http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/may ... hts-reform

I see your old mucker David Davis has issues with HRA repeaL, Sass.

Yes, I saw that. He also has issues with the HRA of course, it's just that he's wary of unilateral withdrawal from the ECHR.

I suspect this will prove to be too difficult to manage with a majority of only 12. If 7 Tories rebel then it could be curtains for the legislation. That said, Cameron made a shrewd move appointing Dominic Raab to the MoJ. He's DD's protege in the party and very much from that same philosophical wing, while also being pretty well respected. If anybody can manage to pilot this through then he can.

More likely that Cameron will just drop it though. This was always intended as legislative ballast which could be thrown overboard as part of the coalition negotiations. Since there haven't been any negotiations then it's obviously incumbent on the Tories to push on with it, and rightly so, but Cameron is not exactly a man of iron principles and he'll happily drop it at the first sign of trouble.

Sassenach wrote:Yes, I saw that. He also has issues with the HRA of course, it's just that he's wary of unilateral withdrawal from the ECHR.

I suspect this will prove to be too difficult to manage with a majority of only 12. If 7 Tories rebel then it could be curtains for the legislation. That said, Cameron made a shrewd move appointing Dominic Raab to the MoJ. He's DD's protege in the party and very much from that same philosophical wing, while also being pretty well respected. If anybody can manage to pilot this through then he can.

I wonder. Putting Gove in as Justice Secretary becomes an even more interesting choice now.

More likely that Cameron will just drop it though. This was always intended as legislative ballast which could be thrown overboard as part of the coalition negotiations. Since there haven't been any negotiations then it's obviously incumbent on the Tories to push on with it, and rightly so, but Cameron is not exactly a man of iron principles and he'll happily drop it at the first sign of trouble.

Maybe he will, but that will create issues with his other backbenchers. If that was the case, why promise to steer it through in 100 days? Better to just say it was still on the agenda and quietly drop it later (during an EU referendum, perhaps?). He may be weak, but is he that strategically flawed? Maybe he overestimates his powers given the recent win.

another question for my electronic notebook on HMG/the UK:

I think you said there's, what, 21 ministers including the Prime Minister himself? And these "secretaries of state" have the power to "vote" to approve things in Cabinet? (Though the vote is binding on all as a consensus, right?) Or am I wrong about that.

At least, I counted 21 so far, who aren't marked "attends cabinet also" on the website.

I was disappointed to find out there isn't really a "Secretary of State for Administrative Affairs.

They have overall administrative control of their departments (although as you say, not all of them have a department). It's not really true to suggest that they all have an equal vote in Cabinet to decide on how the government is run though. Things are discussed in Cabinet but decisions are either taken at the departmental level or by the PM.

JimHackerMP wrote:another question for my electronic notebook on HMG/the UK:

I think you said there's, what, 21 ministers including the Prime Minister himself? And these "secretaries of state" have the power to "vote" to approve things in Cabinet? (Though the vote is binding on all as a consensus, right?) Or am I wrong about that.

At least, I counted 21 so far, who aren't marked "attends cabinet also" on the website.

Cabinet Ministers have their own powers to run their department and make decisions. And they delegate some to junior ministers in their Departments as well.

But major decisions, cross-departmental decisions, overall policy etc would take place at Cabinet. The convention is that decisions reached at cabinet are binding under "Cabinet Responsibility" - basically, if you can't agree with it after the decision has been made resign your post or hold your nose.

However, a PM does have a lot of power in practice. More that they can veto a policy they don't like, than that they can force through one that the rest of Cabinet thinks is mad. But of course as the PM chooses who is in Cabinet, and can sack & replace at will, they command a lot of loyalty. Only if they lose the confidence of a lot of colleagues (as happened with Thatcher, and for different reasons Blair), will that not work, and the PM gets replaced instead.

I was disappointed to find out there isn't really a "Secretary of State for Administrative Affairs.

Of course there isn't - they could not have gotten away with Yes, Minister had it related to a real department. Similarly the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship does not exist either, as in The Thick of It

Right...I was joking about being disappointed there's no Ministry of Administrative Affairs. It's obviously a metaphor for a bloated bureaucracy, which I believe is what the show Yes, Minister and its successor, Yes, Prime Minister, were attempting to attack; as well as the tug-of-war between the political "will" and the administrative "won't". Naturally a Ministry of Administrative Affairs---an entire ministry of administrators, administrating other administrators...well, we all get the point! (e.g., Department of Redundancy Department)

I figured (rightly) that you'd of course know my handle refers to The Rt. Hon. James Hacker, M.P., Her Majesty's Minister for Administrative Affairs in Yes, Minister and Prime Minister of the UK in Yes, Prime Minister (as the title implies). Both series rank as my favorite (forgive me, favourite) Britcoms of all time. (My second favourite Britcom is without a doubt Are You Being Served?) I have both Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister in a set of seven DVD's.

