Praise the Lords?

     Yesterday marked a truly dramatic moment in modern British politics as the House of Lords voted to delay Prime Minister David Cameron’s government from cutting over £4.4 billion of tax credits to low income families and individuals, which are part of an overall £12 billion deficit reduction plan by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.

     It’s remarkable because the Lords, the unelected upper house of the UK Parliament, usually does not take a strong stand in the way of legislation supported by the elected government and the lower house of Parliament, the House of Commons. Indeed, the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 stripped the right of Lords to veto “money” bills, and placed a maximum of two years (reduced to one year by the 1949 Act) for the Lords to delay other public bills coming before it. These acts asserted the near-supremacy of the Commons and limited the Lords to providing scrutiny to legislation.

     However, this isn’t to say that the Lords is entirely meaningless, for their ability to scrutinize, hold up, or turn back legislation to the Commons (even if only temporary) is can used as a check on the government and force it to rethink its proposals. This is what happened yesterday during a highly charged and emotional debate in a packed Lords chamber on whether to either allow the cuts to go through, delay them, or block them entirely.

     In the upper chamber, the Conservative Party – which has a majority of 12 in the Commons and therefore forms the UK Government – has the biggest number of peers at 249, but is faced with the combined numbers of 213 Labour and 112 Liberal Democrat peers, along with hundreds of other peers among smaller parties, independent crossbenchers, non-affiliated members, and Church of England bishops.

     Anticipating a possible defeat on the matter of tax credits, the government and people on its behalf warned against any move to delay or block the reductions, saying that along with contravening the Parliament Acts, this would break a 300 year old convention of the Lords not to interfere with finance bills and spark a major constitutional crisis. Professor Vernon Bogdanor, a leading constitutional scholar who was David Cameron’s tutor at Oxford, told the BBC:

     “These rules date back to the end of the seventeenth century and they say that the House of Commons had exclusive financial privilege – that is the House of Lords should not interfere with the financial privilege of the Commons or the power of the government.”

     He further stated that there was “no source” from which the Lords could derive the authority to defy the Commons, where the tax credit changes have been passed by the elected Tory majority. It was simply a matter of the “very fundamental principle, no taxation without representation”, and the Commons he said, was the “only representative chamber that should decide on matters of taxation.”

     However, Labour, LibDem, and crossbench peers defended their actions to table motions to delay or block the cuts under the notion that the cuts were not actually part of a finance bill or primary legislation. Instead, they were enshrined in secondary legislation known as a statutory instrument (or regulation), which according to The Guardian, is not "subject to the same line-by-line Commons scrutiny as legislation, but instead stand or fall on a single quickfire vote." However, by going about getting through the changes this way, George Osborne “forswore the ‘money bill’ exemption” with regard to the Lords, and therefore set it up to be more closely scrutinized there with the possibility of revisions being sent back to the Commons.

     In addition, the opposition and some cross-bench peers believed that they were within the limits of the Salisbury convention, which states that the Lords will not oppose government legislation if it was promised in the election manifesto of the government party.

     This then, leads to crux of the matter. The Conservatives spent the general election promising not to touch the tax credits brought in by the previous Labour government as part of its overall deficit reduction agenda. After the election, Osborne announced the creation of a UK National Living Wage, which would replace the minimum wage (currently at £6.50 per hour), and be gradually raised to £9.00 an hour by 2020. However, tax credits would also be reduced – with the government claiming that the National Living Wage would make up for the lost tax credit income.

     However, as the scale of the proposed reforms became known (that millions of families and individuals would be adversely affected to the tune of an average £1,300) and as there were questions regarding whether the National Living Wage could fully make up for it, opposition and unease increased. People who claimed to have supported the Tories in the election expressed their anger and the feeling that they had been lied to, including a single mother who unleashed her frustration on the BBC’s Question Time. Conservative politicians, including backbenchers in the Commons and Scottish leader Ruth Davidson, as well media pundits also expressed their displeasure and the need to at least find ways to blunt the effect of the cuts for the poorest working individuals and families who are beneficiaries of the credits. The idea of many of their constituents being told around Christmas that their benefits (and therefore a substantial part of their income) would be cut became increasing untenable in Tory ranks, but the reforms got through the Commons anyway.

     However, some peers contended that since the tax credit reforms were not featured in the Conservative election manifesto, they could at least be held up in the Lords for further debate and possible revision under the Salisbury convention.

     Following a passionate debate in the packed Lords chamber, a motion tabled by Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Manzoor to block the cuts outright was defeated. This was a so-called “fatal motion”, which is rarely used since peers are wary about overstepping their powers to throw out legislation from an elected government. However, the Lords did pass a motion tabled by Labour peer Baroness Hollis of Heigham to delay the cuts until the government produces a plan to compensate affected workers during a three year transition, as well as a crossbench motion tabled by Baroness Meacher to decline support for the cuts until the government outlines how it will help those affected by the cuts and responds to research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which claimed among other things, that only about a quarter of the income lost via cuts in credits would be taken up by the National Living Wage.

