most legislation is bad. What really matters is the budget. And the rule that failing to pass a budget can automatically force an election avoids the absurd US "shutdown" that isn't a shutdown.

infotainment: > The proposals, which return to Parliament on Tuesday, would replace juries in England and Wales with a single judge in cases where a convicted defendant would be jailed for up to three years.Wow, this is literally the plot of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney video games. I'm sure it will go great with no downsides.

alopha: Now we're down to just an upper house absolutely stuffed with hundreds of washed up political hacks given a comfortable retirement and party donors. And a few priests.

fmajid: Including rapists like the Bishop of Lincoln.

jongjong: No idea why this was down-voted, it's true. It's replacing one hereditary system based on inheritance of titles with another hereditary system based on inheritance of capital.

pseudalopex: > No idea why this was down-voted> Oh sweet summer child.And Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.[1][1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

kgwxd: To make room for something worse no doubt.

bartread: There is something to be said for your written constitution though: having the fundamental principles on which your nation is founded enshrined in that way should, at least in theory, make it a lot easier to settle arguments (though in practice, and particularly recently, that does seem not to be the case). Constitutional wrangling in the UK is always really fraught though because it's all done by precedent and is therefore incredibly hard work to get to a clear understanding of what the situation really is.

scj: The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was established in 1982. We're still in the process of figuring out what it means (and as a living document, the interpretation will change over time).It's messy. But I'd much rather that than need to ask "What would Pierre Trudeau think of this situation?"

jongjong: This is a dark day for the monarchy... and for democracy in the UK.Remove the only people who actually have a long-term vested non-financial interest in the system and replace them with more revolving-door politicians backed by the big money so that the big money can operate with even less friction than before. Great. Just great.The problem with our current democratic systems with unlimited government fiat money is that capital is in control. Not voters. Capital. This should be obvious by now. Someone deprived of food will vote for whoever you tell them to vote for.

hdgvhicv: Unlike many progressives I actually think the lords works well as a location for people who are expert in fields other than getting reelected.But heredity lords, no I don’t get that at all

derriz: It's simply a fact that common law jury trials are time-consuming and expensive and cause long delays and bottlenecks in the justice system.Different common-law countries have addressed this issue in various ways. Restricting jury trials for more serious offenses (in this case for more serious charges - ones that could potentially result in a sentence of more than 3 years) is one way than many common law jurisdictions have taken.It's not ideal but it's infinitely better in my mind than the practice used in the US to reduce jury trials. To avoid the cost/expense of a jury trial, public prosecutors threatens to press for a large number of charges or some very serious charges - carrying the potential of very long sentences - a sort of Gish-gallop approach.Even if the chances of successful prosecution is relatively small for any one of the charges, the defendant is forced to take a plea-deal to avoid the risk of spending years or decades behind bars. Thus the defendant ends up with a record and often a custodial sentence without no access to a trial or the chance to present their case at all.

jongjong: You need to have a very cynical worldview already to find my comment boring; as in; no information content. I really don't think most people are there yet.

pseudalopex: > You need to have a very cynical worldview already to find my comment boring; as in; no information content.Boring does not mean no information content. But the part of your comment about comment voting was boring and noise.

endoblast: When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte, As every child can tell, The House of Peers, throughout the war, Did nothing in particular, And did it very well; Yet Britain set the world ablaze In good King George's glorious days! (from Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan)Gather a group of the most powerful people in the land; give them ermine robes and manifold privileges; require of them nothing other than that they meet regularly to converse and debate in a prestigious and historical chamber. Allow them only the power to veto or delay legislation.Gilbert and Sullivan were satirising but I think their point stands. It is possible to do nothing and to do it very well. While they're busy doing nothing they're not interfering or messing everything else up, even though they probably could outside the chamber.The fact that heriditary peers are being ejected means nothing beyond the fact that these nobles have lost their inherent power.

alexpotato: To play devil's advocate:Some people argue that the difficulty of passing laws in the United States is "a feature not a bug" b/c it prevents the US from creating laws too quickly.You could argue the House of Lords did the same: by vetoing bills, it acted as a "speed bump" to laws that might cause too much change too quickly.

kergonath: > You could argue the House of Lords did the sameIt can still do the same thing without hereditary peers. A slow-moving, conservative (in the classical sense) upper chamber is a classic in bicameral systems, it is not specific to the House of Lords.

post-it: The House of Lords isn't going anywhere. The majority of the chamber are life peers, functionally identical to Canadian senators.

kergonath: > It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitutionIt’s also very brittle and one charismatic populist away from unraveling like the American government. Too much depends on gentlemen agreements and people trusting other people to do the right thing. It works in a stable environment, but shatters the moment someone with no shame and no scruples shows up.