I knew it had to be a "consensus vote" (not literally "vote", and "consensus vote" is an oxymoron of course) for the exact reason(s) "Publius" warned of the dangers of a "plural executive" in The Federalist Papers, the ones having to do with the executive branch (written by Hamilton). If you have an executive council of some sort that "votes", well, that could be rather convulsive to the body politic, not to mention the general public. So I had already figured (as you just mentioned above) that cabinet government had to be run by consensus; and not by a numerically-counted or "contested" vote within it.

But with this in mind, how is this consensus reached? Does the PM informally ask for "a show of hands" before a final decision is reached? (I understand that juries sometimes take an informal "vote" to see where everybody stands, before coming to a consensus.)

I'm sorry if the question sounds a bit obtuse, I know that, while S. said that not only was he a member of a constituency party, but once shared a room with someone who's now a Junior Minister, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess he's never been privy to an actual meeting of the British Cabinet at Downing Street. I know Obama doesn't invite me to his, anymore....

I would imagine the decision to resign or to stay silent is a rather difficult one. I mean, if I were made something as prestigious as a senior minister (secretary of state you said they're styled), like the Chancellor [of the Exchequer] or the Foreign Secretary especially, would I have the courage to resign in protest and tell my story to the press if I felt the principle of the matter warranted it? I mean, it would not only likely mean a pay cut, it would probably be the last chance I'd ever get at something like that, at least within the time span of the same leader's Ministry...right? Possibly a powerful incentive for ministers to silently acquiesce, rather than to resign and go to the papers?

P.S.: I mentioned I put what you have informed me of in a Microsoft Word file. I've actually arranged it topically, in alphabetical order, no less. Yeah, that's what happens when you have way the hell too much time on your hands. WAY too much time on my hands. You're thinking I "need a hobby," but I guess that's one of them.

https://dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2 ... ights-act/

This is a fascinating article from the man who has just been recruited to begin setting up the 'No' campaign for the coming referendum. Having read it I'm also quite confident in saying that reform of the HRA is not going to happen:

Ps. 5 (added 27 May) The news today about this issue being delayed should be no surprise given the above. It strengthens my view that there is approximately zero chance of the core issues with the HRA being dealt with while Cameron is PM. Dre has made the Government look stupid by briefing around MG’s appointment that the Human Rights Act would be dealt with within ‘100 days’. Now that Dre is ‘coordinating domestic policy’, it is official that policy is a subset of crap spin in the No10 organogram and, free of Crosby’s discipline, Cameron is back to his familiar role as the nation’s UberPundit. For ten years the lobby has swallowed his spin on human rights. One advantage of today’s media car crash on this is that they may finally realise that Cameron has never had any intention of solving this problem. Self-described eurosceptics who believed him have no excuse for continuing self-delusion.

Ps. 7 Someone emails to say ‘why approximately zero?’ Because if, for example, a bomb goes off in London then the whole conventional wisdom will spin on its axis, people who gave self-important interviews about their determination to ‘protect civil liberties’ will give new self-important interviews saying ‘of course there must be sensible modifications’, polls will show >80% support for ditching the supremacy of Strasbourg etc. Precisely because Cameron has no principles, when he feels a gun is put to his head he can change his mind very fast. His party has been slow to understand this but something like a bomb would turn the debate upside down in hours. It is obviously impossible to quantify the probability of such an event (cf. the 2008 JASON study which I’ll dig out). Obviously changing such profound things in such circumstances is likely to lead to many errors particularly when a Prime Minister has no other model of behaviour than steering by the wind of the pundits.

Ps. 8 The Telegraph splash today (1 June 2015) says that Cameron has already ruled out leaving the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg court. No surprise. The No10 line that ‘Gove hasn’t made up his mind yet’ doesn’t make sense. Obviously only the prime minister can decide whether to withdraw from an international treaty, as removing the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg court requires. Gove’s job on the HRA is to punt it into the long grass then deliver a fudge that leaves Strasbourg in charge. The sensible thing for him to do is give this doomed project to a junior minister and focus on other priorities.