     This was a huge defeat for government of David Cameron and a personal blow to George Osborne, who responded that he would delay the policy until he finds a way to compensate the workers, and wait until his Autumn Statement next month to make an announcement about this. In the long-term however, he said that the events of last night raised “constitutional questions that need to be dealt with” and criticized “unelected Labour and Liberal Democrat Lords” for interfering on a financial matter passed  by the elected Commons. David Cameron’s office responded by saying that the Prime Minister will seek a “rapid review” with regard to the status of the Lords, saying that a “convention exists and it has been broken”, and that it must be restored to ensure that ensure that the Commons has complete primacy on finance issues.

     Other Conservatives made similar comments in expressing their outrage and fury towards the Lords, but some people who opposed the tax credit reforms appreciated the actions taken by the Lords, including some of its critics who believed that the chamber needs to be reformed into an elected body or abolished outright. Many commented it was good to see the Lords actually proving to be useful, while noting that it was sad that it took the unelected body of Parliament to force a climbdown by the elected government on this contentious, controversial, and quite personal issue.

     However, SNP members and politicians (including First Minister Nicola Sturgeon), never to be satisfied with anything the “Westminster parties” do, expressed criticism against Labour peers for abstaining on the Liberal Democrat motion to kill the cuts altogether. In response, Labour people said that their peers abstained because the “fatal motion” would have meant that Osborne could have just brought the cuts back again, and that delaying them to extract protections for those affected was more effective.

     Another reason for not passing the “fatal motion” was that it may result in a Conservative retaliation whenever Labour returns to government. To this, some Nationalists said this showed why the Lords needed to be abolished and replaced by an elected chamber that can actually take action without constitutional concerns, but as this is a more long-term concern and would not do anything to help those to be affected by the proposed reforms, it made more sense from a Labour perspective to do something that would force Osborne to think again, rather than do something that may have turned out to be ineffective and quite potentially overstep the power of the Lords more so than the delaying motions did.

     In many ways, this showed how the SNP is obsessed over constitutional arrangements they don’t like, rather than working within the existing system in the here and now to achieve positive outcomes for the day-to-day lives of their constituents. Certainly some of their members don’t seem to understand the intricacies of parliamentary procedure and strategy, for process matters as much as principle and the latter cannot be achieved without the former. Instead, they prefer to just wanting to tear things down and not observe necessary processes (and of course, having another go at the Labour Party for being “Red Tories”).

     One personal I interacted with said that along with “lack of principle”, the UK has a problem with process and tradition, as if to say that they get in the way of governing or taking certain actions. However, process and tradition are some of the things I admire and respect about the UK. Yes, they may perhaps be archaic, but they give character to the country and make it stand out – mostly in a good way, I might add. Many people look at such processes and traditions, and think, “Yep, that’s how the Brits do it”, and say it in a positive light because that’s simply how things have been done going back hundreds of years.

     That being said, there is always room for reform, and indeed, the British system has reformed it time and time again through many changes over the centuries – some revolutionary, others for more evolutionary and gradual. The monarch is no longer absolute, but constitutional; free elections are regularly held to Parliament with a universal adult franchise, as opposed to elections by the propertied elite; and the Lord’s are limited to a revising and scrutiny capacity, as opposed to an outright and perpetual veto.

     On this last point, yesterday’s developments showed how the Lord’s can be useful in these roles as a check on the government of the day, and it seems that people on both the left and right agree. Stephen Bush of the left-leaning New Statesman tweeted that it was “not a constitutional crisis for the Lords to return to sender. It’s just the constitution.” Adam Tomkins, a Glasgow law professor and Conservative candidate for the Scottish Parliament next year also tweeted that “it’s the House of Lords’ job to scrutinise legislation. That’s what they did today. It [would] be a constitutional crisis if they didn’t do it.” Conservative writer Tim Montgomerie of The Times emphasized in a tweet that the actions of the Lords had more to do with giving MP’s time to rethink, especially considering that "tax credits weren't specified in [the] Tory manifesto", and that for this reason, democracy was not "being undermined." Meanwhile, in relation to politics north of the Tweed, Kevin Shoefield of PoliticsHome.com commented on Twitter that the Lords “does a better job of holding the executive to account” than the SNP-dominated committee’s at the Scottish Parliament (and many others on and off social media expressed similar sentiments).

     Nevertheless, the Lords still attract controversy for being viewed as not much more than a gravy train for former politicians and party favorites – a symbol to some people of a self-serving elite and of Westminster decadence and corruption. Furthermore, while there were expressions of pleasure and even "high-fiving" with the way the Lords acted yesterday, those who did so may not be pleased tomorrow if they are on the losing side of an issue taken up by the unelected body.

     Of course, the reality is that the House of Lord’s does have many people who take their membership seriously and actually work hard. There are elder statesmen who actually bother to read legislation (as they did in their previous political life) and serve to question the agenda of the government and provide counsel for particular areas of public policy for which they have a specialty.  There are also many others from all walks of life who also bring particular qualities and experiences to the upper house, and help to guide its decisions.

