Tony Blair likes to be thought of as a ‘moderniser’. So it’s startling to see that, on a basic constitutional issue, his position is identical to that held by Australian reactionaries in the 19th century, namely that the Upper House should be nominated and not elected. Athough there are some differences between Blair’s position and that of the Australian opponents of democracy, they are minor and not all in Blair’s favour.
To begin with, it’s fair to concede that, relative to the starting point of a largely hereditary Upper House, almost any change would be an improvement. Proposals for a hereditary peerage in Australia, mainly put forward by WC Wentworth were laughed out of existence as a bunyip aristocracy, but Wentworth’s fallback position under which members were appointed for life was successful. This is, as far as I can tell, exactly the model proposed by Tony Blair. Similar models were adopted in other states.
A notable difference between Blair and Wentworth is that Wentworth wanted to constrain the democratically elected lower house, which he feared might undertake radical action, whereas Blair wants to avoid any check on the power of the House of Commons. But given that most recent British governments have had the support of less than 40 per cent of the electorate and that Blair opposes any reform to the electoral system for the Commons, it seems likely that an elected Upper House would be more democratically representative than the Lower House. The differences between Wentworth and Blair are marginal, at best. Moreover, even if Wentworth’s proposals were stacked in favour of his own social class, the idea that government should be subject to checks and balances is a sound one.
In Australia, the struggle for democratic election of both Houses of Parliament commenced with self-government and has continued for 150 years. Queensland Labor took the direct route, packing the Upper House with an appointed ‘suicide squad’ who voted themselves out of existence, but this cleared the way to a series of Lower House gerrymanders introduced first by Labor and then adopted and extended by the conservatives.
In the other states, progress has been gradual and mixed, but the ultimate outcome seems likely to be the same everywhere – an Upper House elected by proportional representation, with a term twice that of the Lower House and no power to overturn the government by blocking money bills.
This is, in my view, an excellent compromise, giving a legislature that is at least partly independent of the executive while maintaining the principal that the executive is responsible to the legislature.
Of course, these merits are precisely why Blair doesn’t support democratic reform. He doesn’t want any parliamentary check on the power of the executive government – in practice the PM. If he were honest, he’d advocate abolition of the House of Lords and not reform. If he were really honest, he’d advocate an elective dictatorship.
John Quiggin 
I doubt even Wentworth would have approved the accumulation of powers enjoyed by the prime minister in Australia and Britain. Howard does not want an elected president and Blair does not want an elected senate. Interesting that they theoretically represent opposed political traditions but when it comes to defending the elective dictatorship they both sing identical tunes.
Leaders want to govern. The other side of the checks and balances theory is the knobbling of democratically elected governments. From memory, the Kennett government managed to pass more legislation in its first year than the Cain government did in its whole time in office, and much of that was weakened by compromise. The result was arguably bad both ways – unthought law by Kennett; paralysis and good law watered down under Cain. So, if we had a wholesale rethink, what would happen then?
I think, if you were Prime Minister, you’d advocate an elective dictatorship too. It’s the nature of the office.
John
“But given that most recent British governments have had the support of less than 40 per cent…”
This is misleading. First, from memory Labour got over 40 per cent in its two election wins. That’s not a majority, but that doesn’t mean that the Blair governments have had the “support” of a minority of the electorate. Remember, the alternative party of government, the Tories, got less than 30% of the vote in ’97 and ’01. I reckon that the vast majority of Liberal Democrat and Scottish Nationalist voters, for starters, would have preferred Labour to the Tories, and would have given them their preferences if the UK had a preferential voting system.
Let’s put it this way. The kind of landslides that Blair got, under a preferential system (with equal sized electorates) are had with about 58% of the 2PP vote. That’s probably a fair indication of the electoral support Blair got in his two elections.
As for reform the House of Lords, I suppose I agree with you in principle (or as you would put it, in principal), but remember the history of the House of Lords obstructing the Liberal Government in 1906 (or 07, or 08 – whenever it was) which led to appointed Lords. The idea of an upper house which can obstruct the government, in any way, is anathema in the UK.
In the good old days (up to the end of the Heath government) there was an excellent tradition of the House of Commons holding the government to account. Backbenchers didn’t think of themselves as part of the government, because they weren’t (and aren’t). A lot of backbenchers on the government side had no ambitions to become ministers, didn’t have to worry about ‘deselection’ (as they call it there) and saw it as part of their job to ask difficult questions of ministers and make trouble for thre government as they saw fit.
