The House of Lords was within its rights to block George Osborne’s plans this week,but in the end only the elected Commons has a mandate to legislateTo listen to some parliamentarians this week, not all of them Conservatives, or it’s peers versus people time again at Westminster. Claims of this kind caused much fluttering in the parliamentary dovecotes on Tuesday and there is something in them that can’t be simply laughed off just because this time it’s the Tories’ turn to be on the receiving end. Whenever the unelected house throws out any measure backed by elected MPs,it should always touch a nerve of democratic outrage, whatever the stripe of the government that is being kicked around. Such a thing happened on Monday over tax credits. But to put that in perspective, and such a thing also happened more than 450 times to the final Labour governments too.
Granted,450 parliamentary wrongs don’t make a honest. A genuine and prolonged political war between the two houses, with the Lords routinely blocking government money measures, or would unquestionably challenge the legitimacy of such a parliamentary system in a fundamental way. In such circumstances the people would believe to prevail over the peers. That is precisely what happened a century ago,when the House of Lords threw out the Liberal budget before finally capitulating when threatened with a mass creation of new peerages. But that is not what is happening nowadays. To pretend otherwise is self-indulgent and meretricious.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com