     Given what happened yesterday, it may very well be that the Lords acted as it should have done in scrutinizing legislation and turning it back to the Commons for revision, and that fears of a constitutional crisis are overblown. However, reform may be needed to make the Lords more legitimate in the eyes of the British public and therefore more able to take the kind of stands as it did yesterday.

     Among other things, perhaps there should be reform of the nominations process to the peerage, so as to reduce the use of Lords as a reward for party hacks and donors, and to encourage the nomination of people who can bring valuable skills and expertise in the Lords. In addition, there should be attendance requirements to ensure that peers are active in their job, as well as limitations on expense claims to prevent abuse of the system. Even more boldly, it should not be outside the realm of possibility for the Lords to represent the nations and regions of the UK on an equal or near-equal basis, in similar fashion to upper houses in Canada, Australia, and the US, where such representation gives constituents parts – particularly those with small populations – a greater sense that they have a role on running the country on the same terms as the larger areas. This, and perhaps eventually, a partially or entirely elected House of Lords would give the ancient upper chamber a more firm legitimacy in the eyes of the public and allow it be a more effective and meaningful body.

     For now though, the Lords will continue to operate as it has, and if the developments over the tax credits leads to long-term and positive constitutional reform, then that can only be good for British democracy going forward.

EVEL: Constitutional Earthquake or Wee Breeze in a Tea Cup?

The Parliament of the United Kingdom (Credit: Jim Trodel via Flickr cc)

     So it has happened: English Votes or English Laws, or EVEL.

     By a vote of 312 to 270 in the House of Commons, procedures in the lower chamber of Parliament have been changed to empower the Speaker of the House to determine whether legislation coming before the Commons affects England, England and Wales, or the entire United Kingdom as a whole. If the Speaker determines that it is an English or English and Welsh matter only, a “grand committee” of the affected MP’s will decide on amendments and if the matter can go forward to the next parliamentary stages, which involve all members of the House and results in a final vote by the full House. If however, the Speaker determines that it is a UK-wide matter, then the legislation will go through the normal parliamentary processes.

     This is government’s response to the long-asked West Lothian Question, which refers to the situation whereby Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish MP’s are able to vote on matters at Westminster which are now exercised by their respective devolved legislatures. This effectively means that they are voting on some issues that do not directly affect their constituents – ones which directly affect England only – but English MP’s cannot do the same to with regard to devolved issues (such as health and education) in Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland. It is an anomaly that has been debated and discussed for nearly 40 years during the debates on Scottish and Welsh devolution, and even farther back to the debates on Irish Home Rule.

     The basic principle is that as more central government powers are devolved to the legislatures in Belfast, Cardiff, and Edinburgh, English MP’s at Westminster should have a greater say on matters that affect only their constituents – lest an English-only bill supported by the majority of English MP’s is defeated by a majority of MP’s from across the whole United Kingdom, including those from Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales.

     Sounds simple? It isn’t.

     For starts, the Palace of Westminster is home to the Parliament of the United Kingdom (which includes England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales), and as such, all matters before it should be decided amongst all MP’s, regardless of their geographical location.

     Furthermore, what issues are “English only” or “English and Welsh only”? Without a known criteria, this may well become a contentious issue, for even though a matter may be viewed as English-only in its legal and territorial definition, MP’s from Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland can also argue that the legislation can (and will) have effects on the rest of the UK.

     Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of public spending, because through the Barnett Formula – the mechanism which decides how money is allocated throughout the UK – spending decisions applying to England have knock-on effects in other parts of the UK. If public spending in England goes up by 2% for any reason in any area, then the amount of block grant money allocated to the Scottish Parliament for example must rise as well. This matters on issues such as proposals to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport in London, so that if money is spent on it from the UK Treasury, then spending in Scotland must increase by a proportionate amount. If health spending decreases in England, then the block grant also gets cut for the devolved legislatures. These are known as “Barnett Consequentials”, and are therefore presented as a reason why non-English MP’s ought to continue to vote on some “English” matters because of their indirect effects elsewhere. (It should be noted that public spending in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales is typically higher per head than the UK average, whilst in England, it tends to be slightly lower.)

     There is also concern regarding the potential politicization of the Speaker, a person who must observe political neutrality in his or her position. This may prove difficult when making decisions on what is and is not an English-only matter, and the decision reached by the Speaker will have far-ranging consequences either way with the decision that is reached, because they will establish precedents for future decisions. A Speaker may also be accused of acting in the interests of one party or the other, or far worse, acting in the interest of one part of the UK over the other, and this may undermine the authority and legitimacy of the Speaker.

     However, the biggest problem with EVEL pertains to the composition of the Commons itself and the government of the day. A UK government is formed by the party that commands the confidence of the Commons, and this is usually done by having that party holding a majority of seats via a general election. Traditionally, this means that the governing party has the ability to get its agenda through via the support of its MP’s from throughout the country.

