No, it was a seat down in Cornwall I think that was waiting for the last boxes to come in.

OK yeah I just noticed that.

I'm surprised to see some of the parties that actually polled well didn't quite know how to translate votes into seats. As we discussed with FPTP voting, they aren't commensurate. But it seems that some of the parties that did well in overall popular votes could have done a better job, perhaps, if they distributed it into specific target areas? Then again, if the pre-election polls were so abysmally off, it might stand to reason that they weren't sure where to target their influence. What I mean is the UKIP and Greens each won one seat, but overall, they outpolled (by like, triple) the SNP. But then again, the SNP (it would seem a logical guess) has its core supporters in a specific target area. It would make sense to assume that the SNP were, for that reason, able to turn votes into seats. After all, you only have to win one more vote than the guy who polled second place in order to win. Sometimes party leaders (in any country) forget that elections are won in the margins. You cannot just throw a crap-ton of darts anywhere in the general direction of a dartboard and assume, well, at least one or two will hit the bullseye if I throw enough of them, right? Doesn't seem to work that way judging by this election's results (map included). Apparently, all politics is still local in the U.K.

One question: do the MPs in any given party have to vote the way the party's official conference (you don't call them conventions obviously do you?) platform says to?

Anddddd another dumb JH-question: is "supply" the whole budget, or just any sort of spending bill at all?

JimHackerMP wrote:One question: do the MPs in any given party have to vote the way the party's official conference (you don't call them conventions obviously do you?) platform says to?

No. Often the government will ignore the conference on issues, let alone individual MPs. During the coalition, they would have had to do that to pass bills with both parties to support them. And Labour has for a long time had form in ignoring Conference.

MPs are subject to whipping by their party, which is organised by the Parliamentary leadership rather than the party at large. If a vote is whipped (not all are, some are not important enough or are considered a matter of personal choice), then MPs are supposed to vote along with the party leadership. We have different 'strengths' of voting, up to the "three line whip":

single line whip: non-binding to turn up, with guidance on what party policy is.
two line whip: binding to turn up (unless given permission by the Whips office), and partially binding on the vote.
three line whip: binding to turn up (except in extremis) and to vote the way the party wants. In theory, breaking the 3LW is grounds for expulsion from the parliamentary group ("having the whip withdrawn") or even the party itself. In practice, the 3LW is imposed rarely other than for budget/confidence motions, and recently there have been rebellions on it without punishment.

Anddddd another dumb JH-question: is "supply" the whole budget, or just any sort of spending bill at all?

Generally just the Budget, as it is about taxation not spending. If there were a taxation clause in a Bill that was not the budget, I suppose it would also need to be "supplied". "Supply" refers to both the need for votes to keep the government in power, and the need for money to keep the exchequer running.

Basically, any bill that the government needs in order to raise the money to do what it wants is automatically a vote of confidence. As is the Queen's Speech bill.

The opposition can also propose a vote of no confidence, as worked for Thatcher in 1979.

Also, the government can declare a confidence vote on other bills it sees as important. Why do that? well, often after a failure of an important policy vote, a government will call a confidence vote to re-establish its position. Usually it works, and heads off a no confidence vote by the opposition.

Now, on your other post, it's not quite as simple as that.

We have national parties, who fight across Great Britain (or the UK in the case of the Conservatives and UKIP who also run in Northern Ireland).

And we have regional parties who only run in specific places - the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales, the various parties of Northern Ireland...

The regional parties get more seats per vote because they only stand in certain areas, and those areas are also where they will get votes. It's not really strategic, so much as bound up in their agenda.

For the national parties, it is all about targeting. The bigger parties have over time accumulated 'safe' seats, so don't need to invest much in them - the locals will do enough alongside the national campaigning in a normal year. So they put more resources into the more marginal seats.

The smaller national parties have a problem, and not one easily solved. They don't get to choose who supports them, and national-level interests will attract people across the country. So they also have to target their support. However, there is a problem for them, which we can see in Thanet South:

The seats most reachable by insurgent small parties tend to be where the race is a bit closer - which are of course where two or more large parties are close and so putting in more resources. So the small guys not only face the greater resources of the larger parties, but they also face a voter "squeeze" - the "Vote X get Y" factor. In Thanet South, and apparently in a lot of places, right-leaning UKIP supporters who previously voted Tory were concerned that if they voted UKIP, Labour might win. Basically, this is tactical voting.

It is often like this. Labour is a major party now, but 100+ years ago were just getting started. So they had to take a long time to just get a couple of MPs, and then it still took decades to get more than a few dozen. There is a kind of critical mass that meant that once the party started to win seats, and as the Liberals declined, Labour became the second party during the 1920s.

