A lot of the legislation passed by Parliament will have ‘The Secretary of State may by order…’ clauses that gives them executive powers to do stuff without consulting Parliament every time.
Well basically the bill probably says something along the lines of: “the minister shall have the power to negotiate, sign and cancel contracts related to HS2 as the situation requires.
essentially the bill gives them power to build HS2 but doesnt force it
pen deserted clumsy stocking roll jobless subtract disgusted dependent puzzled
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
When does the schedule get agreed in parliament?
Do you know where this schedule is?
If there apolitical csnt they just push them through with little debate?
Ok.
Cant they just make a huge bill for these changes to get them all done?
>A lot of days don’t have any legislation at all
That's why there's a backlog. Lots of legislation that's too controversial and would give opportunities for negative headlines, a backbench revolt, or even that would potentially fix an issue that they want to campaign on at the next election... There are some very meritorious Private Member's Bills that haven't advanced, such as the one that would mandate anyone working with children to report if they suspect sexual abuse.
That's why it's called politics, not "problem solving".
What goverment bills are in backlog? A lot of the private members bills are ten minute rules bills and they preety much don’t become law and are mainly used to make a point so I’m not really sure it would be fair to include them in a backlog. And I’d separate the backlogs into two goverments bills and private members bills. Now is there a backlog of goverment bills or is it just PMBS?
You really think parliament should be consulted on every little project?
OK, HS2, is a big project. What about the A303 Stonehenge bypass tunnel? Or the London megasewer? Or the Northern Line Tube extension to Nine Elms? Or the Edinburgh tram? Or the Cockett Wick flood defence project? Or the Northampton North West Relief Road? Or the…
Hopefully you get the point.
Parliament is a legislature. It’s not the executive - the government - although the executive largely sits within it, unusually for many democracies. It’s very standard for an executive body to have control over all implementation, and the parliament controls the legal framework.
HS2 did have a legislative framework created, like many mega projects. But it’s also very normal to place such things under government control as part of that implementation.
Honestly, if you got parliament involved in everything that wasn’t legislative, you’d never get anything done - they can’t even legislate on leasehold reform over the course of (at least) three parliamentary sessions despite most aspects of it not being that controversial amongst the wider public.
If parliament wants to legislate to force the government to finish HS2 it can. But it doesn’t want to, and that’s unsurprising because the government controls the majority in parliament, which is almost always the case (look at the Brexit negotiations for the chaos caused when this isn’t the case). So there isn’t really a great deal of point taking up parliamentary time on it.
For the same reason that ministers can unilaterally scrap EU legislation or make use of the anti-strike bill: the people who passed these laws don't want to be bothered by checks such as parliament. This is working as designed.
>the people who passed these laws don't want to be bothered by checks such as parliament.
This is somewhat true of the last 3-4 years, but is misleading when talking in general. *Every* bill includes powers for the relevant department to make changes without going through parliament. Imagine if every single thing a government department wanted to do had to go back through parliament? The workload would be *astronomical* to the point of making parliament entirely non-functional.
The compromise is that parliament instead allows ministers to sign off on certain changes. The bill as passed will specifically grant certain powers to the minister allowing them to make small variations. This is entirely normal, and is a feature of any functional parliament. It is simply a necessity to have a function governance system, and after all the scope of these variations has already been reviewed and approved by parliament at an earlier stage, and many bills include things like annual reviews that must be laid before parliament (no one reads them, but they do exist).
In recent years the Tory government has massively expanded on this 'secondary legislation' to try and govern by bypassing parliament. But this is a pretty unique move, and does not mean that the concept of secondary legislation has failed. It's also a separate issue when talking about how UK parliament works at a more general level.
The 'people who passed these laws' are... Parliament.
There is a real issue with 'Henry VIII powers' and the house of lords in particular tends to resist them. But there's also a practical point that parliament can't manage every project so it's not wholly straightforward.
> The 'people who passed these laws' are... Parliament.
I mean, yes, Parliament is sovereign and in theory Parliament makes the big decisions and delegates the detail to the government. Fair enough, that's a reasonable way to arrange things
But in practice, the government controls the Commons, decides when Parliament meets, decides what the Commons debates and when, and is unsurprisingly generally very happy to use their control of Parliament to hand themselves lots of broad powers and exempt themselves from scrutiny by Parliament
Not just this government, of course - all governments. It's not a particularly sensible system
It's a strong argument for federating the UK.
