Five days that changed Britain

The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:

dblboggie wrote:Why are there so many MP's?!?!

Their numbers will be reduced before the next election. We are a small country, but we are highly populated. A quick calculation suggest that for 2% of your surface area, we have 20% of your population but I agree, there is far too many at the moment and the quantity has only increased since 1997. Fewer of them will mean they work harder and spend more time in Parliament voting on issues for the people they represent. This has been one of the major complaints that they are spending too little time in Parliament voting on bills.

Still, 650 MP's for a population of roughly 60 million vs. 435 Representatives for a population of over 300 million??? That seems extraordinarily out to your population. And we've not even factored in the House of Lords, of which there are 722!

Though I know the Lords have no real power, but still...

The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:

dblboggie wrote: Yes, that is amusing. I don't think I've ever seen a "new kind of politics" in my life...

Has there been anything of the sort since Marx? Probably not, and even then I doubt all of his ideas were completely original.

Yep, Marx has been done before in history, well before Marx himself. The newest invention in government was, in fact, the American Republic - and that is only in it's form of government; as for the politics, been there, done that, have the t-shirt...

dblboggie wrote:The newest invention in government was, in fact, the American Republic - and that is only in it's form of government

Well no, not really. The Roman Republic was very similar and appears to be a framework for your system.

The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:

dblboggie wrote:The newest invention in government was, in fact, the American Republic - and that is only in it's form of government

Well no, not really. The Roman Republic was very similar and appears to be a framework for your system.

The Roman Republic was similar, and it, other ancient governments were not only studied but addressed in many of our founding documents (Federalist Papers, Ratification Debates, etc.). But the thing that set the American Republic apart from all other previous governments was that the framers made certain rights of the people unalienable from them by the government, stating that these rights were granted by an authority outside the scope of humans; this was unique. And they further distinguished their form of government by stating that all power was in the hands of the people, and not the government, and then giving them the means to defend this power and these rights with the Bill of Rights.

If I am recalling correctly, there were no Roman analogues to these American instruments. And I believe there had never been a form of government like it in the history of man.

Now, it is obvious to any student of history that America was much indebted to Britain, not just for the Magna Carta, not just for English Common Law, but also for the idea that taxation without representation was an unacceptable abuse of government power, King or no King, and that this was indeed the spark that ignited the American Revolution, which was really nothing more than British citizens righting a wrong that their Parliament and King refused to address. So we owe a huge thank you to Britain for those things.

dblboggie wrote:If I am recalling correctly, there were no Roman analogues to these American instruments. And I believe there had never been a form of government like it in the history of man.

The whole concept of "SPQR" and the political position of Consuls and the Senate, and the powers balanced by the Tribunes of the Plebs covers some of those issues you raise. Free born Romans had a lot of power and they wielded it effectively.

dblboggie wrote:but also for the idea that taxation without representation was an unacceptable abuse of government power, King or no King, and that this was indeed the spark that ignited the American Revolution, which was really nothing more than British citizens righting a wrong that their Parliament and King refused to address. So we owe a huge thank you to Britain for those things.

And had King George III learnt the lesson of Richard II mistakes, things might have been very different. Through history, I know that England and Britain have had a reputation as stoic and stiff-lipped but look at the fate of a good handful of monarchs and you will see that they met unfavourable ends when they dared push things too far.

The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:

dblboggie wrote:If I am recalling correctly, there were no Roman analogues to these American instruments. And I believe there had never been a form of government like it in the history of man.

The whole concept of "SPQR" and the political position of Consuls and the Senate, and the powers balanced by the Tribunes of the Plebs covers some of those issues you raise. Free born Romans had a lot of power and they wielded it effectively.

Yes, the concept did exist in large part, but remember that the Roman constitution was not a written document but was, rather, an unwritten set of guidelines passed down through precedent. And while in concept the Roman Republic was indeed the most advanced of the ancient world, then and long after its fall, it was never as cleanly executed as the structure might suggest. But there is no question that it served as a model for our framers to use.

But I still think that our framers took the best from many worlds, added some unique new elements and devised a written constitution unlike anything the world had seen, then or since.

The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:

dblboggie wrote:but also for the idea that taxation without representation was an unacceptable abuse of government power, King or no King, and that this was indeed the spark that ignited the American Revolution, which was really nothing more than British citizens righting a wrong that their Parliament and King refused to address. So we owe a huge thank you to Britain for those things.

And had King George III learnt the lesson of Richard II mistakes, things might have been very different. Through history, I know that England and Britain have had a reputation as stoic and stiff-lipped but look at the fate of a good handful of monarchs and you will see that they met unfavourable ends when they dared push things too far.

Indeed they have. And more than once, public force and violence was the means of those ends.

dblboggie wrote:And then, when you have time, I'd like to get your feedback on the story and on the new coalition government?

I still haven't finished watching the vids yet so I'll have to reserve judgement on the article for now.

I'm sure the concept of a coalition seems incredibly bizarre to you, but on the continent they are much more commonplace than they are here. They come around here once every 25-30 years on average. Plus, it is in the rules of forming a Parliament here that a majority must be reached in order to form a government or the other party is not obliged to step down. The anti-Labour media were full of mock outrage after the election that Gordon Brown was allowed to go back to Downing Street and remain as Prime Minister. It was not his choice, it was not even his right, it was his duty to remain in power until either his party or the Tories could gain a majority through coalition. That said, on the day of his resignation I think that Gordon Brown conducted himself with dignity and David Cameron (for me) went from excitable public schoolboy to serious statesman when he delivered that first speech outside Number 10.

As for the coalition, we are still in a honeymoon period and overall I think they are doing fairly well. Coalitions are never easy for the majority party will always have to compromise or scrap some of their core policies if the partner(s) are opposed to them. Compromise is the price a coalition pays in order to get the most important reforms and policies into law and achieve the necessary backing it needs. Furthermore they have a difficult job on their hands with the biggest deficit in this country's history. There is a lot of bitterness toward the outgoing Labour government for being so wasteful in the last few years and the arrogance with which they ran the country.

There has been a lot of compromise on both sides and the only people really grumbling are the most conservative of Conservatives, who think their party has given away too much, and the most left wing of the Lib-Dems who think the Tories have given too few concessions. Personally I think the balance has been right so far. Despite all of the warnings from "the markets" that coalitions are bad for the economy, and despite warnings that a Conservative-Lib-Dem pact could never work and that we'd be having another election by October (October starts tomorrow with not even the slightest hint of the coalition collapsing) overall I have no complaints.

I'm writing this while watching a weekly political discussion show hosted by David Dimbleby and the historian David Starkey has just suggested that Labour are being squeezed out, that they now exist on the fringes appealing to a few cities and fringes of major towns and in future will become the party of the public sector. A few months before the election, when the coalition was first predicted, I suggested on SP that if such a Tory-Lib-Dem coalition worked, that the Lib-Dem party had a very real chance of reclaiming their position as one of the big two. I still believe that.