     But with EVEL, this becomes problematic if a government has an overall UK majority, but not a majority in England, and if a Speaker determines that an issue becoming before the Commons is “English-only” and a grand committee of English MP’s effectively vetoes the legislation before it comes to the full House. It could – as some fear – lead to a situation where the government cannot act effectively and is held hostage by the UK minority/English majority – resulting in the sort of political stand-offs like those in the US with situations where the houses of Congress and the White House are controlled by different parties. It could potentially generate a massive constitutional crisis and put the Union under terrific strain.

     Interestingly, the party that appeared to be most concerned about EVEL was the SNP, the very political party that wants to break up Britain.

     Leading the charge was the SNP MP for Perth and North Perthshire, Pete Wishart, who could not contain his “outrage” when he tweeted, “Well that’s it. With a majority of 42, Scots MPs are now second class in the UK parliament they were so determined to keep us in.” He further claimed that the change in standing orders amounted to a “slap in the face to Scots voters which they are unlikely to forget”.

     This was the man who claimed – quite passionately – last year on the BBC that he had “no concern or issue” with EVEL, and claimed that it was “an issue that the Scottish people could not care less about”. To Wishart, the debate over EVEL was an “inconsequential spat” which Scots were “not interested in”, and the voters in his constituency “could not care less about policing in Peckham or Plymouth.”

     Indeed, up until recently, the SNP believed in the principle of EVEL and Scottish MP’s abstaining on English matters. In 2007, Angus Robertson, the SNP leader in the Commons asked Prime Minister Gordon Brown (an Scottish MP) if it was not “completely iniquitous” that MP’s representing English constituencies “are not able to decide on matters in Scotland but Scottish MPs…can vote on matters which only impact on England. Why does he not join the SNP in abstaining on these issues?”

     Think of that: the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom not being able to vote on an issue in Parliament – probably a bill backed by his or her government – simply because he or she represents a Scottish constituency.

     This of course, would be the natural concern of pro-Union folks who do not want to see Scotland’s voice in any way diminished at Westminster or have top ministerial posts denied to them by the effects of EVEL.

     However, the self-righteous outrage by the SNP was nothing less than rank hypocrisy and an attempt to engage in grievance-mongering about Scotland’s place in the UK. The SNP deputy leader Stewart Hosie, who was recently owned in an interview by Andrew Neil last Sunday, mockingly referred to the campaign last year to save the Union with his remark that, “When they said ‘Better Together’ they meant second class. When they said ‘lead, don’t leave’ they meant Scots votes don’t count.”

     For a party that likes to claim that pro-Union parties are behind the curve on the changes wrought by devolution (like on matters such as the BBC and taxation), it is somewhat amusing that they are the ones getting all hopped-up here, especially when their former leader Alex Salmond once said:

If you’re asking me should people in England be able to run their own health service or education system, my answer is yes. They should be able to do it without the bossy interference of Scots Labour MPs. We had that in reverse through the 1980s.

     That last sentence refers to when the Conservatives had a majority throughout the UK as a whole, but not in Scotland where Labour held the majority of seats, which led to the idea of English MP’s “overruling” the will of the Scottish people. Back then, there was only one parliament which represented all of the British people in full and laws were made on the behalf of and for the British people from Shetland to Land’s End. For that reason, the idea of English MP’s overruling Scottish ones made little sense, and was more about stoking grievances. Nevertheless, the eventual response was devolution and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, but there was no corresponding action in England. Now that this has occurred with EVEL, the Nationalists are outraged.

     Never mind that this is the consequence of devolution and forget their own previous statements. It’s at this point where I defer to Alex Massie of The Spectator, who wrote:

“There is something irksome about all this gurning; a reminder that grievance is the nationalists’ reserve currency. Ignore them and they will howl; give them what they want and they will find a reason to complain too.

And what of Scotland, poor old Scotland? As always, she is the victim. Whatever happens, she will be molested. The only thing worse than London’s interference in her affairs is London’s indifference to those affairs. And vice versa.”

     Let us not forget: the SNP wants see Britain broken up, which is why for all of the indignation they show, they actually welcome EVEL because it gives them yet another ax to grind which they can use for separation. After all in their eyes, it’s just another example of Scotland being mistreated by big bad Westminster. If anything, their decision back in the summer to announce that they would vote on the issue of fox hunting in England and Wales may well have been an attempt to goad David Cameron to ensuring that EVEL became a reality, so that they can use it for their never-ending campaign for secession. They know that since their economic case for secession is tenuous at best, the biggest asset to their ultimate and overriding aim is making Scotland to be the victim, and if that means inconsistency on the issue of English votes, so be it. Stoking up grievance and resentment is their stock and trade, and if it means poisoning relations between England and Scotland for the sake of an independent Scotland, then so be it.

     It is partly for this reason that I believe EVEL is a bad idea. Despite the Natpocrisy, it plays into their hands with the charge that Scottish MP’s – along with their Northern Irish and (at times) Welsh counterparts – have been reduced to second class status at Westminster, which feeds into the belief that only English voices matter and that Scots are not wanted (and need not be heard) in what is supposed to be the UK Parliament, despite the claim of being “better together.”

     Indeed, I expect that the SNP will be all too happy for the Speaker to declare something as English-only so that they whine about it and crank up the grievance machine.