These days, just about all Labour MPs are either ministers or wannabe ministers (apart from odd cases like Robin Cook) and all think of thmeselves as part of the government, but this just aint so, or shouldn’t be so, in the Westminster system.
What’s needed is backbenchers with backbone, and a committee system not controlled by the executive.
The same is true here, but with less urgency coz we’ve got the Senate.
It not “misleading” to say Labour had minority support. It is merely correct. The contention that Blair’s wins correspond to 58% 2PP is a furphy – it just puts their ratty system in the perspective of our ratty system.
The so-called “majoritarian” single member electoral systems normally give rise to government supported by a minority of the electorate (except in a couple Carribean micro states). On the rare occasions when there is a majority in the first preference vote (twice since the WW2 in Australia – 1975 for Lib-CP and 1950 for Labor which lost the election) it is still an artifact of the voting system, being an outcome of strategic voting and the two party polarisation caused (mainly) by single member electorates.
Where voters are given the chance to vote (sensibly) for their party of preference, no party wins a majority. Consequently, no single party can form government – or at least none can rule without legislative consent.
As for the upper house, empirically it is essential in a majoritarian polity. Apparently even pathetic objects like the Lords or the Canadian upper house form an effective check on executive power.
In New Zealand they ditched their dreadful (sinecures appointed on executive whim) Council in 1950 after nearly 100 years. They lurched about for 46 years before tipping the whole majoritarian foolishness in the garbage can and adopting multi-member electorates, thereby terminating forever the prospect of any party winning a majority.
If an Australian parliament (except Tas) were now to abolish its lower house, that would achieve what NZ has done. It would be a good move but unlikely.
Denmark and Sweden abolished their upper houses at the time NZ did with no dire consequences and there are altogether eleven modern democracies with one chamber and multi-member systems. They seem to work fine.
There used to be four countries that had one chamber and majoritarian electoral systems. With New Zealand and Northern Ireland failed (both spectactularly in their own way), Mauritius and PNG look doomed. Presumably what prevents Queensland from going totally bananas, and the NT from going off the rails, is being part of the larger polity.
The english parliament, was started by the lords, not the commoners, the lords and the crown have lost most or all of their powers over the centuries. Where the end is I don’t know, an unelected government?
IMO the legislatures should reflect modern realities. We need strong Govt focussed on the big picture, with asense of direction, rather than being compromised by pandering to the hip-pocket nerve or pork barrelling in the marginals to gain power. Hence the Lower House solidarity behind the Govt of the day. On the other hand the electorate needs the checks and balances of independent review, in order to counter a tendency toward spin and coverup.
Consequently I’d favour electing our legislatures in reverse. Proportional, political party based representation in the Lower House with the executive, with a single member electorate, non-party upper house of review. Such a system would negate the need for the political parties to pander to the marginals at elections and would protect their most able members from defeat in a swing against it. Also LH members would be freed from dealing with ‘lost dog’ problems as they have to now with their electoral offices. Casual vacancies can be replaced easily by the political party.
The UH of review, with single members could deal with the ‘lost dogs’in their electorates, as well as forming powerful Committees of Review, to ‘keep the bastards honest. This house could receive public petitions and introduce legislation on behalf of the electorate(presumably against the Parties) if desired.
I can understand the objection of the two Majors to this format, but it does have some pluses for them. We would also have to get used to Govt by coalitions, although it would have the effect of knocking the looney edges off the fringe parties. In SA at the moment I am governed by a Labor Govt, which governs with independents and I don’t really notice too much difference.
“If he were really honest, he’d advocate an elective dictatorship.”
Hmm. Almost right I reckon. Just remove the word ‘elective’. Or, possibly better, replace it with ‘bureaucratic’ and/or ‘European unelected’.
After all if one is planning for the future after a long reign and one is still young enough to desire for an ever wider sphere of influence, what better option than a non-elected powerbase covering more territory?
Bear in mind the UK two chamber system is being dismantled anyway in a slow, stealthy fashion (as with many aspects of the current regime). But the point is that the globalisation of politics means that incumbent governments are less free to act of their own volition anyway. So a two chamber local arrangement becomes irrelevent.
That said it is interesting that part of the UK strategy has been to intorduce ‘self government’ for Wales and Scotland and an attempt at the same thing for Northern Ireland. Given that the population of Greater London is larger than any of those three presumably the concept of the Mayoral Executive role for London offers a better dictatorship model development experiment than the other three.
