HoLords reform hits the skids

[Flosshilde]

Putting words into my mouth. I never said that. I am advocating that we do not elect members to the House of Lords as is being suggested. Membership selection seems to work quite well at the moment IMO. There are some excellent members in the Lords. Your comment regarding the monarchy is facile. Ditto MrGG's comments (predictable though they are) regarding the Royal Family....perhaps we should call you Red Herring?

Your comment about the quality of people elected by "the great British public" certainly suggested that you didn't have any great faith in their discernment. & if they can't be trusted to elect members of the 'Lords' (or whatever it's going to be called) of the right calibre why allow them to elect anyone at all?

My comment about the Monarchy isn't facile - the monarch approves the recommendations of the PM for appointment as Lords, so does already select the members of the HoL.

As for Red Herring, there's nothing fishy about me, apart from the fact that I live in the Rhine

[handsomefortune]

I Governments effectively become oligarchies operating on behalf of a pretty small but very powerful section of society. Until that Faustian pact is broken, there is no chance that governments can act in the public interest.

tedious but true. but each party has its very own style of cunning subversion of any 'democracy' they claim to maintain. the voices of labour, tory back benchers, and lib dems who disagree may be too feeble, in comparison with the power drunk grandees? is that a cynical pov...or entirely rational in the circumstances? i mean, who wouldn't want to own great ormond street hospital, with the fabulous views it offers?

a la carte menu and pick and mix .... what! both at the same time? actually, that sounds about right, food-wise, for the current gubmint! doubtless, commoners will envy maltesers bobbing in their gravy.... just like mother used to make in the summer hols?

somehow reminiscent of an experience that maggie Herself may well respect, (as it's so enterprising), returns to me in all its dusty glory. as a student i once rented from an exceedingly wealthy landlady named eve. during my tenancy, eve lost her beloved husband bert, after fifty nine years together. unfortunately, bert died after a routine operation on his varicose veins, as he was always on his feet eve complained disappointedly.

whereas i was always on my guard, as eve and bert were both absolutely ancient, quaint but dangerous. being 'traditionalists' they still did maintenance 'repairs', and collected the rent in person, on saturday mornings, as early as they liked. their favourite doorstep 'dawn lectures' being 'a wonderful world war 2', 'the miracle of the thatcher years', and how much they respected pol pot's sense of order in cambodia as 'you have to be cruel to be kind', and various other ramblings. but if you were really unlucky, you got the never ending story reserved especially for students, (rather than eve and bert's many tenants on housing benefit) of 'how bert came from nuffink'. predictably, one or the other would then launch into triumphant sarcasm about the 'ologies'. presumably gleaned from the bt tv advert, as then promoted by maureen lipman.

eve was suitably devastated by bert's death, but said that a silver lining to his departure was not her inheritance of a truely huge number of (very dilapidated) houses. but that the night bert died, she ate a whole tin of corned beef with strawberry ice cream all to herself. apparently, 'if bert had been alive, he'd 'never have allowed that'.... (in my imagination at least, bert was possibly still there while eve scoffed the lot, he hadn't as yet been taken off to the funeral parlour).

one day, after she'd told me the corny beef 'confession' for the umpteenth time, with a sly smile eve produced an assortment of olde chocolates from her pocket, and offered me one. i declined, not least as eve seemed to have some very dark chocolate down her thumb and finger nails....without further ado, she continued 'installing' my gas fire....having already taken my other one out,,.(while i was out). eve always warned me 'never ever ring the gas board by yourself' as though it's the phone call, rather than gas, that's dangerous. i suspect eve may well have enjoyed the pick and mix and a la carte menu both at the same time....(maybe consumed from a tin with a key attached to the side, as eve and bert were really keen on keys), whilst musing over her shrewd 'savings and investments'.