But until the Greens or UKIP get big, they will face this issue. It's not one easily dealt with, but they did do as you suggested: focus on trying to win the seats they thought they were able to. So the Greens wanted to keep Brighton Pav and pushed in the university towns where they had support. UKIP's support was strongest on the East coast, and that's why Farage ran in Thanet and they were able to hold Clacton.

The feature of FPTP that is important is what's called the efficiency of vote distribution, or differential turnout. One reason that the current boundaries are apparently favouring Labour is not just down to the way the boundaries are drawn or the electorate:population ratio. It's that where Labour are strong [cities and industrial northern towns], turnouts tend to be lower and there are a significant minority of opposing voters (usually Tories). Where the Tories are strong [prosperous suburbs and shire counties], turnouts are high and there is not much opposition.

When it comes to the smaller parties, their supporters being fairly evenly spread is what does for them. If they had a different raison d'etre, which was more regionalist then perhaps they would do OK - such as the Kidderminster/Wyre Forest based "Health Concern" who only stood in one place because of changes to hospitals there and had an MP for two parliaments.

Or like Respect, which had popularity in some Muslim areas combined with a populist (demagogic) figurehead like Galloway and specifically ran in areas where Labour was in by default.

But for the Greens and UKIP this is less of an option. It's a long, slow process to break down majorities. In both cases, they have a means to build up in local areas by gaining power on councils. the Greens have been running Brighton for a few years now, and UKIP have just taken control of Thanet council.

I hope I am not trying your patience with another crap-ton of Hacker questions. You'd think someone whose screen name refers to the Rt. Hon. James Hacker, M.P. would know this already, right? Being a poli sci junkie, I've actually started to write this stuff down in a Word file I keep handy.

Speaking of being a poli sci junkie, I have a confession to make (if I haven't already said this before): I find my own country's politics terribly boring compared to those the UK and other places abroad. Naturally, I'd rather have my Congress than your Parliament (not without certain caveats of course [cough]), but to me, the latter is considerably more exciting than the former. And anybody who does not believe me, well, watch C-SPAN some time; but keep a firearm of some sort handy.

The feature of FPTP that is important is what's called the efficiency of vote distribution, or differential turnout.

Right! the efficient distribution of votes in the right places; that's kind of what I meant to say. The book I mentioned The Dictator's Handbook [long subtitle] discussed efficient vote distribution, and how Lincoln was the master at managing efficient vote distribution. He knew not just how to get votes but WHERE to get them. Yes, thanks I just couldn't think of the right expression Mesquita/Smith had used...And I think I understand what you mean. You cannot always target areas efficiently unless your "margins" are in the right places, right?

How many (if you don't know that's fine) seats in the Commons are "safe" seats versus those that aren't? It would also be interesting to know what the incumbency rate is in the Commons. In the HoR---an appropriate abbreviation don't you think? ---it's greater than 90% if you believe Wikipedia. (I think I do in this case.) BTW when you Britons say "marginals" or "marginal constituencies"; is that the British equivalent of what us Yanks call a "swing seat"?

It is often like this. Labour is a major party now, but 100+ years ago were just getting started. So they had to take a long time to just get a couple of MPs, and then it still took decades to get more than a few dozen. There is a kind of critical mass that meant that once the party started to win seats, and as the Liberals declined, Labour became the second party during the 1920s.

Yes, I am familiar with the "trading places" between Labour and Liberal in the early XX Century. David Lloyd George was a Liberal, I understand. BTW, wasn't the "Liberal Party" originally the "Whig Party"?

and UKIP have just taken control of Thanet council.

Speaking of the councils, how much power do they have? And what is their proper sphere of authority vis-a-vis that of Westminster? If that's too complicated to get into, never mind.

the "Vote X get Y" factor. In Thanet South, and apparently in a lot of places, right-leaning UKIP supporters who previously voted Tory were concerned that if they voted UKIP, Labour might win. Basically, this is tactical voting.

This does actually happen any time a popular(ish) third party or independent candidate runs for congress or a state legislature--they really end up throwing the election to the Democrat when the Republican would have otherwise won, and vice-verse. Of course, that's a majority 2-party system...but if I understand you correctly, same principle, right?

No. Often the government will ignore the conference on issues, let alone individual MPs. During the coalition, they would have had to do that to pass bills with both parties to support them. And Labour has for a long time had form in ignoring Conference.

