Looking back at my previous posts, Britain is struggling with several major crises. Low salaries and a high cost of living mean more and more Britons are slipping into poverty, especially if they start a family. A better educational qualification increases the chances of getting a job with a higher salary. But universities are now part of the problem, due to high tuition fees. Especially compared to usual result - quality of education and salary. There are educational and career paths that lead to much better financial security. But without attendance at an elite university and prior to that, attendance at a renowned public school, the chances are very low. Of course, the latter demand annual fees in the range of typical average salaries. Practically they are only open to the exceedingly small and rich part of the population. Society is becoming more and more divided.
St. James Palace, former principal residence of English and British Monarchs
In addition, there are several crises of the state: since the financial crisis, expenditures have exceeded revenues by far, despite all efforts to limit debt, e.g. through cuts in health, education and social services. The current generation of politicians is making mistakes their predecessors already made, e.g. on the issue of immigration. A sad example of the consequences of the poor education system. The same goes for the public health system, which suffers not only from financial cuts, but also from structural issues at the administrative and professional level.
Tackling all these crises is not easy. Even with the right measures, it would take years - if not decades – to fix them. And it would demand a lot from the British. But it is my impression the problems are either not being tackled at all or the measures are (obviously) fundamentally wrong.
It makes me wonder why no one wants to initiate real change. Sure, Brexit was such an attempt. But the EU is hardly responsible for the above-mentioned problems of the country. Here, once again, I was struck by the lack of education and competence, including a highly distorted self-perception of the general public. Are there really no capable politicians? Is there no one who recognises the problems, has the right solutions at hand and can represent them convincingly to voters? Can nobody initiate change in Britain?!
Do the needed politicians not exist? Or does the system stop them somehow? Or both? In the next few blog posts I want to address these questions, starting here and now with the political system. (Spoiler: It's because of both, just keep reading).
Before I really get into it, let me start with a few generally accepted modern democratic standards for better comparison.
A society, in whatever form, only works if the groups comprising it work together and not against each other. In a dictatorship, cooperation is achieved through repression. Those who do not comply with the regime's guidelines are persecuted, imprisoned or even killed. A democracy, of course, cannot function this way. Common rules must be accepted by all groups of their own free will. A dilemma to be sure, because if a society has more than a handful of members, the citizens will hardly be able to agree unanimously on all its rules.
The practical solution is to resort to majority voting. But up to what point? Can a majority, even if it is only 51 per cent, make rules that completely ignore the interests of the minority? Can it restrict the rights of smaller groups? Can it change the principles of decision-making and thus consolidate its power? No, even a majority must respect the rights and interests of the minority to a certain extent. Otherwise, there is a danger of a "dictatorship of the majority", which can quickly end up in a real dictatorship.
To prevent this drift, the heart of a modern democracy is its constitution. It lays down the basic rules of society, defines and guarantees the fundamental rights of citizens, the form of government and its institutions. In Germany, for example, basic rights and the form of government are secured in constitutional articles that cannot be changed. Others are described in articles that can only be changed with a two-thirds majority. It therefore requires a large consensus in the population or between different groups/parties to adjust the foundation of our society.
Another measure to counteract a dictatorship of the majority and to promote dialogue between different groups is the division of the legislative power among different bodies. In the US the power to make laws is divided among three democratically elected institutions: The House of Representatives, the Senate and the President. In Germany, it is divided between the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. In other modern democracies there are similar divisions. The more important the laws, the more institutions must support them and the larger a majority has to be. And typically different parties hold majorities in different institutions. The system forces them into dialogue and cooperation.
In short, most of the principles of modern democracies exist to accommodate the dilemmas that come with majority voting. To protect the rights of all and to accommodate the interests of as many groups as possible. Dialogue is King.
So what is the situation in the UK? In short, there is neither a constitution nor a division of legislative power. The latter does exist, but not practically...
Britain's current political system has evolved organically over several centuries without major disruptions: There were no revolutions where the old was thrown away to make way for the new. Many adjustments made sense in their time, but all together they led to a system that is now self-contradictory and certainly not up to modern standards.
It is also absurdly complicated. To understand today’s system, it is necessary to roughly trace the changes over the centuries.
First something positive: the British have often been at the forefront of the development of civil rights and democratic institutions. Starting with the Magna Carta, the early parliaments of London and England or the progressive protection of private property in the 18th century. England and the United Kingdom set standards.