Strange though that England should be without its own democratic Assembly despite the financial support it provides to the others. Also of note is that the UK government seems to be disproportionately populated by Scots in senior Ministerial positions.
Divide and conquer?
Grant
Following Dave’s commments I would advocate that NO senator can become a member of the executive.
Thus the only role of the Senate is to review legislation.
JQ wrote “it’s fair to concede that, relative to the starting point of a largely hereditary Upper House, almost any change would be an improvement.”
This is incorrect on two levels:-
– It pays absolutely no regard to the circumstances of the case. It assumes that the hereditary principle should be disregarded by a constitution even if it corresponds to facts on the ground. Now, it is open to people to argue that hereditary customs and practices are wrong and should be changed (though conservatives obviously won’t), but it is the tail wagging the dog, overly prescriptive, to make formal structures deliberately out of touch with reality. For instance, Fijian structures need to accommodate the existence and effect of chiefs. So Blair is different from Wentworth et al in wanting to head in the opposite direction – and also, what Blair is doing is not “Dragging Britain into the 19th century”, precisely because 19th century Britain did have facts on the ground that don’t match what Blair’s doing. He’s dragging Britain away from that, and it’s still unrealistic to the extent that the facts on the ground are still a bit like that (you don’t believe it? see how Clan Campbell regards the Duke of Argyll to this day, or Clan Duncan the Duke of Atholl).
– But as for arguing that the hereditary principle is wrong in itself, that too is mistaken. On some occasions when equality is unsuitable, it is a good way of doing the spontaneous symmetry breaking needed. That doesn’t apply in our situation, but nevertheless there is indeed something in human nature that does give rise to hereditary forms – which is why if we do need to break symmetry, there is less work in doing it and maintaining it that way. That human nature thing is why the ALP has Crean and Beazley dynasties, and the USA has Bushes and Kennedys (as Roosevelts and Adamses before them, or indeed the way Douglas MacArthur got into West Point). If it is desired to offset this, it takes sustained effort over generations; otherwise the expression of the hereditary principle will increase gradually over generations. It is no rebuttal to point out specific reasons in specific cases, a Crean here and a Beazley there; there always are specific reasons. That’s how emergent behaviour works, by creating things via the rational processes in place.
Australia rejected Bunyip aristocracy since that measure was unrealistic and aimed at creating an aristocracy, just the way Second Empire Barons were regarded as laughably artificial. That is, it rejected it because it didn’t fit, not because it was inherently unsound. The other method – which does not apply in Australia – is what mostly happened in Europe. That is, by recognising and taking into the establishment those power structures it found. Originally kings didn’t knight people, knighthood was a self-perpetuating profession as much as accountancy. By “nationalising” it, kings weren’t beginning the institution, they were taming it. This sort of natural aristocracy tends to come into existence spontaneously; that’s what makes it natural (the Americans deliberately thwarted that happening in the late 18th century, by directing the tendency into such things as the “Society of Cincinnati”, a classical allusion). It is entirely possible that Blair is screwing up by white-anting an institution that still has an inner life, as well as by destroying the incidental benefits associated with not doing it the way his new institutions would.
The passage of generations increases the hereditary aspect of all this, unless it is deliberately stopped, because the nature-nurture thing has to allow for each generation’s nurture to include a component added in by the previous one’s nature. After some generations, each area of variation will eventually wash out any initial nurture component by successive relaxation towards some one of the equilibria defined by the nature side of things, even if that is dominated by nurture in any one generation.
It’s not a good idea to have “an Upper House elected by proportional representation, with a term twice that of the Lower House and no power to overturn the government by blocking money bills.” This is essentially taking a second opinion in substantially the same form as the first, a fraud on the people. The real issue is the problem of Arrow’s theorem – it doesn’t matter what you do, representative democracy will have gaps. The only partial answers I have come across involve using very different techniques for the two houses (yes, this does make disagreements more likely – that’s the point, since manufactured agreement is precisely what needs to be engineered out). Then, rather than having a tie-break formula, require any deadlock to be referred to the people (a formula merely creates a higher level of indirection, also subject to the problems posed by Arrow’s theorem). The idea is much like the idea of using different flat maps in combination to work around the mathematical impossibility of any one projection preserving all desirable features from a spherical original.
