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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 appointme

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.

tialaramex 3y ago
> 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".
toyg 3y ago
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.
pm215 3y ago
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.
- kitd 3y ago
  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...
  - MrJohz 3y ago
    Or even before election day approaches - how many by elections are we on now?
pjc50 3y ago
> 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 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 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-court-on-the-prorogation-of-parliament/ 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_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_el...
samus 3y ago
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.
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  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.

tialaramex 3y ago

> 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".

toyg 3y ago

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.

pm215 3y ago

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.

kitd 3y ago
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...
- MrJohz 3y ago
  Or even before election day approaches - how many by elections are we on now?

pjc50 3y ago

> 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 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 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-court-on-the-prorogation-of-parliament/ 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_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_el...

samus 3y ago

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.

pbhjpbhj 3y ago
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.