The failure of the Tory party to back the House of Lords reforms marks an interesting watershed in the life of the Coalition. From now on neither of its two parties thinks much of the other. It was never a marriage, but more of an affair. Now the attraction is wearing thin. There will now be slights, digs and rows. There can be no parting yet, because they have staked all on an economic recovery, now stalled. Until it lifts, any break which triggered an election would lead to defeat for both. Like a warring couple trapped together by a joint mortgage in a house with negative equity, they know they have to make the best of it until times improve, or time runs out.
The back bench Tories knew that they could make mischief, because from the moment the Lib Dems broke their signed pledge with their voters not to support an increase in tuition fees, the Tories sensed their coalition partners were electorally doomed. The Tories may have misjudged the Lib Dem response. Their decision to oppose the plan to reduce the number of seats in the House of Commons will hit the Tories more than any other party. It will wipe out any advantage the Tories may gain from the reduction in Lib Dem support in the West Country and the Shires.
Although the little spat made the headlines yesterday, the country is totally absorbed in the Olympics and will not have noticed. The majority is against any scheme which advances the power of elected politicians. Allowing only half the original plan to go ahead, in other words continuing with the reduction in MPs but dropping the elected Lords, would make Westminster significantly more powerful. Fewer MPs, without some corresponding increase in the power of the Lords, would make the government of the day less easy to check; modern governments are huge and drawn mainly from the Commons, of which they would represent an increased and top heavy proportion in a reduced House. Increasing the power of the Lords by democratisation, even if by the fifteen year term plan, would offset this increase in executive weight.
Put simply you cannot have one without the other and the Lib Dems, if they muster this argument in their defence, cannot be accused of petulance. There is however a much wider issue. It concerns the operation of the Constitution as a whole. This Blog is emphatically in favour of a fully elected House of Lords. It also promotes the need for a Written Constitution. Unfortunately at the moment we do not have one and that the majority of voters, if consulted, would say they prefer it that way.
We must therefore concentrate on making our unwritten constitution work smoothly. The essence of a fabric of State based on precedent, custom, practice and a very few statutes, is that it is continuously evolving in small increments, is very flexible and all the parts are both in harmony and at the same time in tension. Moreover they are not always what they seem. The British arrangements are these.
The State is a monarchy, the Government is the Queen’s, Parliament is there to check the government, not to provide it and the Judiciary, which is separate from the government, is tasked with interpreting both the Law and the Constitution. Parliament is divided into two Houses, one, fully elected, with the power to pass into law legislation proposed by the government, the other is part appointed, part inherited, with the power only to revise and improve whatever the other wants to do. Actual power, all of it, is entirely with the monarch and such as it is exercised by the various institutions of the government and the law, is so exercised because it is ceded to them by the Crown.
That this arcane and near unfathomable arrangement works so well and so smoothly must be among the great wonders of modern civilisation. It does so because it is cherished and cared for and is adjusted with great precision and as little as possible. Neither the Tory plan for equal sized and fewer constituencies, nor the Lib Dem plan for fifteen year senators has any of the qualities necessary to meet the criteria of real improvement and both would likely cause harm and discord. It is better that they perish in a summer squabble and are never heard of again. If we want to modernise, as this Blog does, we have to go the whole hog with a written constitution et al. If we do not fancy that, it is better to leave well alone.