this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Wait? Is the current political leader allowed to just change how votes are counted for the next election?! Is this why the Wikipedia article for how election in England work is just incomprehensible garbage?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Everything is eventually decided by the majority of votes in the house of commons. Even if you put a law in saying that the pm can't do this without a 80% vote, that law itself could be repealed with a 50% vote.

Theoretically it would only require a 50% vote to remove elections or something crazy. (Although in practice that might not get past the king who technically has the final say)

There is no formal constitution that has more protection like in some countries.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Can't they create a law which says that the PM cannot do something without 80% of the votes and that the law itself requires the same amount of votes to be modified or superseded in any way?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's been a while since my politics A level, so I may get some of the terms wrong but hopefully the facts right.

As the UK doesn't have a formal constitution, it relies on convention and that parliament is effectively all powerful (under the crown) in that if parliament (encompassing both houses in this context) votes for something it can do it. (As it represents the will of the people and has the authority of the crown (less relevant in the modern day))

Parliament can't therefore lock a decision in such a way that a future parliament can't change because the future parliament is still all powerful.

In practice though this isn't entirely the case. You can make a law like you said, and while a future parliament can break it, it would (probably) look bad on them. But what does that do to stop politicians?


A further note on the previous chain - we go have two houses of parliament; the house of commons is the main one with the green benches that most will recognise. It has our elected representatives (MPs) in and (normally) where the PM is selected from.

The house of lords (red benches, appointed members for life) is generally considered the check chamber. It used to be able to block laws entirely, but I believe lost that power semi recently and it can now be overruled by the commons after 2/3 rejections.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

But then parliament isn't all powerful, is it? See the omnipotence paradox:

A similar problem occurs when accessing legislative or parliamentary sovereignty, which holds a specific legal institution to be omnipotent in legal power, and in particular such an institution's ability to regulate itself.

And tbh, a parliament which cannot regulate itself is a fairly powerless parliament.

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