01jonny01: Britain's problems are due to uncharismatic Blairite socialist.

jfengel: Deadlock would be fine if the other two branches weren't running amuck.

pjc50: In fairness, this is not unique to Britain. For America read "4" instead of "5".

rvz: Are there unelected hereditary nobles somewhere in the US that is entitled to having a seat in congress and can vote against laws being passed?Nope. I don't think so, not even the length of the term is the same.

fc417fc802: And yet all of your objections apply to us in equal measure. Almost as though hereditary nobles don't have much to do with them.

fc417fc802: This is now my second favorite idea, after a nationwide ban of first past the post voting schemes.My third (previously second) is outlawing political parties. The problem with that one is it would be really difficult to implement in a way that doesn't run afoul of freedom of association and freedom of speech. Probably worth figuring out though.

jfengel: I don't think it can be figured out. Every democratic country has political parties.

fc417fc802: True but I think much could be done to blunt their impact if we collectively put our minds to it.

kbelder: How about a chamber populated by random lottery? Like jury duty?

KK7NIL: Perhaps you're joking, but Athenian democracy had a significant amount of randomness, with candidates being chosen randomly from the top vote winners. Terms were also only 1 year for most positions.These, and other systems, helped prevent any one person from monopolizing power.This is a good video on this: https://youtu.be/pIgMTsQXg3Q

kbelder: Not joking, although maybe not terribly serious either. I could envision a random (filtered) selection of citizens being given a veto power over legislation, as another check against abuse.

inglor_cz: We could start by something like a randomly appointed commission to investigate, say, very expensive public projects.

cuuupid: Some years ago I, an American citizen and resident, studied abroad briefly and was asked by the House of Lords to speak to them about what GDPR (a UK law!) was, how it worked, and the impact it could have.Further than ejecting nobles, they really should just overhaul the entire chamber, which is surely doing more harm than good if they need a foreign national to explain their own laws to them.

fc417fc802: Did they _need_ you or were they seeking the perspective of someone they considered well informed or valued for some other reason? What's the context here?

scrlk: The irony is that, on a technicality, the hereditary peers were the only members of the Lords who had to win an election to get their seats.> Under the reforms of the House of Lords Act 1999, the majority of hereditary peers lost the right to sit as members of the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Section 2 of the Act, however, provides an exception from this general exclusion of membership for up to 92 hereditary peers: 90 to be elected by the House, as well as the holders of two royal offices, the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain, who sit as ex officio members.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_excepted_hereditary_pe...

cm2187: Yeah, the assumption is that the non hereditary peers are somehow more representative, but all they represent is being friends of the PM of the time. It's a historical oddity of questionable usefulness. Meanwhile the house of commons can wipe out any civil liberty with a majority of 50% plus one vote. It is remarkable how a system that seems so unstable and prone to abuses of power has served the longest continuously running democracy for so long.

scrlk: As Walter Bagehot wrote in The English Constitution: "An ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered."Absent ideological capture, it is perhaps one of the best forms of government ever created due to its pragmatic nature and its Lindyness is proof.

dralley: On the other hand, voting needs to mean something. If voting doesn't mean anything, because the whole system is held in a vice grip by a sclerotic institution playing power games with itself, then the broader system eventually collapses.My personal opinion is that Mitch McConnell's intransigence and unwillingness to do anything lest Obama get credit for it led directly to an increased desire for a "strongman"

tialaramex: And for many years now, even the remaining minority of hereditary peers in the chamber are elected to that job, albeit not by the general public. My guess is that all those who are actually useful will get "grandfathered in" by this legislation making them life peers so that they can keep doing the exact same job. Many life peers (who are all entitled to be there) rarely attend, so it would be kinda silly if Lord Snootington, the fifteenth Earl of Whatever is kicked out for being a hereditary peer despite also being the linchpin of an important committee and one of the top 100 attendees in the Lords, while they keep Bill Smith, a business tycoon who got his peerage for giving a politician a sack of cash and hasn't been in London, never mind the House of Lords, since 2014...

