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Elected British MPs are also unable to resign.
To allow them to do so there is a "legal fiction" where they're appointed to an "office of profit". This disqualifies them from being an MP and triggers a by-election. These are unpaid positions with titles like "Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resignation_from_the_House_of_...
I'd say 'MPs have a rather ridiculous manner of tendering their resignations'. Potatoe, potatoe.
Unless someone can share an instance when an MP could not leave the House?
Since only two (or maybe three, I'm not 100% sure) of these positions exist, a mass resignation would be delayed by having to cycle people through the appointment and release of these figurative roles.
It also created a curious effect where a Sinn Fein MP (Gerry Adams), who like all Sinn Fein MPs never took his seat because he would not swear allegiance ot the crown, had to accept a crown job to resign, which David Cameron criticised him for (in rather poor form).
And there is nothing aside form precedent preventing a capricious government from stopping MPs from resigning by refusing to make such an appointment.
It's all fun and games having an unwritten messy constitution until a government exceeds its powers to e.g. prorogue parliament against its will and we have to wait months for a court to rule on it when a proper consitution would never have allowed such an act in the first place.
An insurrection like January 6th would suceed in the UK because there is so much arcane bullshit where our constitution should be, we are solely dependent on the good will and character of the current government to run things as they are meant to be run.
It doesn't in practice delay things much even with a fairly large group resigning at once -- in 1985 15 Ulster Unionist MPs resigned on the same day, and this was done by cycling between the two offices and spreading the appointments out through the day. So it's silly, but not actually a problem, which is why nobody's bothered to try to tidy it up.
Seems ripe for automation in this day & age. 15 per day, pff! I'm sure with the right cloud services and a well-engineered state machine we could get it up to over a 100. Should be just about enough to handle Tory members as election day approaches...
Or even before election day approaches - how many by elections are we on now?
Unlike what many people think, the UK has a written constitution in the form of various laws. However, Parliament (more specifically, the House of Commons) can in theory alter any of these laws at any time. Such is likely only in case it would further solidify Parliament's power and preeminence. Brexit is the last time it happened, when the perceived subordination to the EU was removed.
It's admittedly a messy state of affairs and many important processes are indeed defined and motivated by convention and tradition only. However, many of these traditions came about whenever the British were forced to deal with events or a constitutional crisis. For example, the monarch does not enter the Commons and Black Rod is admitted only after striking three times exactly because of such events.
January 6th is doomed in the UK for the same reasons it was doomed to fail in the USA: it was based on a flawed understanding how the government really works. The British would have doubtlessly dispensed with tradition and taken expedient measures, and those would become the new Tradition, regardless of whether it is subsequently embossed in Law or not.
Parliament, under the same theories, cannot alter any laws - parliament suggests laws to the monarch who grants them according to their caprices ...
Of course the monarchs rather like their position of power and the money they rob (it's only a threat of violence) from the taxpayer and so they don't rock the boat, even when they should (eg when a corrupt, lying PM asks them to please prorogue parliament in order to subvert democracy -- extraordinary prorogation being one of the few reserved powers).
The monarch is perfectly entitled to take a seat in the public gallery of HoC, just as they are entitled to vote, no court would ever deny them such rights as they really derive from shared freedoms given to all UK nationals. When the Tories take us out of ECHR they might lose those rights.
About the only good Mr Alexander Boris de Pfeffle Johnson was to demonstrate how we can no longer trust politicians to be honourable, and must reform our parliamentary system with an assumption that MPs are lying, cheating, thieving beings with utmost contempt for the electorate, the rule of law, and even the institutions of Westminster (buying silence with peerages and stuffing HoL with cronies, for example).
That we cannot, even now, have a general election is a despicable endorsement of the lack of actual democracy afforded to the British people.
Royal assent has not been unilaterally withheld by the monarch for more than 300 years. The role of the Monarch has been a ceremonial over for a very long time. Even if they wanted to rock on the boat now, the result would be uncertain.
Of course the Monarch can enter the visitor gallery, but, as you say, they would enter it as a citizen of the UK, not in their function as monarch.
I'd attribute the deficiencies of the UK's democratic system more to the first-past-the-post voting system, which causes government to be answerable to the winning coalition, not to the whole Parliament. Integrity in Parliament has been going downhill everywhere, not just in the UK.
It's less ceremonial than you think:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/series/queens-consent
The king is exempted from racial discrimination laws, for instance, and well into the 1970s it was their official and open policy that black and brown people were unfit for any position more exalted than cleaning the toilets:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/02/buckingham-p...
Everything you think you know about the monarchy in the UK is a carefully crafted fiction by expensive PR consultants, paid by the taxpayers to lobby against their interests.
> Parliament, under the same theories, cannot alter any laws - parliament suggests laws to the monarch who grants them according to their caprices ...
