Brexit

It makes me wonder want people who say such things would do if they had power?

 

The importance of conventions

As pointed out the UK does not have a written constitution – the UK’s unwritten constitution it is based on based Acts of Parliament, Laws and Conventions

The breaking of a convention can be detrimental to the workings of the constitution and so can trigger a response from Parliament or the courts to correct or remove the risks to it.

*

Imagine a small company in which the convention has been that the CEO can buy a car through company funds – this is ok because the CEO’s have been honourable people that had the best interests of the company at heart and get a succession of mid-range saloons – then a new CEO comes along - let’s call him Alexander - and hearing that he can buy a car with company funds goes out and gets himself a 3.3 million pound Lamborghini Veneno, having a detrimental effect on the company’s finances and putting it as risk of closure.

Alexander has not broken the law but I think many in the company would say it was an abuse of power even criminally minded rather than saying ‘I don’t give a shit’ and I’m sure the company board will act by returning the car and replacing the convention with something more solid, limiting and binding.

 

Supporting the Prime Minister over Parliament coming from Leavers

Thing is that as many have made clear the Supreme Court ruling came about because of the chaos caused by Brexit - but it is NOT about Brexit

This was a matter of abuse of power plain and simple

Anyone that supports the Executive over Parliament in this are basically saying they would be happy with that Executive have dictatorial powers.

To make clear, the power to prorogue Parliament was in the Prime Ministers hands out of tradition and convention because it was presumed a Prime Minister would not abuse that power and no other Prime Minister has.

Basically the executive Prime Minister was using his proroguing powers to try and stop oversight and checks on itself.

If what Boris did was allowed to stand then basically it meant that this and any future Prime Minister could close down Parliament and rule without it through dictate.

Would those right wingers that are been so supportive of Boris in this action be as equally unconcerned if say Jeremey Corbyn was Prime Minister and closed down Parliament to stop its scrutiny of his actions?

 

of course not. everyone is a hypocrite.
that's one of the main issues. people never stop to imagine the situation reversed.
(this goes for all areas of life)
i reckon most people would open their eyes if they learned to do this automatically.

 

See, you do have a zombie parliament at the moment.


Supreme court sticks its nose in, embarrasess the Queen, for what?

To bring them back 3 weeks early so they can just ask the same questions over and over for 3 hours. Questions that cant be answered until at least mid October anyway

 

I hope you have not given up on parliamentary politics. You Poor thing.

 

Do you remember the bus, the bus that seemed to promise so much money for the NHS during the leave campaign only to be told afterwards that it wasn’t a promise, it wasn’t even an aspiration it was just a possible maybe depending on others things and well let’s move on and forget that…

Well they seem to be going for it a second time with Boris doing the rounds of hospitals promising loads of money (without saying where the money will come from or that it will not cover all the cuts already made). Like when he promised 40 new hospitals until the details were looked at and it turned out to be really only 6.

Shouting out that “It is time for us to say loud and clear we are the party of the NHS.”

What is that old saying – fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me

I work in a crumbling NHS. Glitzy Tory promises won’t save it | Rachel Clarke

 

Near the start of this tread I said that no ‘better’ deal was possible because any deal would be worse than what we already had.

And that once a deal was written down everyone would see that. That was why there was such a lack of detail in the leaver campaign to leave and why it took so long to cobble together something that unsurprisingly was clearly a worse deal than we already had.

Because of that I said it would come down to a blame game, with Leavers blaming the EU for any not allowing them to have unicorns.

And now we get the Boris plan and yet another demand for unicorns and yet again the leavers are saying that if the EU doesn’t supply unicorns then it’s all their fault.

But this is clearly the fault of the leavers who never had any rational and coherent plan and have recklessly damaged this country and wish it even more pain.

Hell I love my country and hate what the leavers are doing to it.

They didn’t have a fucking clue what they were doing and still don’t so now they want to take everyone down with then with stupid no deal crash out.

 

I agree I now people in the UK may need to get Jobs, WE need to be in the EU to ensure we have Europeans to be our slaves while we are not working.

Beside I have NO Leave friends (Or people born outside of the EU)

 

We voted leave for different reasons, because the EU because it is undemocratic. Do you remember when we remember voting for the President of the EU no Because we didn't. The MEPs we voted for do not vote of the EU laws that is done by the Unelected Commission.

 

The labour partys new campaign slogan: If we dont do anything, they have nothing to bitch about

 

A popular claim by many supporters of the Leave campaign is that the EU is undemocratic or is run by ‘unelected bureaucrats’.

How much truth is there behind these claims?

This claim mainly refers to the EU Commission: the EU’s executive body. It is true that the Commission President and the individual Commissioners are not directly elected by the peoples of Europe. So, in that sense, we cannot “throw the scoundrels out”. It is also true that under the provisions of the EU treaty, the Commission has the sole right to propose EU legislation, which, if passed, is then binding on all the EU member states and the citizens of these member states.

But, that’s not the end of the story. First, the Commission’s power to propose legislation is much weaker than it at first seems. The Commission can only propose laws in those areas where the EU governments have unanimously agreed to allow it to do under the EU treaty. Put another way, the Commission can only propose EU laws in areas where the UK government and the House of Commons has allowed it to do so.