Very interesting man Dominic Cummings. You can see why he pissed off the PM and Theresa May, but he's one of the more perceptive writers about British politics.It's encouraging to see that all the major donors for the No campaign are getting their act together. Suspect old Nigel will be shunted to the sidelines for this one. UKIP are all well and good for by elections, but for a national campaign it would be a disaster if they took centre stage. Not much they can do though, because they're wholly reliant on a handful of donors who care deeply about maximising the chances of a No vote.

I think Cameron has miscalculated the risks of this referendum. It's quite obvious that he just wants to get it over with and that he'll take whatever meagre terms he can get, convince a few of his fellow Prime Ministers to pretend to kick up a fuss so they can hammer out a 'great' deal in last minute negotiations and then do his damnedest to make sure there's a Yes vote. At least half his party will never accept that and will line up in the No campaign. If, and it's a big if of course, UKIP can be sidelined for the duration of the campaign, it's quite possible that the No campaign could gain a lot of traction. If Labour were smart they'd hammer Cameron's deal as the sham it's sure to be and really try to capitalise politically. The problem is that this would logically mean giving support to the No campaign and I can't see any Labour leader wanting to do that

The coming referendum on EU membership/secession?

Secession is not really the appropriate term, but yes, that referendum.

Couldn't Britain be economically isolated by sece---excuse me, withdrawing---from the EU? Her European trade partners would essentially turn their backs on her? And, a few years later, if the People of the UK end up regretting it (maybe, maybe not, I wouldn't know) they could impose some pretty hefty conditions for readmission?

Couldn't Britain be economically isolated by sece---excuse me, withdrawing---from the EU? Her European trade partners would essentially turn their backs on her? And, a few years later, if the People of the UK end up regretting it (maybe, maybe not, I wouldn't know) they could impose some pretty hefty conditions for readmission?

This is the question that the referendum will inevitably come to be dominated by (just as the Scottish referendum was in a different way).

The answer to that, if we're being perfectly honest, is that nobody really knows. My own view is that the rest of the EU are unlikely to try and impose punitive trade sanctions. That would simply serve to spite themselves since Britain currently runs a very large trade deficit with the rest of the EU. Organisations can't always be relied upon to act rationally though, so I guess it's possible. You have to look at it across the broad range of possible costs and benefits to withdrawal. There would undoubtedly be costs to certain multinational companies which do a large volume of trade in Europe, but these represent a small proportion of British businesses. The effect upon these businesses needs to be set against the potential benefits to all businesses of a reduction in regulatory costs which would surely follow a withdrawal from the EU. Withdrawal would also allow Britain to take up a seat on the WTO, which would give real and direct influence in global trade negotiations and allow us to prioritise our own interests in those negotiations. There's no reason to suppose that we couldn't strike up independent free trade deals all over the world, and the resulting liberalisation in trade could end up being hugely beneficial.

I'm not really sure what 'isolation' really means in this context. Trade with Europe will still go on. Even if we remain in the EU there's a very good chance of us becoming isolated as power increasingly gets pulled into the Eurozone core and EU-wide decisions are made for the benefit of that core to the detriment of the periphery nations like Britain.

But anyway, for me the issue is not primarily a financial one. It's a question of basic democratic legitimacy, which the EU lacks and which its current trajectory is making an ever more distant dream.

Also, the passengers on those nice Eurostar trains between London and Paris would have to stop and ask for/stamp passports, wouldn't they? There'd be a "border" again, right?

There's a border anyway. Britain is not signed up to the Schengen agreement so we still have to pass through border checks when we travel to the Continent.

I doubt Labour will take a unified position. There are Eurosceptics in the party, and the leadership may well want to avoid too solid a link with the main "Yes" campaign.

But UKIP will refuse to be sidelined. If the "No" campaign does not let them in, they will run their own, after all that is their raisin d'etre.

Hacker - yes, we could well have issues as a lot of UK employers are internationals who have strong links in the EU. Of course, we would remain in the European Economic Area which has the same rules and standards (but with far less say), and so the impact may not be that bad. But there is a level of uncertainty. All of the companies I have worked for since I left university have been international with a presence in the EU (one was based in France), and so I have seen at various levels the value of a single market combined with common legislation.

In some ways we felt back in the 1970s that we had already been penalised for not joining at the start (although De Gaulle kept us out for a long time). In a sense the "rebate" was a part of that. If we had a change of heart after leaving, I can see it being hard to enter on the same terms we have now, let alone the ones Cameron may negotiate for his "Yes" proposal.