So where & when does the party come up with its "official" platform, which the party leaders via their party whips vigorously enforce on their fellow MPs in the party? And whose responsibility is it to determine the party's official platform, to which the MP's are bound via the whip system you described?

MPs are subject to whipping by their party, which is organised by the Parliamentary leadership rather than the party at large.

OK, so who is/are the "parliamentary leadership", as contra-distinguished from the "party at large"?

In theory, breaking the 3LW is grounds for expulsion from the parliamentary group ("having the whip withdrawn") or even the party itself.

(The following is not a spoiler this time. My profound apologies again for that slip last time we were discussing this TV series.) In the beginning of the first episode of The House of Cards (BBC, not Kevin Spacey), this MP gets caught trying to pick up a hooker. Chief Whip Francis Urqhart, M.P. tells him: I heard a nasty little rumour today [MP's name]; I heard you were going to abstain on the 2nd reading of the Environment Bill.....DON'T!!!! Wow. Urqhart was obviously correct when he said earlier: I'm just the Chief Whip...I put a bit of stick about...make them jump! If President Kennedy said that "sometimes, party loyalty asks a bit much," it would be my guess that party whips in the United States, particularly many of the state legislatures, spend most of their time twiddling their thumbs and watching internet porn, and do very little actual whipping. (Except for the aforementioned internet porn, perhaps.)

Anddddd another dumb JH-question: is "supply" the whole budget, or just any sort of spending bill at all?

Generally just the Budget, as it is about taxation not spending. If there were a taxation clause in a Bill that was not the budget, I suppose it would also need to be "supplied". "Supply" refers to both the need for votes to keep the government in power, and the need for money to keep the exchequer running.

In other words, it's usually the actual, annual budget of Her Majesty's Government---the whole thing? (That's another strength of your system: I am assuming that, by being the equivalent of an actual confidence vote in the government (if I understand your explanation correctly) it can be sort-of forced through. Unlike in the United States, where, due to the Constitution not being 100% clear on the process, the Prez and the Congress crossed swords on the annual operating budget while the American People (including millions of federal civil servants) patiently awaited the outcome.

OK...you have my permission to take a breather from Hacker-questions after answering those. Promise I'll sit back and listen for a while, after that.

JimHackerMP wrote:I hope I am not trying your patience with another crap-ton of Hacker questions. You'd think someone whose screen name refers to the Rt. Hon. James Hacker, M.P. would know this already, right? Being a poli sci junkie, I've actually started to write this stuff down in a Word file I keep handy.

Phew! you don't ask much do you?

Speaking of being a poli sci junkie, I have a confession to make (if I haven't already said this before): I find my own country's politics terribly boring compared to those the UK and other places abroad. Naturally, I'd rather have my Congress than your Parliament (not without certain caveats of course [cough]), but to me, the latter is considerably more exciting than the former. And anybody who does not believe me, well, watch C-SPAN some time; but keep a firearm of some sort handy.

Well, I'd rather we had something more like German politics. They have a more federal system than we do, but not as much as the US. They have a proportional system of sorts, but it usually results in a clear outcome. And the major parties will work together when they need to.

And I think I understand what you mean. You cannot always target areas efficiently unless your "margins" are in the right places, right?

Well, yes. Usually it's considered all seats where the margin is less than about 5% (eg: winner on 42%, second place on 37%), and then parties will target those on the further edge of that as gains.

How many (if you don't know that's fine) seats in the Commons are "safe" seats versus those that aren't? It would also be interesting to know what the incumbency rate is in the Commons. In the HoR---an appropriate abbreviation don't you think? ---it's greater than 90% if you believe Wikipedia. (I think I do in this case.)

Because you have elections every 2 years, it's more likely that you will have the same people from term to term - we will have higher turnover between elections due to resignation, death, age etc over a 4-5 year period.

I've not actually found a figure, to be honest. I would say that in normal election years, about half of all Commons seats are safe enough to be predicted long before the election, and don't change hands. Our Electoral Reform Society said there were about 364 this year. http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/safe-seat (but that was before the election).

The SNP surge meant that there were no safe seats in Scotland (and the ERS did not list any non-SNP seats as Safe in the above).

There are some seats that have not changed hands for over 120 years. They are pretty much all Tory seats (which is because they were around continuously, while Labour only came along later and the Liberals collapsed to a handful of seats before coming back). Shropshire North has been Tory/Conservative since about 1835, and goes back to the days of Robert Peel and his "Tamworth Manifesto", which was pretty much the start of the formation of a formal Conservative Party with a unified platform.

BTW when you Britons say "marginals" or "marginal constituencies"; is that the British equivalent of what us Yanks call a "swing seat"?