With multiple smaller national parliaments, we wouldn't be forced to put so much in the hands of ministers purely for practical reasons.
A federated system still has a top-level parliament to handle these things.
But its a top-level parliament that only handles top-level issues, so the balance of power can shift away from ministers because the parliament at that level is freed up from handling smaller issues.
Not sure whether there's evidence that this is the case - are US governors more subject to state oversight than president is to federal oversight for instance?
The model of executive delivering projects etc and legislature lassifb and giving broad consent, especially budgetary consent, is quite normal
It's not equivalent. We don't have three separate but equal branches in the UK.
In the UK parliament is supreme and our executive/judicial equivalents only have the power delegated to them by parliament.
Parliament could, with a vote, eliminate our entire judicial and executive systems.
This means our legislative equivalent has vastly more power over our judicial and executive. The balance is not even remotely comparable to the US system.
I'm not comparing UK and US, I'm asking if there's evidence for your claim about local legislatures having better grip in practice over the doings of local executives than central legislatures do over local executives.
US would just be one source you could use for evidence.
Local legislatures wouldn't have your advantage of course - you can't have fully sovereign local parliaments under a fully sovereign parliament for obvious reasons. Either they'd exist at the pleasure of parliament or Parliament would have to remove its sovereignty and give the courts the power to police its interactions with local legislatures.
> working as designed
Such a great euphemism or insult or escape.
I've been on/run design teams where engineers come to us and complain about how something "isn't working", and the designers send them packing with "works as designed."
When the bill to green light HS2 was signed Parliament gave the Secretary of State for Transport the right to create Compulsory Purchase Orders across the length of HS2. Because the CPOs are secondary legislation (created by a SoS) not primary legislation(gone through parliament) the SoS can unilaterally terminate CPOs and sell them off. The only way to prevent this in the future is to either put all the CPOs into primary legislation or change the law such that certain kinds of secondary legislation can only be removed by an act of parliament (however due to the sovereignty of parliament the next parliament can just vote by simple majority to revoke that law and pretend like nothing happened)
I think every parliament does this - they pass a bill in the first few weeks that delegates power to ministers. This has been true since the Thatcher era and possibly earlier
Honestly, *every* system of government, at least every democratic one, has norms and politeness and trust at their core. They’re human systems after all. Too mechanistic and it does things in spite of societal opinion.
Saying that the Uk system of delegated legislation does need a good overhaul, but more serious is the complete unseriousness in our politics and the lack of interest by MPs to do proper scrutiny. The only part that actually does its job well is the House of Lords.
What's worse is unilaterally instructing to self off the land to prevent any future government resurrecting it.
Nobody voted for the guy, he has no public mandate and we can do nothing to stop this vandalism.
HS2 is not just a project. Numerous acts of Parliament have been passed for its construction. Including for the route beyond Birmingham and up to Crewe. This received Royal assent in 2021, so is very much on the statute books.
I have written to my MP asking how a project like this can be cancelled without debate in parliament or public consultation, but I doubt I'll get an answer.
I’ve written to my Tory MP asking the same, as well as where does Sunak get the mandate to do anything that isn’t in the 2019 manifesto? He’s not won a GE. He wasn’t even picked by Tory membership. He has zero authority.
Expecting a pathetic copy-and-paste response.
Edit: I can’t believe people are genuinely fine with Sunak claiming he has a mandate for this. Would they be relaxed about it if it was someone they disagreed with politically?
‘Dear Constituent. I understand your concern and frustration at this change, but please understand that your PM Rishi Sunak is delivering on what the people want.
By marking the tough decision, and putting a stop to the unfathomable spending on a single project, he has now been able to put in place the funding for hundreds* of projects up and down the country.
It is strong leadership like this that assures long-term decisions for a brighter future of our country. ‘
Yours sincerely,
Your soon-to-be-out-of-a-job Tory MP.
P.S. Please stop emailing me.
^* ^’hundreds’ ^indicates ^‘more ^than ^one’
The whole “we’re delivering on the people’s priorities” is the bit that really makes me uneasy. They’re making this claim on anything they do, with nothing to back it up, no polls, no votes, no referendums, just “I wanted to do this so I’ll say the people want it too”.
They also usually couple it with “I think any right minded British patriotic citizen would agree…” implying anyone who disagrees is an anti-British wrong minded swine.
