{"id":189147,"date":"2010-05-14T15:31:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-14T20:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/05\/14\/building-an-infrastructure-for-tyranny-in-the-uk\/"},"modified":"2010-05-14T15:31:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-14T20:31:00","slug":"building-an-infrastructure-for-tyranny-in-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/05\/14\/building-an-infrastructure-for-tyranny-in-the-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"Building an Infrastructure for Tyranny in the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the peculiarities of Great Britain is that they have no constitution, so they can change what should be inalienable rights with a law.<\/p>\n<p>A few years back, for example, they removed the right to remain silent in a criminal investigation, and so juries can now explicitly use non-testimony against the defendant.<\/p>\n<p>Well, as part of the coalition deal the Tories and the Lib-Dems, they intend to<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/13\/world\/europe\/13britain.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss\">set a fixed 5 year term for the parliament<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The current state of parliamentary terms is a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">maximum<\/span> of 5 years, but new elections can be called before then, and have to be called before then if there is a failure of a confidence vote.<\/p>\n<p>Well, Conservative David Cameron, Liberal-Democrat Nick Clegg have decided to go with a fixed term of 5 years, requiring at least a 55% vote of Parliament to dissolve the institution.<\/p>\n<p>It appears that this was done because <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/politics\/2010\/may\/12\/fixed-five-year-parliamentary-term\">Clegg is concerned about getting cut loose as soon as it is convenient for Cameron<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>While this is understandable it is a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">major<\/span> change in the way British governance works.<\/p>\n<p>In the US, with the exception of the (thankfully rare) impeachment, terms are fixed, and state actors are controlled by checks and balances from competing branches of government.<\/p>\n<p>This is not the case in a parliamentary system.  The Prime minister has <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">much<\/span> greater powers, particularly in the UK, where there is no formal constitution.<\/p>\n<p>What prevents excesses in government by the ruling party is the threat of government turnover at any time: the no-confidence vote can put the shoe on the other foot in <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">very<\/span> short order.<\/p>\n<p>If you remove that, you remove many of the constraints on the behavior of the executive.<\/p>\n<p>Clegg is being penny wise, and pound foolish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the peculiarities of Great Britain is that they have no constitution, so they can change what should be inalienable rights with a law. A few years back, for example, they removed the right to remain silent in a criminal investigation, and so juries can now explicitly use non-testimony against the defendant. Well, as &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,1000,984,1009],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-elections","category-europe","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}