My personal preference – based on choosing two systems with very different weaknesses – is to have a term limit lower house elected by cumulative voting (maybe a joint sitting of small state houses elected on that principle), and a “for life” Canadian style upper house, with some posts ex officio, some nominated by state parliaments, and a small proportion self-perpetuating. This would need the government role to sit on the upper house and the lower one to fill a true watchdog role, a partial reversal of what we have now. The main merit is to avoid any emergent behaviour that creates locked in party structures to mediate us to our masters. We should abolish politicians; while the turkeys won’t vote for Christmas, they can and will vote to kick away the ladders that younger fresher ones could use to climb up after them, so transitionally all the current lot should be the starter stock for this new upper house.
Observa wants strong govt elected by PR. This is a contradiction since a PR govt will always be a coalition or a minority. His SA Labor minority govt is not a good example as it is temporary, operating within what is normally a two-party system, and the independents are not in the cabinet.
It seems in general that if you have a PR lower house you don’t need another house. PR itself apparently keeps the bastards honest. As for a “non-party” upper house – that is a fantasy. You can choose your house structure from the following three possibilies: the govt has a majority; the opposition has a majority; no party has a majority. A non-party house will never be.
According to Grant “the globalisation of politics means that incumbent governments are less free to act of their own volition anyway. So a two chamber local arrangement becomes irrelevent.” This is a non sequitur. The merits of one or two chambers have been debated for centuries; it has little or nothing to do with the level of govt.
Homer Paxton: “I would advocate that NO senator can become a member of the executive.
Thus the only role of the Senate is to review legislation.” You bet – and a lot of people realise it, too. If there were no ministers in our Australian upper houses then those pollies would make their careers as members of committees and the committees would be powerful. It would do wonders for the independent legislature principle and for good govt.
P.M.Lawrence thinks, ‘It’s not a good idea to have “an Upper House elected by proportional representation, with a term twice that of the Lower House and no power to overturn the government by blocking money bills.” This is essentially taking a second opinion in substantially the same form as the first, a fraud on the people.’
No it’s not the same form. Our upper houses ARE elected by a different system. The staggered terms bit is not important but the PR is. People are elected to represent political views, not geographical places. No party gets a majority and that is the crucial thing.
He goes on, ‘The only partial answers I have come across involve using very different techniques for the two houses… Then, rather than having a tie-break formula, require any deadlock to be referred to the people.’ This is almost a description of our present federal system. The Australian upper houses are all now using a “very different technique”.
And, ‘My personal preference… [is] a “for life” Canadian style upper house, with some posts ex officio, some nominated by state parliaments, and a small proportion self-perpetuating.’ It has been tried and it doesn’t work. The Canadian upper house is a disgrace. The people canned the dreadful Bavarian upper house a couple of years ago because it was constructed this way. I think now that all the states of Germany are single chamber PR.
“principle” not “principal”…. you’re old enough to have been taught how to spell…
Mike,
I am for strong Govt based on policy and direction, rather than some slavish adherence to the majors. Coalition Govts can be strong and disciplined, just ask Howard. In my state, Labor governs with an ex-liberal MP Peter Lewis as the Speaker. You can’t hand much more power to a perceived opponent than that and it’s working.
As far as a non-political UH goes, I would remind you we elect a whole tier of Local Govt, largely consisting of independent candidates. I am not saying that an UH could not contain ex-politicians from the parties, just that they could not be card carrying members to stand. I wouldn’t have a problem with the Phil Clearys sitting alongside the Paul Keatings in a house of review.
You’re right about Govt needing to represent political views rather than geographical areas. Hence the ALP might like to coopt say a John Quiggin to their parliamentary cause because of his perceived talents. The problem now is that JQ may not be good enough at selling raffle tickets, kissing babies, opening fetes, or branch stacking to get a gig in this seat based system. On the other hand a strong seat based ‘little blokes’ house of review would be desirable to represent the geographics and watch all those Quigginses don’t get too elitist or smart for their own good. (Apologies here of course to the good Professor for being made an example of)
P.K. – “The passage of generations increases the hereditary aspect of all this, unless it is deliberately stopped…” seems to be an argument in favour of aristocracies, and pan generational private companies. If this was right as a necessary rule, then our societies would all be oligarchies sustained by zaibatsus, which ain’t the case. Instead, the generational transfer process introduces terrible instabilities, as the inheritors may be dim (see many royal families) or raised in stultifiyingly rarefied atmospheres, or just rotted by ennui. Not to mention the family fighting over the crown or the corporation. For a version of both, you only have to look at the Fairfax story, or down the barrels of the soldiers in the basement at Ekaterinberg.