but with bert gone, i imagine eve probably dreamt of hanging out with the lawless 'grandee puddings' 'proper british men...not like nowadays'! create a largely elected House of Lords, ... as long as the likes of winston churchill, pol pot, or maggie thatcher was doing the 'electing' presumably! somehow i imagine this is still the monopoly a minority prefer - as superficially, secrecy appears ordered, neat, no arguments......or discussion - let alone reform, or 'worse' still political progress. as though 'saving the country' requires force, with lawlessness 'owed' as a 'treat' for the forcers. yet logically, it's precisely financial force that's got us in a mess initially, and why a country might need saving in the first place. no amount of maltesers bobbing in gravy will alter this fundamental basic that, to this day, the grandees are strategically avoiding, as though the electorate 'won't mind'. in fact, perhaps the chancellor looks like he may be thinking similarly in the photo (accompanying amateur51's 'guardian' article)? the chancellor perhaps hopes that no one will notice his smugness, while macaroon does his very best impression of a bright red squashed tomato. the one thing eve would definitely disagree with though, is deleting 34,000 police officers, and 20,000 armed forces personnel. since, if you're going to be dangerous, it's always best not to put your own neck on the line - but do help yourself to someone elses. because everyone knows 'god 'elps those oo 'elp themselves, and always 'as done'. so, presumably the coalition have their own army that they can phone? if things should get disagreeable with the commoners...as surely they wouldn't leave themselves vulnerable? alternatively, commoners can only hope that those who participate in today's 'politics' begin to be a danger to each other, preferring that their colleagues and opponents aren't 'on their feet too much', especially when there's so much up for grabs!

[ahinton]

The House of Lord

Mon Dieu! I'd not realised that there was a proposal on the table to cut its membership by that many!

[ahinton]

As some of the Lords rent themselves out to any company that wants them, 'Ho' Lords is probably very appropriate.

But will the respective weights of opinion for and against HoL reform of some kind be measured in HoLoGrams?...

[ahinton]

Surely we could do much better ?
and (as with getting rid of the tedious royal family) there are more possibilities than what one would fist imagine

May one therefore read into this a presumption that you advocate their implementation by violent means? If so, I somehow suspect that it would take rather more than mere fisticuffs to "get rid" of the royal family...

[Flosshilde]

Holograms would allow the present lot to be 'present' in the House, and be available for even more lucrative Directorships (more of them, not more lucrative)

[ahinton]

Holograms would allow the present lot to be 'present' in the House, and be available for even more lucrative Directorships (more of them, not more lucrative)

Ah - a good idea well worth voting for, then?

[french frank]

For the Libdems though, it was as certain as anything can be that they would not be the largest single party following the 2010 election, and that at best they would be a minority party in a coalition.

I've been stripping wallpaper and thinking about this for the past hour or so . I would say that presenting a manifesto is a bit like having to make a bid in bridge before you see the hand you've been dealt. The election result was a triple whammy for the LibDems:

1) They had the most encouraging opinion polls ever, but came out of the election weaker than they went into it, instead of the projected three figure tally of seats which, in the event of a hung parliament, would almost certainly have allowed an election pact/coalition with either of the main parties.

2) The Tories ended up not far short of an overall majority, so the great 'hung parliament' scenario was the last thing the LibDems would have wanted.

3) The country was faced with the worst economic crisis for decades, which left the Tories in a slash and burn frame of mind.

In these circumstances, they would never be able to deliver on their manifesto commitments, only those which would be acceptable to a majority coalition partner. Knowing the positions of the other major parties on tuition fees, the leadership of the Libdems must have known that their position was not going to be possible to implement and that to make a pledge to abolish fees was essentially dishonest opportunism.

Nothing new there, then. With the FPTP electoral system a third party might just as well not have an election manifesto at all because it can't deliver on its commitments. In fact all the minor parties might as well just leave it to the Big Boys to take it in turn. Which, of course is what the BBs and their supporters want.

The only way I could see that they could escape this charge after the election was if they had made the pledge a matter of principle - that they would not support in any circumstances the implementation of a tuition fees rise. By trading support for tuition fees as a bargaining tool for their participation in government and for some other things that they thought they could achieve, they made it appear as though none of their manifesto promises - even ones they had backed up with written pledges - were worth anything more than an invitation to trade.