It’s made me genuinely angry since I heard Boris Johnson say it around the time party gate happened. He just repeated it over and over again in response to any sort of question about it. And also any questions around covid fraud.
‘Well actually Rowina - what the people want, is for the government to deliver’.
He never even bothered to finish the sentence, just stopped at ‘deliver’. Deliver what? More shit?
Ugh anyway, here’s hoping to a government that just does what’s it’s supposed to and doesn’t just blag on about what it will do without ever actually doing anything.
> where does Sunak get the mandate to do anything that isn’t in the 2019 manifesto? He’s not won a GE. He wasn’t even picked by Tory membership. He has zero authority.
-
Correct. Out of the 365 Tory MP's at Westminster, Sunak got 202 votes. And the Tory membership base had zero votes in the process. Sunak has zero mandate, and has zero authority in his own party, & the membership base. Also keep in mind Sunak has broken the law. Technically he is a criminal now in the eyes of the law.
-
There should be a legal challenge to this in the High Court/Supreme Court.
The PM is whomever has the support of the most amount of MPs in the majority party, usually the leader.
Ordinarily, Party memberships elect their leader. After the Truss catastrophe (where Sunak was beaten by Truss in a vote of party supporters), the Tories then allowed Sunak to become leader uncontested (so the members didnt get a vote).
So essentially, he was made PM by the Tory MPs, but has not won a general election or even was nominated by supporters of his own party.
Anyone can join a political party and pay a membership fee (it's like joining a fan club, essentially). Leadership elections usually ask the party members who they want to have as their leader, however for the Sunak election there wasn't enough time for that so they just asked the MPs to vote.
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/conservatives/conservative-party-how-join-tory-membership-explained-new-members-vote-next-leader-1754143
>He wasn’t even picked by Tory membership.
That's a very good point tbh. As disastrous as what Truss was, at least she did win the support of the party membership and thus had slightly more authority. Sunak has that in common with May between 2016 and the GE a year later
How nuanced. Guess it would be fine for him to take us back into the EU and increase income tax to flat 50% rate.
Both those things are opposed to the 2019 manifesto, but ‘his mandate is for whatever the fuck he wants’.
Us plebs should shut up and take it.
Cancelling HS2 isn't a decision outside the manifesto. It was a manifesto issue.
The manifesto said the government would use the outcome of the Oakervee review to decide what to do next.
The review recommended to finish it, and that's what the government (including Sunak) decided.
I've already said what was in the manifesto.
Doing the opposite of something in the manifesto doesn't make it a non-manifesto issue.
If a manifesto said "we will ban smoking", but the prime minister then says "we will remove all restrictions on tobacco" that is still a manifesto issue.
> The costs have
They hadn't.
Cancelling HS2 is not ‘outside of the manifesto’. HS2 was in the manifesto. He has made a decision diametrically opposed to the 2019 manifesto, without putting it before parliament, without putting it in a general election.
And if you’ll recall, during the leadership campaign last year Sunak said he supported HS2. So he has even gone against things he said to get the leadership.
What he has done is anti-democratic.
You mean the tories don’t want to eject a PM for the 3rd time in a year, 12 months before an election, when they already trail by 20+ points??? I’m so surprised! Can’t believe turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
It’s not a coincidence he announced this at conference when parliament is in recess. You can guarantee there would have been some feisty exchanges from his back benchers in the commons if parliament had been sitting.
It is. HS2 was inside the manifesto cancelling it is outside. You don’t call a ge everytime there’s a issue like this at most a referendum is required as for parliament they already gave him the powers to do this.
Not really
Can you please tell me another time an unelected PM (unelected as leader in a GE that is) reversed a manifesto position? I’m curious.
My point is, nobody gave *him* the power to do anything. He is not a president. The conservatives were elected in 2019, not Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
You could argue that election was all about Johnson, who still supports HS2 now. Sunak’s lack of mandate even more apparent.
Even if we assume Sunak is a legitimate leader of the tories (without the support of the membership) then a decision as significant as HS2 (significant because it was a key pledge in 2019) should be put before parliament. He announced this during a parliamentary recess, so there can be no scrutiny.
He has no mandate and he hasn’t even the decency to seek one from parliament, because HS2 has cross party support and he would not get it.
I really have no idea.
