The Separation of Powers – the Problem
May 4th, 2009 | 
Author: 
Something that I’ve commented on before is separating the Executive and the Legislature to prevent some of the abuses of power we have seen in recent times and the “Damien Green Affair” threw into sharp focus.
Some newspapers pointed out that the Speaker of the House in the reign of Charles I st. would not surrender the MPs the King sought to arrest, whereas today Speaker Martin, I agree a totally lacklustre Speaker, couldn’t be bothered. However the situation is slightly different today to then and not a change for the better…
A Comparison
In the Seventeenth Century the King was the “Executive” and Parliament was the “Legislature” the revenue gathering body which is why to this day, proposals bought before the House are called Bills because they cost money. In order to raise money there is always a legal basis upon which this money is raised and therefore legislation which it is the duty of Members of Parliament to scrutinize carefully. Once a Bill is passed it becomes an Act of Parliament.
Now in theory the situation is very similar to today except with one important difference: In those days, the King – the Executive was “external” and sat outside of the House of Commons, today the “King” in the shape of the Prime Minister of the day, sits inside the Commons and therefore his/her backbench MPs are in fact his/her “courtiers”. Like a Trojan Horse, the enemy is now within the Gates of the City.
Over Time…
What has happened by degrees often over the centuries is that all executive powers have become invested in the House of Commons and all the original “Royal Prerogatives” such as the authority to declare war as well but it has gone further than that. In Queen Victoria’s day, it was the Cabinet who advised the Monarch on when to dissolve Parliament, today it is just the Prime Minister.
The result is that virtually all executive powers and a lot of patronage potential, are now vested in the hands of the Prime Minister of the day. That person is the Leader of the largest or hopefully unless we have a hung parliament, the party with an overall majority in the House and that person is invited by the Monarch to form the Government.
The Problem…
Probably up until about 30 years ago, the majority of MPs had principles, passions and outside interests of various kinds that formed their personal views but gradually they have all be replaced with the “professional politician” who sees being an MP as a career choice, a classic being the following in a quote from the Times:
“Georgia Gould, 22, daughter of Tony Blair’s former pollster Lord Gould of Brookwood, is the favoured candidate of Labour figures such as Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, and Alastair Campbell, the former spin doctor.”
One might properly ask just why a 22 year old thinks that they are capable of being an MP having done nothing thus far in their brief life to gain broad experience or indeed, grow up. But the reality is that in order to progress her career, she will have to suck up to the party leader and senior figures which bodes not well for independent thought or action plus in this case, she wouldn’t have the bottle.
The Destruction of Our Democracy
Although last week Labour MPs did rebel against the Government over the Gurkhas, these are desperate days for Labour MPs sitting on marginal seats, at the minimum 100 will lose their ‘jobs’ come the next election. So let us look at some interesting figures that tell a very grim story indeed:
The last election was on 5th May 2005, 646 MPs were elected which as the Speaker is unoppsed and supposed to be impartial unless their surname is Martin, that leaves 645 sitting MPs of all parties and although subsequently they have lost a couple of seats, they still have a comfortable majority of 63 MPs and up until recently, all with brown noses. However if you drill down a bit into the figures and percentages, some really odd things come to light.
Numbers
The turnout for the last General Election was very low, only 61.4% of the potential electorate and whilst you will never get 100%, we should be expecting +80% still, there you go. Of this 61.4% that bothered to turn out, Labour got 35.2% of that (355 seats), the Conservatives 32.4% (198 seats) but looked at when set against the potential vote (100%), we got a Labour Government with less than 22% of the possible votes.
But it gets worse: Because of lickspittle professional politicians who will always toe the “Party Line” and in this case we are talking about a Labour Government but next time it could be a Conservative one because the structure is wrong, it effectively means that the people who elected the other 290 MPs were from day one disenfranchised, their MP could do absolutely do nothing and have no influence on what the Government of the day decided to do.
A time to consider alternatives but first we must look at the system in the USA which grew directly from this Country and see if we cam re-import some good ideas.
Posted in Community, Law, Politics, The Media | 
Tags: A United Kingdom, Parliamentary Reform, Political Ideas, Political Parties, Within the UK
There is a system of proportional representation in Scotland, so every vote counts for something. The problem is we are still lumbered with the same national parties, albeit the SNP won more votes than any other recently.
Support for the SNP reflects widespread disenchantment with Labour, who had formed the Executive prior to 2007. It is only a matter of time until this disenchantment becomes evident with the SNP too, as they are merely more of the same, or maybe worse. The biggest problem is the lack of quality amongst the available candidates. The unacceptable truth of the matter is those who stand for election to Holyrood are usually considered not good enough to stand for election to Westminster.
The single biggest argument in favour of Scottish independence is Westminster, yet our First Minister not only still accepts pay as am MSP and First Minister, he still receives pay as an MP and claims his full food allowance,even if he’s not in London.
Many MPs do a considerable amount of good work, much of it for individual constituents and it receives little publicity. All this recent fuss does is cause the general opinion of MPs to fall further, lessening the chances of an increase in non “professional” politicians showing any interest in standing.
We might see an increased turnout at the next election as a protest against Labour, but I doubt it will set a new trend.
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I managed to delete it before reading. For some reason the buttons jumped whilst logging-on to my e-mail and the open button changed to delete, as I didn’t move the mouse. Obviously it’s always the tools’ fault, never mine…
Dear Sheumais
From the users perception, it is always the fault of the technology, from the support side, always “pilot error !”
With regard to your earlier comment about the Scottish Parliament, a Scottish friend of mine stated from outset that all it would produce was a “Numpties Charter”. I must admit, once given/taken, whatever, you cannot remove the devolved Parliaments or Assemblies however, they could become the basis for a more Federal structure to the UK, I live in hope.