For me the sticking point would have been electoral reform, not tuition fees which were never were a central concern for the mass of the voters until they saw the consequences of the election. But we now have the Tory right wing saying that the LibDems 'got what they wanted' in the AV referendum (as if the LibDems ever wanted AV).

Heigh-ho! So we enter an 'entirely new political phase' which offers the electorate the same again. That's what most people vote for, and that's what they get. I suspect UKIP will find it much easier to stitch up a deal with the Tories than the Greens will with Labour - and the LibDems will be relieved to be out of it for a generation.

[Lateralthinking1]

After thought, I didn't want to see Clegg win on this one. He has failed to support and protect the public on all the important things. He deserves no place in history.

My biggest concern is that the LDs have learnt nothing in two years. It is not just that they have been forced into situations. Some of their current philosophy is entirely Conservative with a big "C". With people like Laws waiting in the wings they are in no mind to reform.

I have been trying to envisage a House of Lords election. I think I can see it clearly. Most of the independent minded cross-benchers would be LD candidates. The tiny few who tried to stand as Independents would lose. The second Chamber would be another horrible bloc of the Big Three and not much else.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18778639

[french frank]

I didn't say the manifesto wasn't "directed at the electorate as a whole" - it was you who wrote of a "deal"; so it's aimed at the electorate as a whole, but the "deal" if that's what it is is ultimately with people who liked the LibDem's policies enough to vote for them.

No, it's not. Once the voting is over, the parties are faced with whatever the parliamentary reality is. An elected MP is supposed to represent every member of their (sorry ) constituency, not just those who voted for them.

It would be ridiculous (and undemocratic!) for a party to say, we'll push through all our pre-election pledges because we have to honour our commitment to the 23% of the voters (i.e. the 15% of the electorate) who voted for us. Especially if the parties who got a bigger share of the vote were campaigning against that policy.

It wasn't a vague, open-ended, subject to changing circumstances aspiration (IIRC the 'pledge' said that even if the LibDems weren't the party in government they would work to prevent student fee increases and argue for abolition?)

The pledge actually said: “I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative.” So it was one out of two, because the long negotiations that took place which in the end persuaded most of the LibDems MPs to vote for the final package included the commitments to require universities to provide bursaries and discounts for students who couldn't afford the fees.

People may have voted LibDem to keep one or other of New Labour / Tories out, but I'd imagine activists like to think people vote positively for their party?

That's a question, is it? I would have thought that most activists know that voters vote for the party most likely to defeat the party they dislike most ...

I read you as effectively saying it's not the fault of the LibDem's that they broke the tuition fees pledge, it's the fault of the electorate for not backing them.

I wasn't saying it was anyone's 'fault'. Elections aren't like that. The reality is that even if voters had supported the LibDems as the polls suggested they would probably have been skewered over tuition fees because, even in coalition with Labour they would have had to accept a rise in tuition fees - though that might not have been the case. Who knows, since it didn't happen.

I reckon what happened was the party hierarchy weren't keen but thought it could be a vote winner (could take votes away from the other two parties), could be presented as a challenge to the other two parties, and didn't much think past that to what might happen in any coalition.

Your speculation could be right - I don't know. But tuition fees were a low priority policy, so why the 'party hierarchy' would have thought that - of all policies - would be a vote winner - I don't know. If it had been a vote winner, you might have had a point. But it wasn't.

That might be the way of things in the world of same politics, but it's impressive the way you manage to conjure a positive glow of virtue to surround the abandonment of that 'pledge'. As in, we haven't done anything wrong and it's the fault of the electorate that we had to do the anything wrong that we didn't do anyway .

I've looked for the positive glow of virtue in what I wrote. Can't find it.

There's no 'blame' attached to voters - they're free to vote as they choose - but the hard fact is that if a party doesn't get the votes, there's not a lot it can do. And getting back to the OP: if 100 Tory MPs, plus the Labour MPs vote against Lords reform it won't happen.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

He deserves no place in history.

And yet he has one: the man who ensured the un-electability of his Party for the next hundred years in exchange for the title Lord Clegg of Coventry.

[MrGongGong]

But tuition fees were a low priority policy, so why the 'party hierarchy' would have thought that - of all policies - would be a vote winner - I don't know.

