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> It's kind of strange. 20 years ago there was the House of Commons making laws, with the House of Lords checking the laws, and the Queen who signed the votes.

> Now, the House of Commons has made the House of Lords something that can be ignored,

The House of Commons gained the right to override the House of Lords through the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949. A lot longer than 20 years ago.

It's worth noting that the House of Commons recently refused to debate a law for an equivalent to the perjury laws during parliamentary debate. i.e. is fine to lie in the House of Commons.

Recently Johnson overruled the House of Lords appointment commission to give someone a peerage that was involved in a corruption scandal[1].

That along with the the lies used to the win the Brexit referendum have robbed me of any faith in our current system of first past the post government so I see the need for more checks and balances.

Unfortunately, the current system seems open to abuse such as Charles using this royal privilege to keep people from owning homes on his enormous estate lands.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson...

I'm confused about your objection.

That's how it works in almost every modern democratic country. The check and balance to the power of the current government is the constitution, with a national constitutional court enforcing it.

You are mistaken.

Almost every modern democracy has a bicameral legislature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism

"Almost every" is an exaggeration. While most do, there are quite a few with unicameral legislature, and they do not work worse than bicameral ones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicameralism#/media/File:Unib...

I think quite a few of those also have multi party proportional representation which tend to avoid parliamentary majorities, so checks and balances are their in a different (I would argue better) form.

Fair call.

That's a fair point, but I don't think the house of lords really represents a second chamber? Usually that second chamber consists of representatives of federate states, such as the senate or the Bundesrat.

How do the lords get elected?

As far as I'm aware the Lords aren't elected, so there's an argument there they should have less power???

Membership is granted by appointment or by heredity or official function

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords

And what happens if that head of state decides to overrule the Parliament on a whim? Is it even meaningful to talk about an entire population having "whims", as that's a term normally reserved for individuals.

People can afford to take edgy contrarian positions on the basics of democracy because they take it for granted. The Queen is not an abusive monarch and never has been, in fact she's been so scrupulously symbolic that her actual political views are almost entirely obscure. So here we see arguments of the form "maybe Parliament should have to bend to the whims of the Queen".

The Queen is 94. How many more years can she carry on? When she dies, Prince Charles will take her place and he has always been politically active in ways the Queen has not. Does the idea of Charles vetoing legislation sound fun or in any way appropriate for a first world democracy? No, it does not.

I don't like the Guardian at all but it's good that they're bringing this to light, or rather, it would, if they were actually revealing the documents in question. It seems this article isn't going to do so, which means we are being asked to trust the Graun. Unfortunately I don't trust the Graun so this is a bit of a pickle. What's being said here sounds plausible, and there's really no reason for such a process to exist at all, but it could also be shit-stirring.

Yes, I would like to live in a democratic nation.