Wrong, under those theories, Parliament can absolutely alter laws (this requires, of course, royal assent, but the monarch is a component of Parliament not separate from it in theory, even aside from the fact that this function is now essentially ministerial in terms of its performance by the monarch in both practice and constitutional theory.)
> The monarch is ... entitled to vote, no court would ever deny them such rights as they really derive from shared freedoms given to all UK nationals.
You seem to be correct that the monarch is technically not barred from voting (although they don't and shouldn't), but the Lords are not entitled to vote, so I don't think the reason you give is correct.
Adams never accepted anything - Cameron's admin unilaterally appointed him to the post, which is why Erskine May was subsequently changed to specify Maps are appointed to, rather than accepting, the paid job. "Call me Dave" was making stuff up, as he was wont to do.
> An insurrection like January 6th would suceed in the UK
The US situation can't arise in the UK because they cut the three key roles up differently
In the US the Figurehead and Executive Leader are one man (the US President in this case Donald Trump) in the UK the Figurehead is the Monarch (ie today King Charles) and the Executive Leader is the Prime Minister, who is also Legislative Leader (and historically both these jobs are sometimes done by women). Both countries bizarrely assign multiple jobs with different required skill sets to the same person, which would be understandable if they were tiny nations with a small population but they aren't. However which roles are split this way is crucially different.
The problem on January 6th in the US is that the Executive Leader wants to destroy the Legislature. Yes his Secret Service persuades him not to accompany the insurrectionists, but they're doing what he told them to do.
That can't happen in the UK because the Executive Leader is the leader of the Legislature. If the Legislature don't think he should be leader, they can get rid of him, and not via some "arcane bullshit" but with almost the simplest possible motion,
"That This House Has No Confidence In His [or Her] Majesty's Government".
> An insurrection like January 6th would suceed in the UK because there is so much arcane bullshit where our constitution should be, we are solely dependent on the good will and character of the current government to run things as they are meant to be run.
The "arcane bullshit" is kind of irrelevant in both directions on this question; power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Same applies to the Jan 6th rioters. They seized the building but not the institution. They had no coordinated support network (although it was a spectacular achievement for opportunism) among Congress, or - critically - Trump himself. Nor had they bothered to secure sufficient police/military/paramilitary political support to turn holding a building into holding power.
As to whether it would succeed in the UK: this depends very much on "establishment" support. With that all sorts of things are possible, without it they aren't. The nearest might be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wilson_plot_allegations , none of which amounted to more than talk among a few people in a private room. (See fictionalisation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Very_British_Coup ).
Storming Parliament would be met with gunfire in the same way as Jan 6th was unless conspirators had bothered to secure the support of the security services beforehand. Conversely, it doesn't matter what the constitution might say if the security services aren't willing to back it up and decide to fire on demonstrators instead, Bloody Sunday passim.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/decision-of-the-supreme... : as we can see, it was illegal, but not in a way that matters. Parliament agreed to an election, and the public decided to endorse Johnson, the Conservative party, and all prior and subsequent misconduct; the rest is history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_el...
Apparently not since the 1840’s:
> The Chancellor may in theory deny an application, although the last time this happened was to Viscount Chelsea in 1842. In the debate over expelling the fugitive James Sadleir in 1856, the Government committed to refusing any potential application he would make.
From the Wikipedia article referenced above.
> Appointments to the House of Lords have long been a sore on the British body politic. In 1922 David Lloyd George was exposed for egregiously selling peerages in exchange for donations to the Liberal Party. The Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act followed in 1925, but the banning of such overtly corrupt practices didn’t restore complete confidence in appointments. A century later, Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list and the peers it created (or, in several cases, did not create) sparked another bout of introspection about who is worthy of a place on the red benches.
This skips the cash for honours scandal in the early 2000s[0].
It's definitely an article with a massive Tory slant. It doesn't really say why "it was no longer deemed possible for a member of the House of Lords to be prime minister" - because the political winds had been turned by Labour after Churchill, forcing modernity upon Westminster. And it treats Tony Benn as a footnote, when he was arguably the strongest proponent of such arguments even before his father died.
Hogg and Douglas-Home simply rode the coat-tails of a great man for base self-interest, and effectively reneged their commitments a few years later.
Tory slant how? Cash for honours was a Labour scandal.
The Tories engaged in similar practices, before and after that scandal. Literally every Tory treasurer ascends to the Lords, together with lots of party donors, and Boris Johnson even got in his chum Lebedev despite opposition from the security apparatus.
That's why that scandal is never mentioned nowadays: because things got even worse after 2010.
Which great man is that?
Tony Benn, one of the best PMs Britain never got.
No. The only thing he was ever right on was Britain leaving the EU. He was a far Left agitator whose only policy position was "do the opposite of the USA".
