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March 27, 2006
‘The primacy of the Commons’
With renewed interest in the reform of the House of Lords, the catch phrase of the week seems to be the ‘primacy of the Commons’. Blair, Brown, Kenneth Clarke and probably a number of others have referred to it in recent days.
Members of the House of Commons are determined to maintain the power of the Commons, i.e. their own power. They have the difficulty of trying to reform the Lords (in a seemingly democratic way) and at the same time making it subservient.
However for those of us who are not in the Commons, ‘primacy’ is not an issue. We just want effective democractic institutions. The relative power of an elected lower house vis-à-vis an elected upper house is not a problem. Indeed it seems entirely natural that an elected upper house should become more powerful than an unreformed, unelected, and basically corrupt assembly.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4848618.stm
Posted by Simon Holledge at March 27, 2006 11:46 AM
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