It is not envy that ends aristocrats, or the naughtiness of the ungrateful unwashed. It’s folly and oppression.
Due to a complete hard disk failure while travelling, I’ve been off-air for several days. I hope to resume posting tomorrow, but that depends on recovery plans working out.
Best wishes to all
John
Mike Pepperday has misunderstood a copuple of my points, and even misquoted one of them to create a false statement.
Here’s the first misunderstanding: “Our upper houses ARE elected by a different system”. No, they are both elected on systems that have much in common. I’m not saying they are 100% identical, just that they have high overlap and can’t be considered different. The timescales suggested are too much alike, the distribution of votes and the way preferences move around work out similarly in effect even if the algorithms aren’t identical, etc.
The misquotation is “My personal preference? [is] a “for life” Canadian style upper house, with some posts ex officio, some nominated by state parliaments, and a small proportion self-perpetuating”.
Go and look again at what I really did put. He completely cut out the very important “- based on choosing two systems with very different weaknesses – is to have a term limit lower house elected by cumulative voting (maybe a joint sitting of small state houses elected on that principle), and” material.
This misquotation leaves out my recommendation for bringing together two very different systems with different weaknesses; it falsely makes out that I favour just one of the two parts, with all its weaknesses uncompensated by the strengths of the other part. That makes all the rest of his criticism – about failures of the one part when thjat was tried elsewhere – mere straw men. I know it doesn’t work on its own, that’s why I recommended it as part of a larger whole, which would work (though I didn’t explain just how it would work, I admit).
David Tiley mistook me for PK, and mistook what I was getting at. I wasn’t recommending the hereditary principle, I was describing how it tended (if nothing was done about it – granted, it rarely reaches that pitch); given that, like using an existing current, it may well make sense to use it rather than reject it, on those occasions when opportunity presents itself. The Danes did very well with a system that had just precisely that sort of self-sidelined monarchy by the late eighteenth century; it allowed them to rest on the system’s legitimacy while reforming it from within. Eighteenth century Danish despotism worked far better than French despotism did, precisely because it slept so much (Holger Dansk, anyone?).
I was going to put something in the Monday stuff, to do with JQ’s article in the AFR on Mickelthwait and Wooldridge’s book on comapny structures, but I’ll wait for that to arrive.
To P.M.L.
I did not misunderstand. We merely disagree. You think the Reps and Senate are the same and I say they are different. I think the Reps is a useless legislature, ie does nothing, while the Senate makes law. Don’t you think that is a huge difference?
Their methods of election are also different. One is PR and the other is majoritarian. There is simply no greater distinction in electoral systems. The same applies in SA, NSW, WA and Victoria.
I didn’t misquote you. The charge should be selective quoting at most. I was just trying to be brief.
Why do you imagine an upper house would compensate for weaknesses in the lower if it is chosen as you suggest? All the ones I criticised were in combination with different lower houses; ie they were not on their own at all. As far as I can see they do satisfy your criterion.
I don’t know that one house ever compensates for another. It seems to me that in bicameral systems one house works and one doesn’t. Canada’s, the Lords and pre-1950 New Zealand are pitiful but not utterly useless because they perform some sort of check on the executive which the majoritarian lower house doesn’t (the lower house being useless). This is the check that was lacking in Northern Ireland (1921-72), in New Zealand (1950-96), Queensland since 1922, the Canadian provinces and, I suppose, is lacking in PNG and Mauritius, they being the only democracies with a single chamber majoritarian parliament.
In Bavaria, Denmark and Sweden the upper houses were all “different” in the way which you seem to mean and they were worse than useless. Why? Because the lower house in these cases was and is PR. They were appropriately abolished.
To Observa
You think your SA lower house with its minority govt works well. Well, what does it do? If SA were always a minority govt, there would be a very different atmosphere (very) but I expect the present SA lower house is just like the ones where the executive commands a majority — and thus useless.
It might not be so. The SA upper house has been PR since 1973 but for reasons not clear to me, it doesn’t quite work in the way the Senate, and the NSW and WA Legislative Councils do (and, no doubt, the Victorian one will work in future) and this, along with the fact of the minority govt, may give the lower house some power or feeling of power.