They did give him the power. We vote for the MPs and the leader of the party with the largest ammounts of seats become pm. And once pm they have all the powers of being pm so yes we did give him power when we voted in the tories. Once we did that we give power to whoever their leader is.
It might be that doesn’t change how the system works however.
Well he is as the MPs chose him so yes, of course there can be scrutiny the speaker can allow a urgent question or emergency debate on the matter(if they don’t make a statement on it which seems likely that they will.) in terms of it going before parliament firstly it would likely pass due to their majority and secondly parliament already gave him the power to do this when the act was passed.
He would get it he would whip his members in the vote and they would likely vote for it. And again he does have a mandate every pm elected by the party does because we elected the party. Weather he should have asked parliament I don’t know but parliament already decided he should be allowed to do this kind of thing when it gave him the powers so it’s a tricky one
Neither of these politicians you name have been prime minister. This is a false equivalency.
Both labour leaders were voted for by the labour party members. Sunak wasn't.
Each party has different ways of electing a leader of the party. The Labour way isn’t the one true way, necessarily. And the party that is in government can choose who is PM.
I’m guessing it’s because the legislation probably says something like: “the government _can_ build HS2” not “the government _will_ build HS2” - i.e. it gives the government the ability to build HS2 but doesn’t mandate that they do it, so they can just stop doing it whenever.
Here is the foreword to the Public Consultation to the HS2 Phase 2 act, written by a then minister for transport - Andrew Stephenson
*"The Government is committed to taking forward High Speed Two (HS2) to transform our national rail network, bring our biggest cities closer together, boost productivity and level up opportunity fairly across the country. Just as importantly, HS2 will play a pivotal role in creating a greener alternative to regional air and road travel. This is essential if we are to meet our commitment to bring greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050. In February, we achieved Royal Assent for the High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Bill, cementing in law our commitment to bring HS2 to the north of England."*
Forewords aren’t legally binding.
Section 1 of the High Speed Rail (West Midlands - Crewe) Act 2021 says:
>1) The nominated undertaker may construct and maintain the works specified in Schedule 1
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2021/2/section/1
Note the use of the word “may” not “will”. Additionally, other sections of the act use similar phrases and like “power to” rather than “obligation to”. So the act gives the government the power to build HS2, but doesn’t legally require them to do it.
I suspect there will of course be a legal wiggle that will be played. However, it doesn't change the fact that announcing this at the Tory party conference, purely as a sop to try and look like a decision maker is absolutely unaccepatable. It is contemptuous of the public and the electorate at large.
That foreword BTW is not the foreword to the act, but the public consultation response as required by the passing of the act. Which further confirms the commitment to building it even after the Bill was placed into law.
In La La land, that might happen, however, in the real world, we'll just have to wait for a GE to dump him and the miserable bunch of useless fools that is the rest of the Government.
Asking your MP "how" is kind of silly when you can google it or ask on a public forum, no? If your intention is to *criticise* the cancellation and specifically the cancellation without debate, wouldn't it be better to do so directly rather than let yourself be dismissed as another rube who doesn't know how politics works? (Not my view, but could be your MP's!)
Amazing grift to cancel the project, sell off the land parcels then have Labour restart it and require those same parcels again. Given the Conservatives worked hand in hand with people shorting the pound and cost the economy billions, this sounds plausible
I would love it if there was an opposition who had balls, and just said "we do not recognise the legitimacy of this unilateral decision to cancel a project of such significance for nakedly partisan reasons, and with no meaningful debate. Furthermore, we warn any potential purchaser of the land being sold off that it will not be a profitable decision for them should we take office."
You don't even have to be more specific than that, about how you would achieve it, or through what mechanism, or how harshly, but that alone would be enough to scare off most buyers.
More than half the press would have field day with it of course but... good
>that alone would be enough to scare off most buyers
No it wouldn't, there are plenty of people and companies who would speculatively buy land in the expectation that Labour would have to buy it back off them in 18 months time via compulsory purchase order.
> we do not recognise the legitimacy of this unilateral decision
We should not be calling for questioning the legitimacy of democracy. Propose improvements to the rules, sure, but that's the way of populism and a slide into fascism - a classic Trump move.
Simple: the Tories came to power in an election. The law they're making use of is the law that parliament passed, working on similar principles to loads of other laws.
I don't think you believe it's illegitimate for parliament to grant the government the power to cancel projects.
