> The other limits—involving the king or the courts—are theoretical and, if asserted, would cause their own political crises.
Part of the issue we're in such a political crisis at the moment is the growth and expansion of the court system to block things that politicians try to do. Just to give an example - the European Court of Human Rights has dramatically expanded through case law the Article 3 from a clause intended deliberately to protect people within their own state from inhumane treatment e.g. torture, indefinite imprisonment, to an absolute clause that blocks extradition or deportation of anyone if they're deemed to be at risk in the country they'd be removed to. This was explicitly rejected by the drafting states. The ECHR claimed not to apply to immigration or deportation decisions, and it was only in the late 80s with this case that they changed their position on that with the decision in Soering v United Kingdom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soering_v_United_Kingdom). Prior to this they declined to intervene in cases like this. Whether or not you agree with this, it's my view that it is up to politicians to decide on the law that applies to a country, and it's judicial overreach to expand it. Aside from this, people see problems that they think the politicians should be fixing and the country has sleepwalked into a position where these powers have been delegated to unelected bodies (NHS England being at arms-length from the Health Secretary even though people view this as the government's problem to fix, leading to current government abolishing NHS England entirely to try and take control again) and even totally unaccountable private organisations ("can't disclose due to commercial sensitivity" is commonly trotted out in Freedom of Information requests to avoid embarrassing private companies operating public services).
> But there are practical things which could be done by means of constitutional reforms that would not be easy for an incoming illiberal and radical government to undo, at least not quickly. There could be fundamental reform of the House of Lords to extinguish prime ministerial patronage. The Royal Prerogative could be placed on an entirely statutory basis.
The problem is that mucking about with this and putting it on statutory basis is that that can be changed by an Act of Parliament trivially - no Parliament is legally able to bind it's successors. Look for e.g. at the Coalition - they legislated that Parliament would have fixed terms of 5 years in the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, and then the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 was later passed and everything reverted to the old system.
physicsguy•4mo ago
Part of the issue we're in such a political crisis at the moment is the growth and expansion of the court system to block things that politicians try to do. Just to give an example - the European Court of Human Rights has dramatically expanded through case law the Article 3 from a clause intended deliberately to protect people within their own state from inhumane treatment e.g. torture, indefinite imprisonment, to an absolute clause that blocks extradition or deportation of anyone if they're deemed to be at risk in the country they'd be removed to. This was explicitly rejected by the drafting states. The ECHR claimed not to apply to immigration or deportation decisions, and it was only in the late 80s with this case that they changed their position on that with the decision in Soering v United Kingdom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soering_v_United_Kingdom). Prior to this they declined to intervene in cases like this. Whether or not you agree with this, it's my view that it is up to politicians to decide on the law that applies to a country, and it's judicial overreach to expand it. Aside from this, people see problems that they think the politicians should be fixing and the country has sleepwalked into a position where these powers have been delegated to unelected bodies (NHS England being at arms-length from the Health Secretary even though people view this as the government's problem to fix, leading to current government abolishing NHS England entirely to try and take control again) and even totally unaccountable private organisations ("can't disclose due to commercial sensitivity" is commonly trotted out in Freedom of Information requests to avoid embarrassing private companies operating public services).
> But there are practical things which could be done by means of constitutional reforms that would not be easy for an incoming illiberal and radical government to undo, at least not quickly. There could be fundamental reform of the House of Lords to extinguish prime ministerial patronage. The Royal Prerogative could be placed on an entirely statutory basis.
The problem is that mucking about with this and putting it on statutory basis is that that can be changed by an Act of Parliament trivially - no Parliament is legally able to bind it's successors. Look for e.g. at the Coalition - they legislated that Parliament would have fixed terms of 5 years in the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, and then the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 was later passed and everything reverted to the old system.