You say, “Coalition Govts can be strong and disciplined, just ask Howard”. No they can’t. The Lib-Nat coalition is not relevant. It would not win govt (on its own) under PR rules. Your desire for discipline is already satisfied by every house of govt in Australia, the house being entirely obedient to the executive.
I don’t feel that the two Australian fedearl houses are the same, I feel that they are sufficiently well aligned that they do not bring out disagreement on all occasions when they should. This proceeds from a too great similarity of the electoral processes.
I appreciate that the attempt at brevity was well meant; I merely point out that it has produced a vast misquotation – one which is obviously still not clear.
It’s a misunderstanding that I was after one house compensating for weaknesses in the other’s operations. I’m after their constitutional weaknesses causing them not to work when there is disagreement, so that the matter gets referred back to the people. It’s that aspect that is missing in existing cases that appear similar – they aren’t combined in a way that throws disagreements back to the people. Instead, you get a mucky deadlock that gets broken somehow, and then the loser house merely gets blamed for being obstructive. The system taken as a whole merely operates according to one of its parts. (And that really is built into current Australian arrangements – there is a joint sitting tie break mechanism, when the object should be to lance the boil not suppress it.)
Aside from contemporary issues, the arguments of Blair and Wentworth may be the same, but the situations are not. In the 19C Australia, political institutions were been established, and the abolition or reform of the House of Lords represents disestablishment.
This process seen in the reduction of number of Bishops of the Church of England from 25 to 16. I am not sure whether the difference represents a cut back or an opportunity for other religious insights and moral authorities to be represented.
The abolition of the House of Lords would require the establishment of a new Supreme Court to replace the Law Lords, who by definition must be appointed. I have somewhat facetiously thought that sense the separation of powers is of so little significance that they might be transferred to the House of Commons. No doubt setting up such a new court may present difficulties.
In this context, I surprised to learn of the power of the European Court of Justice, to quote from a leading case:
“The EEC Treaty is the supreme law of this country taking precedence over Acts of Parliament. Our entry into the EEC meant (subject to our undoubted but probably theoretical right to withdraw from the Community all together) Parliament surrendered its sovereign right to legislate contrary to the provisions of the Treaty on matters of social and economic policy.”
Nevertheless, Britain unlike Australia does not have a written constitution so there is no procedure to resolve conflicts between the houses, which conceivably could become a problem is both houses had a democratic mandate. Unlike Australia at the Federal Level, Britain has legislation since 1911 setting the convention that the Upper House will not block money bills or supply. In this situation it is reasonable to insist on the primacy of the House of Commons.
The steady evolution of Prime Ministerial government, legitimated through the masks of democratic and representative and oiled by public relations and spin does, I think, require a countervailing development of representative institutions, principally through electoral reform. We might get away from the colonial legacy of having relatively small number of members of parliament, but that involves constitutional change. It is simply foolish to assume as the British White Paper claims that voters for the House of Commons are answering the solitary question: “Whom do you choose to govern you?”. They might as well be asking : Whom do we choose to represent us?
It seems to me that any political institution with 20% or 40% elected members will not have legitimacy, once the traditional hereditary peers are finally abolished. Therefore, the reform of the House of Lords on these terms, and an fully elected option is not viable, simply will not work in practice. Since reform of the House of Lords is not workable; abolition in this case is the best alternative.
P.M. – sorry for getting your name wrong; if its any consolation I did not confuse your identity with anyone else, just scrambled the nomenclature. As to the argument – we are discussing contrary statements about the nature of reality and the terms for both of us are strictly pragmatic. The only principle we both invoke is that the system should work by delivering stability.
My thanks to wmmbb for posting the paragraph re the European Court of Justice.
This highlights the legal angle related to my earlier post on the potential for the UK second chamber to be seen as irrelevant. (Indeed there are those that suggest the first chamber is/will be/should become irrelevant too.)
Note that the reference os to ‘economic and social’ policy. What little that does not cover is effectively manipulated by other areas of the EU hierarchy.
So we have a House of Commons, a House of Lords and representatives elected to the EU parliament as well. Many are former UK politicians who found the higher salaries and expenses of the EU irresistable.
Under those we have the separate assemblies for Scotland, Wales and, in a different form, London.
But, over all of that, the EU unelected bureacracy wields most of the power to act or prevent from acting according to the whim of the individuals appointed.
Hence my earlier observations.
When you live with it you tend not to worry about recording the quotes that tell you what you’re living with. It just is, without explanation.
Grant