Yes.

Yes, I am familiar with the "trading places" between Labour and Liberal in the early XX Century. David Lloyd George was a Liberal, I understand. BTW, wasn't the "Liberal Party" originally the "Whig Party"?

Sort of.

The Tories pretty much became the Conservatives.

The Whigs were joined over the 19thC by other anti-Tory forces, free-market Liberals (the Peelites, who had supported ex-PM Robert Peel and broke away from the Conservatives in the 1840s) and Radicals. The three groups coalesced into the Liberal Party in the 1850s, although the Whigs and Radicals had been working together before then. It was led by Whig Lords for a few years, before Gladstone (a Peelite) took over and it had the more modern leadership from the Commons.

and UKIP have just taken control of Thanet council.

Speaking of the councils, how much power do they have? And what is their proper sphere of authority vis-a-vis that of Westminster? If that's too complicated to get into, never mind.

It's complicated more by the fact that there are essentially four types of council, and the devolved regional/national assemblies. I have already gone through this before on another thread, I'm sure, but if you copy this into your crib note this time (and Wikipedia is fairly accurate):

A) Devolved parliaments/Assemblies (Scotland, Wales, NI, London)
They have varying powers, with London being the weakest and Scotland/NI being perhaps the strongest. Apart from London, they run their own parts of the NHS, and also set policy on education, agriculture, justice (not Wales), and can pass laws within limits. London has power over policing, transport, etc but under a directly elected Mayor who is the Executive to the Mayor's Legislature

B1) County Councils
These cover most of the land in England, but not the population. They run education (although increasingly the equivalent of "charter schools" is eroding that), social services including care, local roads and transport, fire services. They get about 75-80% of local taxes.

C) Borough/District Councils
Where there are County Councils, you get these as the next tier down. They get about 10% of local taxes (where is the rest? The Police Authorities, which are the same size or larger than counties, and are separately run). They look after planning, licensing, leisure facilities and public housing (if they have any left).

B2) Unitary Councils/Metropolitan Boroughs
These have the same powers as Counties and Boroughs combined. These are either city-based (like the 32 London boroughs, or the cities of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds etc). Their 'counties' were abolished in the 1980s. A second wave came about in the 1990s where some shire counties split up, usually with the main towns getting their own council and large rural authorities for the rest.

In most of England, Counties and Unitaries are one step below Parliament. In London, Scotland, Wales & NI, they are one step below the devolved assemblies.

D) In some places, you also get small Parish Councils or Town Councils, these have no real political power - they get to be consulted on planning matters, and they usually own and run things like local parks/commons, allotments, maybe the streetlights. There will be a small additional amount on the local taxes to pay for them - sometimes they manage to put in bills of zero.

Where I live, we don't have a Parish council and the town is too big to have a Town council. The rest of the borough is split into dozens of parishes (a few of which are or contain suburbs of the town). But for me the first level of local government is Rugby Borough Council.

Rugby is one of five boroughs in Warwickshire, which has it's own County Council. Warwickshire is unusual in that it has a Police Authority that only covers one county (although I think as it is working closely with neighbouring West Mercia (which covers Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire that may change) - our police Authorities used to be run by nominated councillors from councils across their area, now they each have a directly elected Commissioner.

Nearby is Coventry. This is a Unitary Authority. It's also part of what used to be the County of the West Midlands, and along with Birmingham, the Black Country Towns and a few other places, combines with them to do things like issue a combined concession scheme on public transport. It is being suggested (and is being trialled in Greater Manchester, a similar area to the West Midlands) that power could be devolved to them. for things like running the local NHS.

Now, the other thing is Mayors. Most Mayors do not have any power, they are just the chair of the council meetings (like the Speaker of the House of Commons) and go around in a big gold chain and silly hat opening garden fetes.

But at about the same time as the London Mayor was created, so was the chance for Borough/Unitary councils to have directly elected mayors along similar lines - an executive to the council's legislature. They have to have a referendum to get one, and of 51 referendums, with 19 mayors being set up (and 2 revoked by referendum). Usually they are from one of the main parties, but there are several independent mayors. One just got chucked out of his job for breaking electoral laws.

the "Vote X get Y" factor. In Thanet South, and apparently in a lot of places, right-leaning UKIP supporters who previously voted Tory were concerned that if they voted UKIP, Labour might win. Basically, this is tactical voting.

This does actually happen any time a popular(ish) third party or independent candidate runs for congress or a state legislature--they really end up throwing the election to the Democrat when the Republican would have otherwise won, and vice-verse. Of course, that's a majority 2-party system...but if I understand you correctly, same principle, right?