     Then again, the West Lothian Question had to be solved, for the alternative would have been for it to be a festering contention for some people in England who saw non-English MP’s voting on what had effectively become English matters, due to devolution.

     After all, if devolution was brought about to address a “democratic deficit” with regard to Scotland’s place within the Union, and to lessen “English influence” on “Scottish affairs,” logic follows that some people in England may wish to lessen “Scottish influence” on “English affairs.”

     Joyce McMillan, a columnist for The Scotsman, said that this ignores the “brute fact” that the UK is an asymmetrical union in which 85% of the population resides in one part of the country – England, and that EVEL will shut Scotland out of critical decisions that affect the UK as a whole – including Scotland.

     However, some pro-Union supporters say that this an admission that devolution – at the very least – is a flawed concept whose architects failed to think through its implications on Scotland and the United Kingdom as a whole, and its implementation in a piecemeal manner failed to engage the UK as a whole on constitutional matters.

     They also contend that the asymmetry to which McMillan refers did not exist before devolution, for with a single sovereign parliament in London, all of the British people were represented by MP’s who could equally participate in the parliamentary process in full without question. This allowed for many Scots to take their rightful place in powerful and prominent positions in government – defense secretaries, home secretaries, foreign secretaries, chancellors of the Exchequer, and prime ministers – and representing the interests of the UK as a whole (including Scotland).

     In other words, if EVEL had been enacted without devolution – with Scottish representation cut or downgraded for no reason at all – then that would provide more legitimacy to the case for separation. But with devolution, the constitutional dynamics had changed, even has the politicians struggled to come to terms with it, and to some extent, attempted to ignore the issue and pretend it did not exist.

     Indeed, Alex Massie wrote in The Spectator that “the best answer to the West Lothian Question was always to stop asking it” and hope that it would just go away quietly, but recent events – the extraordinary success of the SNP in winning 56 of 59 Scottish seats in the Commons and the prospect of further devolution (including the full devolution of setting income tax) to Edinburgh – have meant that this approach will no longer work.

     From this perspective, he believes that EVEL is a “milquetoast” reform and the “least bad option available.” Other people I know on Twitter and Facebook have referred to it as “a very minor measure”, “hardly the equality of devo”, and “a wee breeze in teacup”.

     Indeed, Massie does not believe that the EVEL procedures will be used very often because he believes that the current Speaker, John Bercow, will “take an inclusive approach to these matters; an approach that will please SNP members more often than it does English MPs.” He further makes an example of how adding a third runway at Heathrow – while appearing to be an “English-only” issue – is more likely a UK-wide issue because airport capacity is something which affects the whole country. Furthermore, the aforementioned “Barnett Consequentials” also mean “that there are fewer England-only bills than often appreciated”, and if the Speaker takes these things into consideration, then EVEL may well “prove a constitutional earthquake so tiny most people will scarcely notice it.”

     Using this point of view, EVEL may be a symbolic gesture to assure most people in England that there are procedures in place to ensure that MP’s representing English constituencies will have greater scrutiny on matters deemed to be English-only. Even if the Grand Committee of English MP’s vote for consent of an England-only bill to go through to the full House of Commons, it is still possible that the bill can be defeated there. And of course, it is possible that the procedure may only be used to a such a limited extent as Massie suggests, so that the overall effect is moot, and even Chris Grayling, the Conservative Leader of the House of Commons, said that he anticipated that only three or four upcoming pieces of legislation may be subjected to EVEL.

      Nevertheless, Westminster is the parliament of the whole United Kingdom, and there should be no debate or question about as to who gets to vote on what, or at a particular stage just because they happen to represent the “wrong” constituency.

     This is why I believe that EVEL is a crude idea that at best is a short-term political answer, rather than a long-term constitutional solution for the United Kingdom. Indeed, the story of devolution thus far is that it was been a series of ad hoc processes with no real unifying concept with regard to the relationship between the UK and its constituent parts, and this has left the country with an unbalanced governmental structure that has eroded the constitutional fabric of the UK, and is prone to misunderstandings and grievance-mongering

     There are no easy answers, but there are ideas which should be taken into consideration. One is the reformation of the House of Lords into a chamber that represents the nations and regions of the UK, which is something about which I have written. Looking back, this probably should have been the way to go in addressing the asymmetries within the UK, which have also been noted by many pro-Union politicians such as Gordon Brown. If this had been achieved long ago, it may have averted the need for devolution, because it would have guaranteed a level of Scottish representation in the upper house that would have been on par – or nearly on par – with England, so that Scotland’s voice (or rather voices, since Scotland is just as diverse as England) could be heard and provide wisdom and scrutiny to government legislation. Even if a reformed Lords did not have the absolute ability to block government legislation, it could – with substantial Scots influence – force the government to think again on its agenda.

     Of course, there would still be people making the case for devolution and decentralization from London. In fact, the idea of revamping the United Kingdom into a federal union like the United States has taken hold in some quarters in the wake of the referendum. But even Gordon Brown has remarked that federalism can only go but so far in a country where 85% of the population lives in one area, and most forms of federalism still mean having a strong central government with the ability to levy and collect taxes, and make an array of laws that directly apply to all people throughout the entire union.

