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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday September 13 2017, @07:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the returning-sovereignty-to-parliament dept.

A controversial motion that will grant the government the power to force through Brexit legislation has been passed.

[...] It means the Conservatives, despite not winning a majority at the general election, will take control of a powerful Commons committee, and grant themselves the power to force through legislation without it being voted on or debated in parliament.

With parliament needing to change, amend or import wholesale thousands of laws and regulation to prepare the UK for its exit from the European Union, the EU Withdrawal Bill has been designed to allow for new laws and regulations to be passed via controversial legislative device called a statutory instrument, which are debated in tiny standing committees.

But the government has now voted to give itself a majority on the little known Committee of Selection, which decides the make up of those committees, and in so doing has seized control of the whole process.

[...] Liberal Democrat Chief Whip Alistair Carmichael commented: "This is a sinister power grab by an increasingly authoritarian Prime Minister.

"The Tories didn't win a majority at the election, but are now hijacking Parliament to try and impose their extreme Brexit on the country.

"It is a bitter irony that Brexiteers who spent their careers championing parliamentary sovereignty have now chosen to sell it down the river.

Source: The Independent


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by choose another one on Wednesday September 13 2017, @10:57AM (7 children)

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 13 2017, @10:57AM (#567166)

    > As far as I'm concerned, anything outside 60-40 minimum should be subject to a re-vote or - if it starts to cause voter fatigue - continuation of the status quo.

    Remind me when we voted 60-40 minimum for the Maastricht treaty, or Lisbon for that matter?

    If the pre-Maastricht status quo (roughly, the "Common Market" not the EU) was on offer in the referendum, it would probably have won (bigly).

    Maastricht treaty was major economic and political change, and yet was approved by France with only 50.8% of their referendum vote. Can't have it both ways, if countries can go in for major change on 50.8% of the vote, they can clearly reverse out on 52%.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Wednesday September 13 2017, @11:19AM (6 children)

    by ledow (5567) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @11:19AM (#567172) Homepage

    I'm not "either way", let alone "both ways".

    The vote should be both necessary and definitive or it's really just a waste of time.

    I'm a mathematician. Voting sucks. All voting sucks. I have many reasons for this, but though 50.000000001% may be a technical majority it should not be enough to act upon - for or against.

    I'd even contest that ALL elections should be run twice with the wording negated on the second run. If you can't get a consistent sizeable (10% will do) majority on the question when you word it the other way, it means people didn't know what they were voting for, didn't understand the question, don't care (a consequence of legally-required voting in some countries, without a "I turned up to vote as legally required but I don't want to vote for any of the above" option), or don't feel strongly enough that they can organise a campaign to convince others.

    25% of Americans believe the Sun goes around the Earth, but 50.1% of the populous is enough to decide to join / pull out of a complex economic market? I don't buy it.

    If you put out a vote to "remove all opposition party representatives from Parliament" and it gets 50.1% of the vote (which is incredibly likely in any two-party system), does that make it democratic? No.

    Don't even get me started on ministerial / presidential elections with constituency boundaries that play a role.

    Even Master of Orion understood this. 2/3rds majority or nothing happens.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by turgid on Wednesday September 13 2017, @12:10PM

      by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 13 2017, @12:10PM (#567188) Journal

      Stop talking sense. You're on the Intertubes now, sonny.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by choose another one on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:18PM (4 children)

      by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:18PM (#567206)

      > 2/3rds majority or nothing happens.

      I agree, but that isn't the way it currently works. Who gets to decide _when_ we move the goalposts?

      If you look at the history of EU referenda a lot were decided by less than 2/3 majority, and some with similar margin to Brexit. If we seek to undo Brexit on the basis that it was 2/3 what do we also undo?

      - Greenland back in (went out with 53%)
      - But Denmark (and hence Greenland I think?) is out anyway - went in in 1973 with only 63%
      - Single european act is gone (denmark fails to ratify with only 56%)
      - Maastricht is gone - Denmark (56.7%) and France (50.8%) fail to ratify, but then Denmark never joined, see above, without that we probably never get TCE (rejected) or Lisbon - Lisbon would have failed in multiple member states anyway, if put to the vote
      - Finland (56.9%) and Sweden (52.3%) are out - failed to join in 1995

      And so on. Under your rules the EU in it's current state, and much of what the Brexiters disagree with, wouldn't exist - it simply wouldn't be there to Brexit from.

      If we accept that Maastricht is approved and Sweden and Finland are EU members, then we also have to accept the Brexit result.

      • (Score: 5, Touché) by PiMuNu on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:42PM (1 child)

        by PiMuNu (3823) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:42PM (#567217)

        We were wrong in the past so let's keep being wrong otherwise it's unfair!

        • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:02AM

          by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:02AM (#567686)

          Democracy is not about the decision being wrong or right, it is about how you make the decision.

          Saying you only need >50% to make a decision one way but >2/3 to reverse it is a pretty weird democracy.

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday September 13 2017, @02:24PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @02:24PM (#567230)

        One possible solution - the same act that moves the goalposts also includes an "automatic sunset clause" for all acts in the last X years that wouldn't have passed according to the new standards: After Y years all sunsetted acts that haven't been reconfirmed under the new standards get repealed.

      • (Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday September 13 2017, @03:17PM

        by ledow (5567) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @03:17PM (#567243) Homepage

        Taking the votes as-were under different rules and then just extrapolating blindly isn't fair either.

        If, say, Denmark didn't get in because it would need a 2/3rds majority, would it stay out for ever more since 1973? No. They'd re-vote in the time between if they cared.

        If they knew you needed 2/3rds majority, they'd campaign harder and put across sensible cases (something which was at least partly responsible for Brexit which largely felt like an accidental vote!).

        And maybe limiting members would actually have worked for us too... can Greece get in/stay in? Can the former Russian states? Turkey? If they required 2/3rds majority in their own country to apply and 2/3rds majority to be accepted, maybe they wouldn't be in either and it would be a bit more stable today.

        What-if's that assume nothing else would ever change in 44 years in between are largely just useless.