Following the behaviour of the Lords & many politicians in trying to thwart the will of the British people over Brexit, they have shown they cannot be trusted with our democracy. The House of Lords should be scrapped and replaced by an apolitical body such as a citizens assembly.
The exact nature of the citizen’s assembly is not as important as that the upper house should be largely free of the self-serving career politicians and bought peerages who have have recently shown so much contempt for the will of the people. Several options are possible including an assembly selected like a jury from volunteers or one appointed by a similar citizen’s panel where members are chosen for the character not their political colour.
Click this link to sign the petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/189253/sponsors/CvRv3C6i3JHysIxNZhs
An assembly of 200 to 300 non-politicians with real-world experience elected by proportional representation with no legislative power serving in an advisory capacity would be my starting point.
Yes what we really want is non-party politicians, but the reality is that PR is a vote for parties. And when the press held almost total control over what was debated at elections – it became largely a decision of the press who they’d back.
Hence the idea of a small committee or perhaps even many regional committees the size of a jury made up like a jury interviewing candidates and picking them individually. It really would be like a job interview and that way the politics would be a very minor side issue.
Another idea that gets suggested is to nominate people by their organisation. So, e.g. the head of the CBI, trade unions, principle of St.Andrews … they would be largely non-political, but who decides which bodies and what number? Left to labour it’d be every trade union, left to Tories it’d be all their friends from Eton.
Another interesting suggestion was the mayor of every town. That doesn’t get rid of the political element – but they’d not be so willing to go under central party control and they’d be a better regional representation.
There is of course an elected house – which would then be elected on its own mandate and then no one would know which house had authority to proceed with its own agenda. We’d quickly go into a constitutional mess, we’d end up with a complex constitution which only lawyers and judges were allowed to interpret – and we’d effectively end up with any contentious legislation being decided by judges … so we end up with even less control … and back to something akin to the Eurocracy where Eurocrats had all the power.
Just get rid of the Lords ASP and stop them trying to block BREXIT and giving support to the Bankrupt Corrupt EU. We need to take our time deciding who to replace them with. If we rush into this we may make another mistake.. One suggestion may be to form a parliament consisting of the Chairmen of County Councils as they complete their service. At least they have been elected and served the community.