     In essence, federalism means that there are some powers exclusively exercised by the federal government, some powers exclusively exercised by the federated governments, and some powers are exercised jointly. For example, in the US and Germany, the setting of income and corporate taxes are a joint responsibility of federal and state governments. The federal governments and legislatures in both countries are quite powerful – though their power is limited in certain areas.

     Indeed, the authority of the British Parliament at Westminster has already been limited in practice, regardless of the fact that it possesses ultimate sovereignty across the UK. The Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, and Northern Irish Assembly are now semi-permanent institutions to the point where no prime minister or his/her government will dare contemplate abolishing them.

     The issue at hand now is how these institutions, the British Parliament, and potential institutions in England can fit into a federal framework for the United Kingdom as a whole. This will require an end to ad hoc devolution (including the proposal for Full Fiscal Autonomy for Holyrood) as well as the crude answers contained in the proposals for EVEL. Joyce McMillan herself acknowledged that the decision to devolve control of setting income tax rates was “strange and hasty”, for the income tax allows for one of the most transparent forms of redistribution from wealthier parts of a country to another, and the concept of pooling and sharing resources throughout the United Kingdom for the benefit of all was one of the main arguments used for keeping Scotland as part of the Union.

     If the Union is to survive at this point, there needs to be the establishment of a UK constitutional convention that will attempt to sort out the issues of British governance and forge a lasting constitutional settlement that is as “fair” as possible to everybody.  It means looking at the United Kingdom as a whole and having a firm understanding of how it ought to work going forward, which – among other things – means defining the powers of a federal UK Parliament (as Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution does for the US Congress), the limits on the federal parliament (Article 1, Section 9), and the powers and limitations on the federated governments of the nations and regions within the UK (Article 1, Section 10).

     It also means defining the values that bring Britain together as a country, and establishing principles upon which the people and their representatives can build on.

     This effort will require an enormous amount of good faith, tact, skill, statesmanship (likely in the face of political party interest), creative imagination, and a sense of vision and purpose to make such a settlement a success.

     It will also require the participation of people from all walks of life in Britain – including ordinary citizens, civic organizations, and faith groups in an expression of British civic participation that may also facilitate bringing people together and forging a sense of a common identity and common ideals for Britain going forward.

     Balance and fairness must be restored to the constitution, for the integrity and stability of the United Kingdom, is on the line and I believe that excessive and short-sighted devolution combined with similarly short-sighted EVEL only serve to weaken and destabilize it. Indeed, it would be optimal to go back to the way things were before 1999, and start over with such a convention, and alas, we have to work with the current circumstances. Who knows? Perhaps through the debate and discussion of a convention, people may realize that having different tax jurisdictions may not work in a country the size of the UK.

     The brute reality is that Scotland and England have been “interfering” in each other’s affairs for centuries, and they really can't help it, given the island they share. The Union simply made it official, and in my opinion, it is in everyone’s interest for Britain to remain together, for Britain has so much collective potential, and its people can achieve much more together – not just for themselves, but for the world at large – than they could ever do apart.

     Taking all this into account, EVEL may not be either an earthquake or a wee breeze - perhaps something in between. Hopefully, it can lead to a greater understanding of the constitution, as well as a deeper and more meaningful look into how it can best serve the needs and interests of all the people of the United Kingdom going forward.

In the National Interest

     After the past two weeks here in the US, there may be a conclusion with regard to the election of a new Speaker of the House of Representatives.

     Ohio Republican Representative John Boehner has been at the post (which among other things, is second in line to the presidency) since 2011, when his party took control of the lower chamber of Congress, but announced his resignation last month. In his place was supposed to Kevin McCarthy of California, who is the current Majority Leader in the House. However, he was beset with criticism over his relative inexperience as a Member of Congress, as well as for his public gaffe’s, which include the apparent revelation that the Republican-led committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya may have been a vehicle for attempting to damage then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is currently seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Current Speaker of the House, John Boehner of Ohio. Gage Skidmore  via Flickr cc

     But the biggest issue he faced was the potential opposition from about 40 hard-right backbenchers, who (despite political reality) do not want to makes compromises with the Democrats in the Senate (where Republicans have a majority, but not have enough members to overcome a potential Democratic filibuster) or with President Barack Obama, who wields the veto pen (and will not, for example, sign a bill that will overturn his signature health care law).

     Even so, McCarthy had every expectation to get enough votes from his fellow Republicans to nominate him as Speaker behind closed doors before a vote before the full House with the Democrats, where the Republican majority should have ensured him the speakership. But at the last minute, he withdrew his candidacy to the shock of virtually everyone in the Washington Beltway and the wider political world. In doing so, he threw what was supposed to be a more-or-less pre-arraigned process into total disarray as John Boehner announced that the election would be postponed indefinitely.

     Since then, the party has been looking again for a person to ascend to the role which Boehner wishes to vacate. The problem is that no one (especially people with White House ambitions) really wants the job because they know that it will likely be their political graveyard.