Also, ‘proposing’ is not the same as ‘deciding’. A Commission proposal only becomes law if it is approved by both a qualified-majority in the EU Council (unanimity in many sensitive areas) and a simple majority in the European Parliament. In practice this means that after the amendments adopted by the governments and the MEPs, the legislation usually looks very different to what the Commission originally proposed. In this sense, the Commission is much weaker than it was in the 1980s, when it was harder to amend its proposals in the Council and when the European Parliament did not have amendment and veto power.

Part of the misunderstanding about the power of the Commission perhaps stems from a comparison with the British system of government. Unlike the British government, which commands a majority in the House of Commons, the Commission does not command an in-built majority in the EU Council or the European Parliament, and so has to build a coalition issue-by-issue. This puts the Commission in a much weaker position in the EU system than the British government in the UK system.

Second, the Commission President and the Commissioners are indirectly elected. Under Article 17 of the EU treaty, as amended by the Lisbon Treaty, the Commission President is formally proposed by the European Council (the 28 heads of government of the EU member states), by a qualified-majority vote, and is then ‘elected’ by a majority vote in the European Parliament. In an effort to inject a bit more democracy into this process, the main European party families proposed rival candidates for the Commission President before the 2014 European Parliament elections. Then, after the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) won the most seats in the new Parliament, the European Council agreed to propose the EPP’s candidate: Jean-Claude Juncker.

The problem in Britain, though, is that this new way of ‘electing’ the Commission President did not feel very democratic. None of the main British parties are in the EPP (the Conservatives left the EPP in 2009), and so British voters were not able to vote for Juncker (although they could vote against him). There was also very little media coverage in the UK of the campaigns between the various candidates for the Commission President, so few British people understand how the process worked (unlike in some other member states). But, we can hardly blame the EU for the Conservatives leaving the EPP or for our media failing to cover the Commission President election campaign!

Then, once the Commission President is chosen, each EU member state nominates a Commissioner, and each Commissioner is then subject to a hearing in one of the committees of the European Parliament (modelled on US Senate hearings of US Presidential nominees to the US cabinet). If a committee issues a ‘negative opinion’ the candidate is usually withdrawn by the government concerned. After the hearings, the team of 28 is then subject to an up/down ‘investiture vote’ by a simple majority of the MEPs.

Finally, once invested, the Commission as a whole can be removed by a two-thirds ‘censure vote’ in the European Parliament. This has never happened before, but in 1999 the Santer Commission resigned before a censure vote was due to be taken which they were likely to lose. So, yes, the Commission is not directly elected. But it is not strictly true to say that it is ‘unelected’ or unaccountable.

And, in many ways, the way the Commission is now chosen is similar to the way the UK government is formed. Neither the British Prime Minister nor the British cabinet are ‘directly elected’. Formally, in House of Commons elections, we do not vote on the choice for the Prime Minister, but rather vote for individual MPs from different parties. Then, by convention, the Queen chooses the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons to form a government. This is rather like the European Council choosing the candidate of the political group with the most seats in the European Parliament to become the Commission President.

Then, after the Prime Minister is chosen, he or she is free to choose his or her cabinet ministers. There are no hearings of individual ministerial nominees before committees of the House of Commons, and there is no formal investiture vote in the government as a whole. From this perspective, the Commissioners and the Commission are more scrutinised and more accountable than British cabinet ministers.

So, it is easy to claim that the EU is run by ‘unelected bureaucrats’, but the reality is quite a long way from that. Although, having said that, I would be one of the first to acknowledge that the EU does not feel as democratic as it could or should be – as I have spent much of my academic career writing about this issue. But, this is perhaps more to do with the stage of development of the EU than because of the procedures that are now in place for choosing and removing the Commission, which are far more ‘democratic’ than they were 5 or 10 years ago.

Simon Hix is Harold Laski Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

 

Undemocratic EU - what about an Undemocratic UK?

I’m not saying the EU is perfect but I don’t think any system is - yes there is a certain amount of ‘democratic deceit’ in the EU but that is also true for the UK.

The parliamentary, constituency and first past the post electoral system in the UK for example means that political Party’s that get control of the government usually have power in excess (often far in excess) to their mandate.

For example even though Margret Thatcher as leader of the Conservatives won three elections the Tory’s never polled more than 43% of the popular vote. I’ve been told that that the last time a UK government was elected with more than 50% of the popular vote was back in 1931.

This means that we get things like the 2015 election when the Conservatives got only 36.9% of the popular vote but 50.9% of the Parliamentary seats.

Also remember we do not vote directly on who is going to be Prime Minister, people vote for a party and the party decides who is going to be the leader, and if that political party is in power then they chose who is to be Prime Minister – I mean who remember when ‘we’ the people voted for Boris Johnson to be ‘our’ Prime Minister - no because ‘we’ didn't - only about only 160,000 Conservative members had that choice.

 

Errrmmm - Didn't Clem Attlee win a 'landslide' victory in 1945 ???

 

Vlad

Clement Attlee and Labour Party

47.7% of popular vote - close but no cigar

 

Do you remember because you had your 21st birthday that day?

 

No, but I am a Bevan boy - Nye Bevan that is - the then Minister of Health !!!

 

Yes that is also True but at least we can vote for which party leads the UK, Which is more than we get for the EU. But ONE leader who we only kinda voted for is better than 2.

 

Just Revoke Article 50 please we need to remain It does NOT matter how we VOTE I voted remain, I hate people outside the EU, Russians, Americans and the LIKE

 

NO NO NO.
LETS GET BREXIT DONE!
BREXIT ON 31st OCTOBER 2019.

Got that?

I can't stand those Froggy and German Bastards!