It can do. Sometimes the Independent or Third Party candidate wins:

Martin Bell won Tatton in 1997 as an Independent [special circumstances, the seat was a Safe Tory seat and the incumbent has been caught taking money for asking questions in the House. The other parties stood aside and he won. He stood down in 2001 and was replaced by the now-Chancellor George Osborne]

Dr Richard Taylor won Wyre Forest in 2001. It had swapped from Conservative to Labour in 1997, but Taylor stood for Kidderminster Hospital Health Concern, a local group angry at the moving of acute services from their hospital. From nowhere he took the seat and KHHC gained seats on local councils. He lost his seat in 2010 to the Tories, and came 4th this year.

George Galloway, who you may have seen on C-Span when he faced a committee under Norm Coleman on the Oil-For-Food affair, did it twice. He was already a Labour MP from a Glasgow constituency, but was expelled in 2003 for bringing the party into disrepute. So he formed his own party, Respect. First in 2005 in the London seat of Bethnal Green & Bow he beat the Labour incumbent Oona King. He lost in his bid to stay on in the redistricted Poplar & Limehouse in 2010. But in 2012 he came back in a byelection in Bradford West. He lost that last week, thankfully. In both cases it was a "safe" Labour seat with a significant Muslim population from the Indian subcontinent, and he allied with anti-Iraq War Muslims and the hard left.

Before all that though, there is a good example of a party breaking through rather than just splitting the vote. In the 1980s the Tories and Labour were dominant.

The Liberals had started to come back after the 1950s nadir but still only had about a dozen seats on 20% of the vote in the 1974 and 1979 elections

But after the 1970s Labour government collapsed there was a lot of bitter division in the part between the right and left. Michael Foot became leader and was from the left. So a few MPs resigned to form their own party, the Social Democratic Party - a more centrist party. At one point they had . They formed an electoral alliance with the Liberals (they had a common platform and agreed which party would stand in each place. The SDP started to win a few byelections, and gathered nearly 20 MPs (mainly defectors from Labour) who worked with the Liberals. In the 1983 General Election, the SDP had 6 MPs, the Liberals 17, giving the combined alliance 23 MPs - the largest third party force in Parliament since

No. Often the government will ignore the conference on issues, let alone individual MPs. During the coalition, they would have had to do that to pass bills with both parties to support them. And Labour has for a long time had form in ignoring Conference.

So where & when does the party come up with its "official" platform, which the party leaders via their party whips vigorously enforce on their fellow MPs in the party? And whose responsibility is it to determine the party's official platform, to which the MP's are bound via the whip system you described?

Well, generally ho it works is like this (with varying degrees of internal democracy):

There will be policy forums and collation over time. The results of which will provide items to be discussed and agreed at Conference, which is usually supposed to be binding (in the Labour constitution is is binding, but in reality not so much - and they use ambiguous and general language nowadays).

In the build up to the election, the center of the parties will draw up a manifesto, which is the list of things they would to if they get a majority government. Sometimes things will be presented as 'aspirational' or long term.

MPs are subject to whipping by their party, which is organised by the Parliamentary leadership rather than the party at large.

OK, so who is/are the "parliamentary leadership", as contra-distinguished from the "party at large"?

The party at large are all members. The Parliamentary Party is all MPs. The Parliamentary leadership is the MPs elected to the front benches.

In theory, breaking the 3LW is grounds for expulsion from the parliamentary group ("having the whip withdrawn") or even the party itself.

(The following is not a spoiler this time. My profound apologies again for that slip last time we were discussing this TV series.) In the beginning of the first episode of The House of Cards (BBC, not Kevin Spacey), this MP gets caught trying to pick up a hooker. Chief Whip Francis Urqhart, M.P. tells him: I heard a nasty little rumour today [MP's name]; I heard you were going to abstain on the 2nd reading of the Environment Bill.....DON'T!!!! Wow. Urqhart was obviously correct when he said earlier: I'm just the Chief Whip...I put a bit of stick about...make them jump! If President Kennedy said that "sometimes, party loyalty asks a bit much," it would be my guess that party whips in the United States, particularly many of the state legislatures, spend most of their time twiddling their thumbs and watching internet porn, and do very little actual whipping. (Except for the aforementioned internet porn, perhaps.)

Well yes. Urquhart is a fictionalised and extreme version, but Michael Dobbs was a Tory MP and knew what the Whips did: collect "reasons" to put to MPs to toe the line.