Congressman Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Majority Leader. U.S. Government and Printing Office (Public Domain)

     Indeed, part of the reason why Boehner wants out is because much of his time as Speaker has been characterized by dealing with the divisions within his own party. Even though the Republicans have had a majority in the House since 2011, Boehner has had a tough time ensuring that he could get a majority of them to vote with him on contentious issues, such as raising the debt ceiling and passing a budget. A small but vocal minority of hard right conservatives (known as the House Freedom Caucus) have attempted to use showdowns on budgets and the debt ceiling to force the defunding of things to which they objected, such as "Obamacare" and Planned Parenthood.

     Boehner knew that Senate Democrats (who had a majority until this year) would block such measures and even if they made it to the White House, the president would veto them. A long-time representative and establishment figure, he knew that compromises would have to be made, but would be forced to go to the brink by this minority of representatives – many of whom have been elected only within the last five years on a platform of opposing Obama. Eventually, Boehner would be able to push through his agenda, but only after high stakes drama and the threat of government shutdowns, and indeed, there was a costly shutdown in 2013.

     This was why Boehner wants to leave, but with almost no one else amongst House Republicans wanting the speakership for the same reasons, this caused some outside-the-box thinking – literally, since there’s nothing in the Constitution which states that the Speaker must be a member of the House. Names of prominent Republicans who are no longer in public office had been mentioned, including former vice president Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who served as Speaker from 1995-1998 while a member of House.

     The most intriguing possibility was the election of a compromise candidate between Democrats and Republicans who are tired of the obstruction by their fellow members (i.e., the tyranny of the minority). After all, the Speaker needs only support from a majority of the overall House, and need not come from the majority party, and indeed, a Speaker having broad support from throughout the House may have been the ideal that our Founding Fathers wanted.

     Nevertheless, speakers elected along party lines has usually been the tradition, and anybody who broke this mold would have be taken an enormous risk.

     However, it now appears that conventional thinking will prevail with the announcement that Congressman Paul Ryan will seek the nomination to become Speaker. The 45 year old representative from Wisconsin has been a member of the House since 1999, and ran for vice president as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012. Ryan is well-regarded throughout the party and seen as a unity or consensus candidate, which is why he was the most often-mentioned name for the job. But he – currently the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee – expressed no interest in it.

     But after coming under much pressure, Ryan has announced this week that he would become a candidate for becoming Speaker, but only on certain conditions (more on that later). Yet, even if he becomes Speaker on party lines, it may well lead to the end of his political career and any prospect of occupying the White House in the future due to the hard choices he will have to make which may make him deeply unpopular with the base voters of the Republican Party. If John Boehner ends up serving the remainder of his term as Speaker, he is looking at the possibility of calling on Democrats to help get around the rebel backbenchers and push legislation through.

Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan - the reluctant Seeker for the Job . Gage Skidmore via Flickr CC

     All of this has been presented as taking one for the team, or more appropriately, doing what’s best for the country.

     This is nothing particularly new – the notion of a politician stepping up to do things in the national interest, and often in the face of opposition by his or her own party. John F. Kennedy wrote about this in his book, Profiles in Courage, and how some of his predecessors in the US Senate put themselves into great political and personal jeopardy by doing what they believed was best for the country.  

     In Britain, a politician who comes to mind in this regard is Ramsay MacDonald, a man who remains quite controversial in British politics.

     MacDonald was born in Lossiemouth, Scotland and was a founder of the Labour Party. In 1924, he led a minority government as the first Labour prime minister of the United Kingdom (and the first from a working class background), but only lasted for less than 10 months. Five years later, Labour was elected back into power with MacDonald as prime minister for a second term with a larger mandate this time around, although he still led a minority government with support from the Liberal Party.

     Two years later, MacDonald was faced with dealing with the economic crisis that had begun with the 1929 Stock Market Crash, and had blown into the Great Depression. As unemployment soared and government finances deteriorated, MacDonald’s government struggled as it attempted to reconcile two conflicting aims: balancing the budget to maintain the Gold Standard and prevent a run on the pound, as well as maintaining social welfare assistance to the poor and unemployed. A committee was appointed to review public finances, which in July 1931 recommended sweeping reductions in public spending (including welfare and unemployment payments) and public sector wage cuts to avoid a budget deficit. MacDonald and a majority of the Cabinet agreed with the need to balance the budget, but this was a slim majority, with the Cabinet effectively split down the middle and senior ministers – some of whom wanted to enact countercyclical fiscal policies advocated by John Maynard Keynes – threatening to resign from the government in protest.

     Faced with this, MacDonald was prepared to tender his own resignation to King George V, but the King insisted that MacDonald should stay at his post and lead a National Government with Conservatives and Liberals. MacDonald knew that if he did this, he would draw fire from his party and bring odium to himself, but the King believed that – in this moment of crisis – that MacDonald was the only man who could be prime minister and make the decisions to get the country on track.

