Mad Rant: A British Senate?

With all due respect to MM, this is nothing new. It has been planned since the passage of the Parliament Act 1911, still in force, which states, '...whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation.'

From The Mad Monarchist (29 June 2012)

As you have probably heard, “Call Me Dave” Cameron, the so-called conservative Prime Minister of the U.K. (surely at the behest of Deputy Fuhrer Nick Cleggy) have announced their intention to effectively demolish the House of Lords and put a British Senate in place of it. I am sure that while Great Britain is drowning in a sea of foreigners, crippled by unemployment, choked with regulations and bureaucracy and deeper in debt than Greece that the vast majority of British people are in the streets demanding that something be done about the House of Lords! They are not, of course, because what has lately been called the House of Lords was already as near to being totally useless as any government body could be. The House of Commons is where the action is and the House of Lords is largely ignored. It’s rather like a really large political discussion group for former politicians. The British people, I am sure, have other priorities. But not the Deputy Fuhrer and his Liberal Democrats. They are on a mission to seek out and destroy anything remotely “British” in Great Britain and grind it beneath their egalitarian, socialistic, EU-loving boot heel.

This, honestly, does not upset quite as much as some might suppose. Rest assured this is only because of the simple fact that, at the very least since the Blair government, I don’t care what they call that gutted, toothless, glorified talking shop but it is most certainly NOT the House of Peers. The traditional upper house of the British Parliament has been so mutilated, so perverted and so twisted into the current monstrosity that putting it down seems almost an act of mercy. Almost. I say that only because once something is totally and officially removed it is historically all but impossible to ever get it back and so long as there was still something called a House of Lords that carried on, at least in name, the tradition, there remained something to work with to restore it to the proper function it once had. What is going on now is clearly disastrous and to be opposed absolutely, however, it is only the culmination of an act of destruction that began a long time ago when the House of Lords was first subject to manipulation in order to accommodate the House of Commons and when the House of Lords lost the ability to actually stop any legislation and when that ridiculous farce of a “life peer” first entered the British lexicon.

I could do my best to stomach all the previous wounding of the upper house but the introduction of “life peers” as the expulsion of the hereditary peers was, to me, effectively the end of the House of Lords anyway. What is being proposed now is simply the final nail in the coffin but that is one nail that is still worth opposing. Compounded stupidity is still stupidity after all. As the British parliamentary system was originally established, the House of Peers served an important and practical function. It consisted of men who had a vested interest in the long-term success of Great Britain, men who had a stake in the country and who had a lifetime of diverse, “real world” experience from which to draw on in their deliberations on the bills passed by the Commons. They were non-political and beyond the influence of the passing trends of popular opinion. They were also guardians of the most time-honored traditions of England and later the United Kingdom. Their ancestry and the hereditary nature of the house meant that they could take a broad view, unconcerned with elections and political pandering, to do what was in the best interests of the country as a whole and the British legacy. What shall replace it?

A British Senate if the current government has its way. They will be elected which means they will be representative, in theory at least, of their constituents. Granted, this may seem to make more sense than the current, ridiculous set up of government-appointed “life peers” (I mean, really, was there ever a more absurd notion?) but it is certainly no improvement. What is the point of an elected senate? In the United States, before that vile visionary Woodrow Wilson screwed things up, the Senate represented the states of the Union. The House of Representatives represented the interests of the people who elected them but the Senate (often appointed by Governors or state legislatures) was to represent the interests of the states. Who or what are British senators supposed to represent? There are no states in the U.K. and regions such as Wales, Scotland and even Northern Ireland already have their own local assemblies. They would, we assume, represent the people who vote them into office. Yet, Britain already has such a body, and has had for really quite some time, called the House of Commons. In a way, this is not any sort of reform at all but rather is the destruction of the ancient bicameral legislature of the United Kingdom by abolishing the House of Lords and simply vastly expanding the House of Commons.

This will do Great Britain no good whatsoever. All this will do is add another layer of the same sort of confused, incompetent leadership that has made the House of Commons the center of so much derision. Which is not to say that the House of Lords was not in need of some authentic reform. It was too loosely organized, too large and made the British Parliament rather top-heavy, though -I hasten to add- this was mostly a result of the way the House of Peers was tweaked and tortured into assuring the outcome desired by the Commons. If I had my way the House would have been reformed by restoring the hereditary peers, restoring the powers of the House but cutting down on the number of those given seats which could be done by granting seats to those peers who hold the senior most title in their general area. Just an idea. Instead, since the Blair government has thrown out the baby, the Cameron government is adding more bathwater. Again, it is possible to overstate the calamity of this because so much of the damage had already been done. Many factors have certainly been at play over the years but, I cannot help but note, that when the House of Peers operated in the traditional fashion the United Kingdom was one of the most successful and dynamic countries in the world and the center of the largest maritime empire in history. Since the U.K. started down the road of a unicameral legislature, just how has Great Britain fared? Is Britain greater or poorer now and what does the answer to that say about the direction the country is going in? A simple question, posed by the simple, and damaged, mind of … The Mad Monarchist.