In other words, it's usually the actual, annual budget of Her Majesty's Government---the whole thing? (That's another strength of your system: I am assuming that, by being the equivalent of an actual confidence vote in the government (if I understand your explanation correctly) it can be sort-of forced through. Unlike in the United States, where, due to the Constitution not being 100% clear on the process, the Prez and the Congress crossed swords on the annual operating budget while the American People (including millions of federal civil servants) patiently awaited the outcome.

Yes.

OK...you have my permission to take a breather from Hacker-questions after answering those. Promise I'll sit back and listen for a while, after that.

ta.

George Galloway, who you may have seen on C-Span when he faced a committee under Norm Coleman on the Oil-For-Food affair, did it twice. He was already a Labour MP from a Glasgow constituency, but was expelled in 2003 for bringing the party into disrepute. So he formed his own party, Respect. First in 2005 in the London seat of Bethnal Green & Bow he beat the Labour incumbent Oona King. He lost in his bid to stay on in the redistricted Poplar & Limehouse in 2010. But in 2012 he came back in a byelection in Bradford West. He lost that last week, thankfully.

My biggest regret from election night is that I staggered up to my bed before getting the chance to see Galloway lose. I gave it a damn good shot, but once it got past 5am I was done for and they were still doing that damned recount.

What an odious lowlife that man is. He claims to be a socialist and yet he's essentially made a seamless transition from being Saddam Hussain's paid shill in Parliament* to being Britain's foremost Islamic fundamentalist, all the while being a fat white man from Glasgow.

*For the benefit of Hacker, George Galloway was an open supporter of Saddam back when he was still in power. He appeared on Iraqi TV at an audience with Saddam in which he uttered the immortal line "Sir, I salute your courage, and your indefatigability". More to the point, he also took large sums of money from the Iraqi government in order to campaign against the sanctions regime. Since then he's set him himself up as Britain's best known 'anti war' campaigner, aligned himself with all of the worst elements of the Islamist movement and spouted a lot of crap which is borderline anti-semitic (although I have to be careful here because he's known to be very litigious). He is (or thankfully was) easily the most odious man in Parliament and I was very much looking forward to see him lose.

Oh, I agree with you there. In a sense, given the overall result, I'm not too disappointed by Balls losing his seat either. Or Jim Murphy.

As the thread is based on the conferences from over 6 months ago, perhaps we need one about the post-election situation.

I see that the Tories are moving fast - pushing forward those bills that were blocked by the Lib Dems by the look of it.

Yes, it looks that way. Move quickly to capitalise on the no doubt brief honeymoon period that will follow re-election and the fact that Labour and the Lib Dems are both in the throes of leadership elections. I was initially surprised about how few changes Cameron had made to the composition of the cabinet, but I guess it makes sense from that perspective.

The one that I'm most interested to see is the scrapping of the Human Rights Act. Not before time says this immigration caseworker, but nevertheless it's fraught with potential complications and I remain sceptical about whether Gove can pull it off.

Sassenach wrote:Yes, it looks that way. Move quickly to capitalise on the no doubt brief honeymoon period that will follow re-election and the fact that Labour and the Lib Dems are both in the throes of leadership elections. I was initially surprised about how few changes Cameron had made to the composition of the cabinet, but I guess it makes sense from that perspective.

Makes sense to me. Keep most people in place, replace the exiting Lib Dems with those who deserve a reward, cover both wings of the party, and set some of them tasks to make change very quickly - the quicker it's done, the harder it is to undo.

The one that I'm most interested to see is the scrapping of the Human Rights Act. Not before time says this immigration caseworker, but nevertheless it's fraught with potential complications and I remain sceptical about whether Gove can pull it off.

Well, I think he'll find that the mythical Blob is not quite the same kind of adversary as lawyers. While he had an interest in education he managed to mess a few things up. He has not got any legal experience that I am aware of, which means he will be very reliant on advice.

And I'm not sure that coming out of the HRA would be the godsend you seem to think it is. All it really does is to bake in the ECHR to our law. Undoing that causes a problem because any cases already heard in English courts are now part of Common Law. And we are still subject to the ECHR, having written the thing, been the first nation to sign it and presumably even if we do leave the EU (which Cameron does not want) we want to remain in the Council of Europe.

So the UK can still be taken to the ECHR (more so, because the Supreme Court won't be recognised by the ECHR if it does not cover it), ECHR cases will still have an impact on our laws, and whatever revisions are put into a "Bill of Rights" they can't erode our rights as residents and citizens.