Ramsay MacDonald, Britain's first Labour Prime Minister. George Grantham Bain Collection - U.S. Library of Congress

     MacDonald agreed to form a National Government, which meant bringing down his own Labour government, and by doing so, he and other Labour people who supported the National Government were expelled from the party that he had helped to create. In the ensuing general election that year, the National Government won 554 seats – one of the largest electoral mandates in British political history, and though MacDonald remained prime minister, he was only one of a handful of pro-coalition Labourites (under the name National Labour), and the government was dominated by the Conservatives. The main Labour Party itself suffered its worst defeat up to that time, and took over a decade to recover, which only stiffened the antipathy toward MacDonald, even though he still believed himself to be a Labour man and believed that the National Government would be temporary.

     Under his watch, the government finances were righted with the reductions to public spending, and the economy eventually began to turn around. He resigned as prime minister in 1935 due to declining health, and died two years later at the age of 71, leaving a mixed legacy behind.

     To some Labour Party members to this day, MacDonald is seen as a power-hungry traitor who made incestuous deals with the enemy – the Tories – to stay in Downing Street at the expense of his party and the people he was supposed to represent – the working classes. On the other hand, he is also viewed as a co-founder of that party who helped to carry it from being a protest organization to being a legitimate party of government, and who when on to make tough decisions in the national interest of the UK. In both veins, he can be considered courageous for doing what he believed was right.

     More recently in our time, the decision of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats to join a coalition government with David Cameron and the Conservatives following the hung parliament of the 2010 general election is arguably another example of a politician risking so much for himself and his party in the pursuit of doing what was thought best for the national interest. With the British economy still reeling from the effects of the financial crisis and Great Recession, compounded with the eurozone crisis and other international economic issues, it seemed only reasonable for them to join forces with Tories, who were the biggest party in the House of Commons, but just short of achieving an overall majority.

     As with Ramsay MacDonald in 1931, Nick Clegg believed – or at least, made everyone else believe – that in a moment of crisis, a strong coalition government was needed to steer the UK, as opposed to a weak minority Tory government. One path offered stability and a path way to recovery, the other offered instability and an economic roller coaster, along with a potential second election that year. Financial markets and businesses, who prefer stability and certainty, would have questioned the ability of the British government to handle its affairs, especially if there were multiple elections and uncertainty of who would lead the country.

Nick Clegg's Decision to Join the Conservatives in a coalition government was controversial in 2010 and has Cost his party dearly. Chatham House via Flickr  CC

     As it was, the Nick Clegg took his party into coalition with the Tories, and to the surprise of most political observers, the coalition government – with Cameron has prime minister and Clegg as deputy prime minister – survived through the end of the five year parliament. However, the LibDems ended up paying a huge electoral price for being seen as propping up the Tories and acquiescing to their program of austerity, which included the raising of tuition fees (which the LibDems had promised they would abolish). They were credited in some circles for putting the brakes on (or watering down) some of the more controversial policy proposals from the Conservatives – such as overturning the Human Rights Act and weakening the fox hunting ban. In the end however, it did not really matter. They lost waves of seats in local council elections, the elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, the 2014 EU election, and in this year, the UK parliamentary election in which they were reduced from 57 seats to just eight.

     Back home in the US, the saga over who becomes the next speaker may not lead to such consequences, but there’s the chance that it could, especially if the new Speaker is a Republican who uses Democratic votes to get legislation through, or – more unconventionally – the new Speaker is a compromise between both parties. One party or the other will accuse people within it of treachery and selling out for power and prestige.

     However, this likely will not be happening since Paul Ryan relented under pressure to step up and offer himself as the Republican nominee for the speakership, albeit on the certain conditions – most significantly, that he must have House Republicans united around him if he is to be the consensus candidate for the job and if he is to be an effective Speaker. To this end, he made an appeal to acting in the national interest – saying the speakership was not a job he wanted or ever sought, but that he came to the conclusion that this was “a very dire moment”, not just for Congress or the Republican Party, but for the entire United States, for without effective leadership in the “People’s House”, the business of the nation cannot be done.

     He made it clear that he is a principled conservative who will not acquiesce to the White House, but also made it clear that he wants to lead as the principle spokesperson and agenda setter for the House GOP without the threat of revolts from the hard right of the sort that have made John Boehner’s life a living hell for the better part of the last four years. For more assurances, Ryan has said that he will seek to make it more difficult to remove a sitting speaker, which is a procedure that requires only a simple majority vote. Some Republicans balked at these demands, but it appears that Ryan has pulled the great bulk of them together, including most members of the Freedom Caucus), and this has given him a clear pathway for the nomination and the speakership itself.

     Whichever way it goes for the Republicans (and for that matter, politicians of any party in the US or UK), the common refrain is that so often, those who step up and make sacrifices – personally and politically – for the good of the country are often vilified and do not receive any thanks for it, except in the annals of political history, and usually long after such people step away from the political stage. They do what others either cannot or will not do due to the lack of political courage, and they know very well that it all may well come crashing down on them in the end. In a hyper-charged political era where we ask for more statesmanship from our politicians, perhaps it is time that such people were looked in a more measured light in their time, and ours.