amadeuspagel: > The case of Peter Mandelson, who resigned from the Lords in February after revelations about his friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, drew renewed attention to the upper chamber and the problem of lords behaving badly.But Mandelson wasn't a hereditary noble. His example is an argument for abolishing the House of Lords entirely (which I agree with in any case) but not specifically for ejecting hereditary nobles.> Labour remains committed to eventually replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber that is “more representative of the U.K.” If past experience is anything to go by, change will come slowly.Why does the House of Lords need to be replaced at all? Most countries are gridlocked enough with one chamber of parliament.

throwaway7783: Does House of Lords have any real power today?

pjc50: Sort of. They can and do amend bills, but they can't overrule the Commons on anything the latter regards as important.

rgblambda: With a very small number of exceptions, including changing the maximum duration of Parliament from 5 years.

hardlianotion: Most western democracies have exactly the same fault, maybe having unscrupulous, shameless legislators are the end state of the current models of democracy being practiced.

s_dev: If cool means interesting then yes, it is cool because it's archaic and different but it's not effective. It's the equivalent of a verbal contract. It's simply not as clear or coherent as a written one.Irish democracy in contrast uses STV voting and a written constitution and is modeled between the best of what the UK, the US and France had to offer when it was drafted and is a very representative democracy with many political parties compared to the duopolies in the US and the UK. It's also why Ireland is largely immune to hard shifts to the left or right relative to the UK and US.

williamdclt: > duopolies in the US and the UKfor better or worse, the duopoly is disappearing in the UK. Both Tories and Labour are getting passed by Reform and the Greens

kiba: It doesn't really help the United States create good law. You could argue that it worsen the quality of laws by forcing kludges to be built on top of kludges.A sortition panel collecting random people from all walks of life to give feedback on law would probably improve the quality of law more than any amount of procedure and paperwork ever will.We mistaken paperwork with deliberation and quality control.

kennywinker: I’d go further. To bypass the deadlocked congress, obama used executive orders in new and expansive ways. That ratcheted things up. Now trump is using executive orders even MORE expansively, to do things that are patently undemocratic and unconstitutional (federalizing who can vote, ilegal tariffs). The kludges and hacks are causing a crumbling of democracy, not just mediocre law.

scott_w: I think a good revising chamber is critical to good democracy, though the Lords recently have been playing silly buggers around the Employment Rights Act and ignoring the Salisbury Convention (which is that they shouldn’t block manifesto commitments).I do think the USA goes too far, which has led to frustration among the public and contributed to Trump and the resulting behaviour. I’ve said before that I think the US House of Representatives should have a mechanism to override Senate speed bumps, though not without effort. The idea is to encourage the legislature to compromise but maintain the “primacy” of the House if the Senate is being obstinate. Something like the Parliament Act, is what I’d have in mind.

hardlianotion: Which manifesto commitments have been blocked in this parliament?

xp84: “It should never be a gallery of old boys’ networks, nor a place where titles, many of which were handed out centuries ago, hold power over the will of the people.”Nobody tell these extreme optimists about America. Replace 'titles' with 'generational wealth' and that's precisely what not just our upper house, but most of our government, is. And they're all elected!

jazzpush2: Kennedy, Bush, Clinton, Newsom related to Pelosi, etc... This guy might be onto something!

tehjoker: 50% + 1 is called democracy. Civil liberties are more liable to be swept away by minorities that come to power. In the US, the republicans often do this because they have minority popular support but a disproportionate representation in government. So the key is to make sure that it's 50% + 1 but also representative of the real population.The nobility is another example of a minority with disproportionate power. It's important that they are reduced to ensure civil liberties.

rgblambda: Voting system reform would probably mitigate the worst aspects of political parties.Egypt after ousting Mubarak held an election where a third of seats were reserved for independents. Most winning candidates were just Muslim Brotherhood affiliated. I suspect the military interim government did that deliberately to justify their later coup.