Let's see if the Remainians were right.

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Original post by DanB1991

Still more elected than the UK government, one out of our two houses is completely unelected, as is our head of state who still technically holds very real powers she simply chooses not to use. All three of the EU's houses are in some way, shape or form chosen by the EU's citizens.

By your logic the UK shouldn't have an armed forces either :facepalm2:

The House of Lords has no power anymore. The acts of 1911 & 1949 ensure the most the Lords can do is delay a bill. They certainly can't stop it dead.
The Monarchy also has no power within the Parliamentary process & therefore cannot stop a bill which has got through the House of Commons.

The only politicians of the EU that are anything close to directly elected are the MEPs and they can't even really propose legislation; only the European Commission can do that if I remember correctly.

Reply 21

james813

Original post by Tempest II

Absolutely right. I think the House of Lords should be much more cost-efficient, and elected but it has no say in going to war.
The entirely unelected Commision soon will.

Reply 22

DanB1991

Original post by Tempest II

While the house of lords cannot ultimately stop a bill passing if it attempts to pass twice, technically in the first instance they are very much doing that.

Also the reigning monarch has the right to refuse to pass any bill.... you may not be happy about it, and the monarchy refuses to enact this power, but they are perfectly entitled to. the last time it actually happened was in 17087, but actually was incredibly close to happening in 1914 due to the 'Government of Ireland Act 1914'.

And most people don't even realise how important it is to have unelected elements in a democratic system. Having a government of simply elected individuals can often result in disastrous circumstances!

Reply 23

username1799249

Original post by Tempest II

The House of Lords has no power anymore. The acts of 1911 & 1949 ensure the most the Lords can do is delay a bill. They certainly can't stop it dead.

That is simply not true. The Lords are very powerful. So much so in fact that they completely obliterated a piece of key legislation earlier this year (sadly can't remember what) When their is discourse by the Lords, everyone stands up and listens. Power is not necessarily about being able to press a button. It can also be about influencing the people who can press the button and in that respect they have power in buckets.

Same could be said for the queen. We have no idea what she says in her meetings with the PM, but we do know business leaders would fall over themselves to have the same one-to-one meetings with them PM.

Reply 24

username1799249

Original post by Pinkberry_y

The EU is a disease that we are soon to be free from.

What does that even mean. Are we going to sail out into the Atlantic? We will never be free of Europe. But as we are now seeing, without our influence, their direction is rapidly diverging from our own ideologies. I also detect an element of bitterness in Junka's voice. They can punish us and there is nothing we can do about it. They are bigger than us. One lesson I learned pretty early is that picking on the bigger kids is much riskier than kicking on the little uns.

Reply 25

Tempest II

Original post by DanB1991

While the house of lords cannot ultimately stop a bill passing if it attempts to pass twice, technically in the first instance they are very much doing that.

Original post by ByEeek

The House of Lords is now, at most, a glorified "Insider" Pressure Group:

Under the "Salisbury Convention", the Lords doesn't block legislation which the government has won a mandate for in a General Election (IE in their manifesto).

The House of Commons has had "financial primacy" over the Lords for over 300 years so it has no real power to stop financial legislation.

The House of Lords has no power to initiate military action or declare war, nor does it have the power to stop said military action. In fact, it's only in recent times that the House of Commons has had a vote on whether to approve or disprove military action (and, as far as I'm aware, the power to declare war still rests with the Prime Minister due to the Royal Prerogative rather than Parliament)

The House of Lords can, at most, delay a bill for a couple of years although it's not uncommon for bills that make it through the Commons but got rejected by the Lords to be back in the upper chamber again within months.

When you compare the powers of the House of Lords to other upper chambers around the world, such as the American Senate, you realise how relatively weak it is and to then try to compare it to the EU Commission & Council really is rather misleading. The Lords can do little more than scrutinise legislation which is also what the press & pressure/interest groups like the CBI do.
I'm not saying it doesn't fulfil an important function; I personally think it's a good idea to have men & women with plenty of life experience & who preferably experts in their field in government. However, the elected MPs should, and do, have far more power.

Reply 26

username878267

Original post by KingBradly

The so-called left always get things wrong. All the time. But they just forget about it later and pretend like they never cared about it.

Remember when they thought that mass immigration and multiculturalism was going to work perfectly? Hmm. Doesn't seem to have done. A long while back there were was a couple of MPs who stood up and said that there was a serious problem with Pakistani rape gangs in Rotherham. They were shouted down and accused of being racists. Turned out they were right in the end though.

Before the refugee crisis, some people said that allowing in millions of migrants would cause a lot of problems, and that there would be rapes on the streets. They were shouted down as being the most sick racists imaginable. Turned out they were right in the end though.

Before the Brexit vote, most of the so-called left were very smug in their sureness that Remain would win, and scoffed at those that thought that Brexit could win. Turned out the Brexiters were right though.

When some people began to wonder if Hillary was actually a sick, and were very skeptical that she only suffered from overheating, the so-called left accused them of being incredibly insane mentally deranged whack-job ultra-nationalists. Turns out they were right in the end though. And they'll probably be right again, this time about Hillary not only having pneumonia, but the left will just forget about it or try and shrug it off when the truth comes to light.

They're weasels. Don't expect anything good from them.

Oh yes because David Cameron, George Osborne Theresa May, Jeremy Hunt and around 2/3 of the tory cabinet and around 2/3 of tory backbenchers who all supported remain are 'so called left'.

The biggest proponents of the EU were the centrists in labour, lib demand and the Tories.

I have no idea why you are portraying it as a left wing thing.

Also the people who argued with you about Hilary such as AG and Drewski are certainly not left wing, both are centrists.

And we have not actually left the EU yet nor do we know what our new trading arrangements will be. Let's wait and see.

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(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 27

james813