Maybe low priority for us old folks but ask any 19,20,21 year old ?
who now associate the Libdems with deceit and dishonesty and who blames them ?

It's the wriggling I can't stand ................ clegg has come out of this with less credibility than David Icke (a real achievement in one sense 0

[scottycelt]

And yet he has one: the man who ensured the un-electability of his Party for the next hundred years in exchange for the title Lord Clegg of Coventry.

Hate to disagree with a fellow-Brucknerian but I'm not quite so sure ...

Under Clegg the Lib Dems have now tasted real political power by realising what was in the national interest and seizing the moment by going into coalition government with the Tories ... Labour was a dead duck as far as that was concerned.

I simply cannot understand those who despise Clegg for dropping ' election pledges'. It is not a Lib Dem Government it is a coalition, where both contributing parties have had to give and take and make sacrifices. This seems to me perfectly reasonable under the dire circumstances at the time. Surely we don't ever live in the world we might prefer, we have to deal with the one that actually exists?

There would have been no Lib Dem policies in place now if it hadn't been for the Coalition Agreement. Clegg's place in history is indeed assured and that may well prove to be much kinder to him than many here seem to currently suppose.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Clegg's place in history is indeed assured and that may well prove to be much kinder to him than many here seem to currently suppose.

That may well be true. It's Danny Alexander I can't abide. I didn't know who he was until after the formation of the Coalition, and I then assumed him to be a Right Wing Tory, such were his dishonest pronouncements about public sector pensions, echoing, parrot-like, the equally dishonest pronouncements by Cameron & Osborne.

But to get back on topic, we shall see how much "give and take" there is by the Tory support for the House of Lords debate.

[aeolium]

The election result was a triple whammy for the LibDems:

1) They had the most encouraging opinion polls ever, but came out of the election weaker than they went into it, instead of the projected three figure tally of seats which, in the event of a hung parliament, would almost certainly have allowed an election pact/coalition with either of the main parties.

2) The Tories ended up not far short of an overall majority, so the great 'hung parliament' scenario was the last thing the LibDems would have wanted.

3) The country was faced with the worst economic crisis for decades, which left the Tories in a slash and burn frame of mind.

As far as no 3) was concerned, that was known well before the election by all parties. IIRC, the Libdems were closer to Labour's ideas about reducing the deficit than they were to the Tories (i.e. cutting over a longer period). As far as no 2) was concerned, the result was not such a huge surprise - the likeliest scenarios, Labour being quite unpopular but the Tories not being that popular, were that the Tories would either have a slim majority or be the largest party in a hung parliament. Had the Libdems got more MPs, it would probably have been at the expense of Labour who got more than expected, so the relative position would not have changed hugely. I think in that scenario the Libdems might have been reluctant to enter a pact with Labour a) because of Clegg's reluctance to work with Brown and b) because it would have looked like propping up a discredited government. So the Libdems ought really to have seriously considered the possibility that they would be entering a coalition with the Tories.

With the FPTP electoral system a third party might just as well not have an election manifesto at all because it can't deliver on its commitments.

No, because an election manifesto ought to be not merely a statement of commitments but an articulation of principles. This is all the more important in a third (or fourth etc) party which is likely not to be in a position to implement the commitments. It means that people should be able to understand what a party stands for on key areas of policy and will try to defend those positions in opposition, and not depart from those positions fundamentally in coalition.

For me the sticking point would have been electoral reform, not tuition fees which were never were a central concern for the mass of the voters until they saw the consequences of the election.

But arguably for most people who voted for the Libdems, electoral reform would have been less important to them as an issue than tuition fees (as a great many people with children would be affected by the change in policy). And even if tuition fees as an issue was not the most important one in the election, the fact of a political party making a clear pledge on a particular issue and then seemingly renege on that pledge once in coalition surely had a hugely negative effect on the way many voters viewed the Libdems irrespective of whether they had voted for them or not.

There is one possible consolation for the Libdems though, that although they will undoubtedly do worse at the next election, the Tories are unlikely to benefit greatly as the economy is likely to be in the doldrums for years yet.