It's a lovely populist policy, clearly one that hits the mark with you, but frankly it's a retrograde step. Most of the 'controverstial' decisions would be less of a concern if the UK government could write laws properly or consider things between two extremes:

eg: voting rights for prisoners. The decision does not mean that all prisoners have to have voting rights, just that the application of a blanket ban on all prisoners is not fair. Another ruling also said that some life prisoners did not automatically have a right to vote. So the line can be drawn somewhere in between quite easily. Such as:

Anyone who has less than x days of a sentence, and who is not serving for electoral fraud can vote, the rest cannot.

Simple.

But no, our government had to dig in, and the press had to jump up and down about murderers getting the vote, and we look like a nation of spoilt kids.

On immigration, well, they may be foreign, but they are still human and the whole point of the ECHR is that all humans are entitled to the same basic rights. A lot of the issues are really about how the law and the process treats people and manages to fail.

I didn't say it would be a godsend and I'm aware of the difficulties. I still believe that abolition of the HRA is a necessary step though.

The problem is not really with the European court as such, it's with British judges and their interpretation of the ECHR, which often goes way beyond the European jurisprudence and which is steadily turning the whole concept of 'human rights' into something the wider public treats with contempt. A couple of weeks ago there was a ruling in the Upper Tier Tribunal that a Libyan man with over 50 criminal convictions could not be deported because he was an alcoholic and alcohol is illegal in Libya. This, according to a senior British judge, would have constituted an infringement of his right to private life. Rulings like this completely undermine the very notion of universal human rights. We need a way to rein these judges in, and current arrangements are not doing it.

The ECHR didn't used to be such a problem until it was incorporated into British law. Prior to that people could still appeal to the court in Strasbourg if they felt that immigration decisions had seriously infringed their rights but because of the difficulty and expense of doing so, it only happened in serious cases that warranted it. Once we brought it into law it opened up the floodgates and now there are tens of thousands of utterly spurious human rights claims in the system at any given moment. Immigration cases account for approximately 70% of all judicial review applications, mostly because they're used as a cheap way of frustrating removal, and a vast industry of crooked shysters has mushroomed in the legal profession specialising in abuse of the human rights procedures.

Now granted, it's not immediately obvious that replacing the HRA with a British bill of rights would necessarily improve things to any significant extent, but I think it's worth a try. By repatriating human rights we allow the will of Parliament to be more easily convoyed to the judiciary, who would no longer be free to ride roughshod over it to the extent that they currently do. I think in the long run it would be beneficial for the very concept of human rights as well. If we carry on as we are then public confidence will completely collapse. Do you really want that ?

Sassenach wrote:I didn't say it would be a godsend and I'm aware of the difficulties. I still believe that abolition of the HRA is a necessary step though.

The question is what will replace it. Apparently they are already on draft number seven and no sight of it for the public.

The problem is not really with the European court as such, it's with British judges and their interpretation of the ECHR, which often goes way beyond the European jurisprudence and which is steadily turning the whole concept of 'human rights' into something the wider public treats with contempt. A couple of weeks ago there was a ruling in the Upper Tier Tribunal that a Libyan man with over 50 criminal convictions could not be deported because he was an alcoholic and alcohol is illegal in Libya. This, according to a senior British judge, would have constituted an infringement of his right to private life. Rulings like this completely undermine the very notion of universal human rights. We need a way to rein these judges in, and current arrangements are not doing it.

Actually, your reading of the case (perhaps just of the reports of the case) is incorrect.

The appeal was raised on the grounds of both Article 3 (cruel and degrading treatment) and Article 8 (private life). However, the final Tribunal only really considered the detail on Article 3, because if that is upheld then a breach of Article 8 is likely to follow. Which it did.

You can read the actual decision here,DA/02122/2013 Tribunal Decision

The initial reason for upholding was:

Jonathan Perkins, Judge of the Upper Tribunal wrote:20. This is not a case of a person having cynically having a drink of alcohol to make himself irremovable. Rather it is a case of a person who faces a real risk of unlawful detention in conditions that either are or are close to being internationally unacceptable with the added risk of unacceptably savage corporal punishment.
21. It follows that on reflection I do not agree that the Tribunal erred in any way by not addressing specifically the question of whether the appellant could avoid the problem by abstaining. Its conclusion that he would not avoid the risk because he is an addict was reasoned and open to it.
22. It follows therefore that I see no error of law in the decision to allow the appeal on Article 3 grounds.

I think it is the misrepresentation of the outcomes of such cases that undermines public trust.