But as described, the drafting of a constitution is not one of them. At least there is no self-contained, single document. British constitutional law consists of ordinary statutes and common law: law derived from established patterns of behaviour or judicial decisions (precedents).
The foundations have existed at least since the Glorious Revolution of 1688/89. As in the centuries before, the monarch was and is the source of all power, executive authority and head of state, but he is the sovereign only in conjunction with the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Together they form Parliament. (Let us be clear about this right away: To this day, the people are not the sovereign.)
Legislative power is vested in Parliament. At the beginning, the division into two chambers and the Crown involved the three relevant groups of society. In addition to the ruling family, the House of Lords included the nobility and the Anglican Church. The House of Commons represented ordinary citizens.
This division of the legislature not only sounds incredibly modern, the Westminster system is the model that most modern democracies follow more or less.
However, in the English/British system, the only legislative institution which was/is somehow democratically legitimised is the House of Commons. Somehow, because in the first years only men with a certain wealth were entitled to vote.
In a revolution like the American one, the British would probably have extended the right to vote and democratised the other two parts of Parliament. The king would have become a president, the House of Lords a chamber similar to the Senate.
But, as I said, the British managed change without (further) overthrows. They changed their system in a civilised way through a series of reforms. Exemplary, actually. And the lack of a constitution was even an advantage.
The 1832 election reform of the House of Commons is a good example. During the 18th century, the industrial revolution began. Before, agriculture had a prominent economic role and provided the aristocracy with great power. However, with economic change, the importance of industrial production and trade increased more and more. The economic and political importance of cities grew rapidly. Some large cities of the 19th century had been villages 100 years earlier. Other rural areas were depopulated. With a few exceptions the constituencies had never been adjusted. Major cities were represented by one or no MPs in the House of Commons, regions with a handful of voters sent two. Mandates in the countryside were sometimes sold to the highest bidder, or electors and deputies were in a dependent relationship with their local noble.
There were several movements among citizens to initiate change. But despite massive pressure from the streets, the House of Lords resisted a constituency reform (and an extension of voters rights) for a long time. The nobles did not want to lose their influence in the House of Commons, due in part or precisely because their economic importance had declined drastically. It was only through pressure from the king that their resistance was broken. King William IV announced that he could grant as many new titles of nobility to supporters of the reform until a majority in the House of Lords was secured. The threat was enough to make the Lords relent.
As a result, the power of the nobility was not only limited by the changed composition in the House of Commons. It was clear the Lords would lose more influence if they opposed the interests expressed in the House of Commons too often. If a decision of the House of Commons was supported by a large public majority, the House of Lords usually did not resist.
Another example is the changing role of the Crown in the executive. Monarchs slowly relinquished the management of government affairs. Even in the centuries before the Glorious Revolution, there were chief ministers who presided over the government unofficially on behalf of the Crown from time to time. From the 18th century onwards, the leadership was permanently handed over to a prime minister. At first, the title was again unofficial and without the far-reaching powers of a modern head of government, such as the power to appoint or dismiss other ministers. But over time, the modern office took shape. However, the position was not formally recognised until around 1900. And it is difficult to say exactly when. The first mention on an official document is found on the Treaty of Berlin (1878). But the title was not included in the Kingdom's protocol rankings until 1905.
Initially, it was mostly Lords who were chosen as head of government, but after 1902 the choice almost always fell to the majority leader in the House of Commons. Not as a fixed rule, but when George V had the choice between the leaders of the two chambers in 1923, he chose the Majority Leader of the House of Commons because of the "demands of the time", setting a kind of precedent.
Over time the precedent became more powerful. See the leader change in 1963 for example. Prime Minister Macmillan resigned due to illness. After prolonged wrangling over his successor, with none of the three original candidates showing clear support within the ruling Conservative party, Lord Home stood for office and was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II to form the government. Four days later he resigned his peerage, and a few weeks later he was able to enter the House of Commons via a by-election and become majority leader.
Because the prime minister should always be the majority leader in the House of Commons, prescribed by common law, sort of.
The above examples are typical of the transformation of the political system: the balance of power in society changed. Without a constitution, the system is flexible enough to adapt its structures. Resistance may have existed, but it was not supported by strong constitutional provisions. Some changes were fixed in official laws, others came about through voluntary renunciation, which after a while became a habit. Sometimes these were later cast in legal form, sometimes not.
The crown and the nobility thus lost more and more influence, but they and the related institutions continued to exist without being replaced. Thus, not only is there no constitution today, but the institutional division of legislative power has also disappeared.
More on the British political system today in my next blog post.
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