You clearly have a limited knowledge of his experience, largely from his latter years. He was actually a pretty centrist element in Labour, until his experience as Postmaster General, Minister of Technology (delivering the Concorde), and other cabinet positions, made it clear to him how fundamentally undemocratic the British system was (and is). He then moved leftwards, and on many causes history proved him right - Iraq and Afghanistan to name a few, but also the need for abolition of the Lords, which continues to be plain to anyone who wants to see.
It's also custom that members of the House of Commons cannot resign their seats. To get around this any member wishing to resign is made the Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds, by doing this they are an employee of the Crown and hence disqualified from being an MP.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06...
"Prior to the 18th century, serving in Parliament was often regarded as an
obligation to be accepted reluctantly, rather than an honour to be
eagerly sought. Voluntarily relinquishing a seat was not, therefore,
something to be encouraged."
How times have changed. I'm sure a lot of that attitude was just posturing, but still: ambition for power had to be somewhat dressed up in clothes of virtue. Now we've fundamentally dispatched with virtue, and simply put up with the (supposedly) less scummy of the lot.
In those times it wasn't really a position of power, though - the crown in practice had considerable control over the parliament, and attending parliament would have often meant a considerable cost in time and money. Imagine jury duty, but it's on the other side of the world and you have to pay for your own flights and hotels.
And also imagine that in a time where a new set of clothes cost a considerable share of your income.
> I'm sure a lot of that attitude was just posturing
I'm guessing that it had a lot to do with the differences in transportation and communication at the time. You had to leave your house and your fields and possibly your family and then go far away and start making the people back home, who are near your house with all your stuff in it, very angry at you.
It was an interruption in the business that you the leading burgess in your town and a position of physical and financial (and reputational) vulnerability.
Prior to 1911, MPs didn't get paid.
Which of course meant only the very rich could afford to seek election.
Back in the 1850s paying MPs was a working class demand, hoping for working class communities to be represented by working class people.
What a messed up bureaucracy. Imagine what would happen if a group of people left and started their own government by the people and for the people?
You'd maybe end up with a system where one member of the upper house was preventing any senior military appointments - https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/08/army-now-2nd-servi...
As a Brit, I think I would rather have a hereditary peerage I could leave to my family than be Prime Minister. Not sure if that is typical though.
Although it remains technically possible to issue hereditary peerages (and indeed because Parliament is sovereign even if it was no longer possible they can just change the rules) there haven't been any issued to non-Royals in my lifetime and it's unlikely that under any foreseeable circumstances more would be created.
Forth years ago maybe if you married into royalty somebody (well, Liz) would green light a hereditary peerage for that, but today that's frowned upon. I'd guess the other plausible route might be to do something so incredibly famous and heroic that a George Cross is seen as inadequate. Maybe a mad terrorist with a dirty bomb threatens to detonate it inside a central London orphanage, live on TV and you single handedly defeat them despite being unarmed? I dunno though, I think a week later people would be like, "The medal is fine, and he can go on a celebrity cooking show or something, we don't need a new peerage".
Yeah. It's very unlikely to get something these days. The last person I can think of that got a hereditary title (not necessary the last person to get one, just one that I remember) is Dennis Thatcher getting a baronetcy.
And wikipedia tells me: "It is the only baronetcy to have been granted since 1964, and is one of only three extant hereditary titles awarded outside the British royal family since 1965."
Anyway, I'll keep up my gym going etc just in case I am inside an orphanage when it comes under attack.
I'm not sure though whether the fact that new hereditary titles not being created is more or less egalitarian? It now means unless your family did something 800 years ago you're out of luck.
Because most of the peerages automatically extinguish in certain situations (e.g. no male heir, no heir at all, or sometimes if their holder is King / Queen), they will gradually die out over a long period. This is also a sign that they're not a modern (or even modernised) institution.
Something of a nit, but I thing Baronets are a bit of hybrid in that they are not peers, but it’s a hereditary title
Agreed, not a peerage but I'd take it.
Don't take this the wrong way, but...is that more because you wouldn't want to be associated with the rubbish recent crop of PM's, or more because you wouldn't want to be responsible for cleaning up the b*oody mess they've made?
Honestly, I think it is rather because (being a parent) I'd like to leave something to my family for generations, rather than just me be famous for being the PM.
As the PM, you could lead a government that passed all sorts of things that benefited your family, possibly for many generations
As a hereditary peer you'd get to be one of a few hundred people that could vote to veto some stuff which the Commons could then override if they felt strongly enough to persist with it. And lunch expenses, I guess.
I don't think the few remaining hereditary peerages will outlast this generation either...
Actually, after googling the Thatcher Baronetcy above, I could be Prime Minister and then grant myself a hereditary honour when I leave office. Best of both worlds!