The ECHR didn't used to be such a problem until it was incorporated into British law. Prior to that people could still appeal to the court in Strasbourg if they felt that immigration decisions had seriously infringed their rights but because of the difficulty and expense of doing so, it only happened in serious cases that warranted it. Once we brought it into law it opened up the floodgates and now there are tens of thousands of utterly spurious human rights claims in the system at any given moment. Immigration cases account for approximately 70% of all judicial review applications, mostly because they're used as a cheap way of frustrating removal, and a vast industry of crooked shysters has mushroomed in the legal profession specialising in abuse of the human rights procedures.

On the other hand, there are genuine cases in there that would not perhaps have been raised because of the costs and difficulty before the HRA came in. As frustrating as it is, I'd rather see justice extended for those few, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Now granted, it's not immediately obvious that replacing the HRA with a British bill of rights would necessarily improve things to any significant extent, but I think it's worth a try. By repatriating human rights we allow the will of Parliament to be more easily convoyed to the judiciary, who would no longer be free to ride roughshod over it to the extent that they currently do. I think in the long run it would be beneficial for the very concept of human rights as well. If we carry on as we are then public confidence will completely collapse. Do you really want that ?

"repatriating" out of the UK judicial system and back to the ECHR.

What you seem to be calling for is a less independent Judiciary. I don't really want the "Will of Parliament" to be supreme. In this sense, the Americans have it right to avoid one leg of government too much power.

The question is what will replace it. Apparently they are already on draft number seven and no sight of it for the public.

Yes, this is a problem. I suspect it will be too thorny a problem for Michael Gove to solve, not least due to the complications of the devolution settlement. It's right to make the effort though.

The appeal was raised on the grounds of both Article 3 (cruel and degrading treatment) and Article 8 (private life). However, the final Tribunal only really considered the detail on Article 3, because if that is upheld then a breach of Article 8 is likely to follow. Which it did.

Fine. It's still a ridiculous decision even on Article 3 grounds. In effect this ruling states that the rights of an alcoholic one-man crimewave supersede the rights of wider society to be protected from him by virtue of the fact that he's an alcoholic one-man crimewave. It's intuitively absurd and not at all in keeping with the intention of the drafters of the ECHR. We see judgements like this regularly, albeit not all so gratuitously crazy as this one.

I think it is the misrepresentation of the outcomes of such cases that undermines public trust.

There really isn't any way that you could represent some of these cases that the public would understand. When they see terrorists who have absolutely no respect for the human rights of others abusing human rights legislation in order to frustrate removal the general public feel a sense of anger which undermines the whole concept of human rights in the first place. Likewise when you see serious and habitual criminals evading the consequences of their actions by getting somebody pregnant. I realise that this is a huge grey area and open to interpretation in various ways, but nevertheless it's commonplace in my profession to come across cases whereby serious criminals can never be removed from the UK because they once fathered a child here with a British citizen who they're no longer in a relationship with but still maintain a tenuous connection with the child by seeing them once a month. This kind of thing is a mandatory grant on Article 8 family life grounds thanks to jurisprudence established mostly in the British courts through an overly strict interpretation the ECHR and which can never be overridden by Parliament because judges feel empowered to completely ignore any legislation that is passed in this field. You may remember the well known story of the Iraqi man who killed a young girl through dangerous driving but managed to avoid removal because in the period between his release from prison and us finally getting round to trying to remove him he'd gotten somebody pregnant.

What most ordinary people think, and I agree with them, is that there should be a better balance between the Article 8 rights of the individual and the rights of wider society to be protected from the actions of those individuals. Current jurisprudence has evolved in such a way as to skew the balance too heavily in one direction, and this is a dangerous development which could have very unpleasant consequences if allowed to continue. We can't afford for the term 'human rights' to become a term of derision like 'political correctness', but it's heading that way.

On the other hand, there are genuine cases in there that would not perhaps have been raised because of the costs and difficulty before the HRA came in. As frustrating as it is, I'd rather see justice extended for those few, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The proposal is not to simply revoke the HRA and leave nothing in its place. The idea would be to replace it with a narrower but still fairly comprehensive bill of rights which would open up the recourse to law for those who felt their rights had been infringed. It would just (hopefully) allow for some of the more egregious examples of judicial drift away from the intent of the drafters to be superseded and restore public trust. I agree that this will be easier said than done though.

What you seem to be calling for is a less independent Judiciary. I don't really want the "Will of Parliament" to be supreme. In this sense, the Americans have it right to avoid one leg of government too much power.

Parliament passes a law and then it's up to the judiciary to enforce and to some extent interpret it. As it stands the ludiciary are free to completely override the will of Parliament by reference to a higher court, and they're doing so in ways which are damaging and which need to be curtailed.