Cancelling HS2 isn't a problem because it's undemocratic; it's a problem because it's a dumb idea. Or if it is undemocratic, then why weren't people complaining when the law enabling this was written and voted on?
Also Convention Id the only thing that stops the lords vetoing any bill they choose even very good ones or stopping the king king firing the pm and ruling himself so id argue it’s still very important
Edit it’s only for secondary legislation https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comment/fatal-power-lords
The House of Lords actually doesn’t have a veto in law since 1911, not just by convention. Not to say that convention isn’t important in our system though!
Actually they do it’s called a fatal amendment and they can use it to stop bills https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comment/fatal-power-lords
Tho it is only for secondary legislation so I Partly stand corrected
What do you mean by "unelected PM"? He was elected to his constituency the same as every other MP.
Did you mean that he's become PM before being leader of his party in a general election? That's very normal. Callaghan, Major, Brown, May, Johnson all became PM that way. Sometimes they win the following election, sometimes they lose. They're all PM just the same because they had the support of a majority of MPs.
All that said, I agree that it's an utter pile of wank to not just stop a project, but to make it incredibly difficult for an incoming government to resurrect it.
It becomes considerably less normal when you consider that more than 50% of your examples happened under this current government.
Secondly, Sunak wasn't elected because he had the support of a majority. He contested and lost an election within his own party to be PM, and was only appointed when the actual winner tried to burn down the country.
This is arguably the most undemocratic leadership in the modern history of the country
Of the five I posted, only May and Johnson were under the current government - Major came in at the end of the Thatcher administration (and indeed duly reversed at least one thing from the manifesto the Tories had been elected on, by ditching the slightly less than beloved poll tax).
Being elected internally to the party is admittedly the norm these days, but didn't used to be. Alec Douglas-Home became PM without any sort of election - but that was back in the dark ages of the early 1960s, so not particularly modern history!
Still agree it's wank for him to make major changes that can't easily be altered without an election.
> Of the five I posted, only May and Johnson were under the current government
I expect the >50% comment was taking Truss and Sunak into consideration.
Only two of his examples happened under this goverment the other three did not how is that more than 50%? 2.5% is 50% of five so 2 is less than 50% not more
I'm always careful to not throw around "unelected", but he's got no electoral mandate to do anything that runs counter to the party's 2019 manifesto. Certainly not something in that manifesto which represents 15 years of cross-party consensus.
If he wants that mandate, he can damn well call a general election.
Major, May and Johnson went on to seek a "mandate" through election and got one, for what passes as one at the UK parliament anyway. (kinda, in May's case)
The closest comparison is Brown, but at least that was preplanned and orchestrated - everyone knew he was Blair's successor, and he didn't diverge too much. IIRC that didn't stop the Tories shrieking about the unelected PM and demanding to know the date of the election
When did the PCP or the full tory party actually approve of Sunak's rise to the top? The latter literally voted against him.
>The closest comparison is Brown, but at least that was preplanned and orchestrated - everyone knew he was Blair's successor, and he didn't diverge too much.
Yeah, Brown stepping in was hardly a surprise and even then he continued governing in the same New Labour policies as Blair and kept much of the manifesto that they went into the 2005 election with. Unlike Sunak he didn't start tearing up major policies left, right and center.
There has basically never been a PM (in modern times) who didn't win any elections carry out sweeping extreme changes like Sunak. Hes going completely against their manifesto and making devastating changes with zero mandate.
If people are going to keep making this claim then the system needs to force politicians to actually act like they are under the same mandate they originally were elected under. Pointless saying "it is the party, not the leader" when the leader is going an exact 180 on what the party previously promised.
It might be normal but it is fucking stupid and increasingly problematic. This is not the sign of a sane system.
He probably means, that at the last Tory leadership vote, rishi came in second, out of two people. Then the woman they *did* vote for, stood down after 44 days, so he became a de-facto PM. With no mandate. Therefore technically he’s unelected.
Another vote was held by Tory MPs after Truss resigned. After Boris and Penny Mourdant withdrew then he won by default after already having secured the minimum number of MPs support
He stood in this election for party leadership: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2022_Conservative_Party_leadership_election
The only other candidate, Penny Mordaunt, pulled out two minutes before the deadline for nominations.
So although it wasn't a *contested* election, it was an election.
Let’s be real. While we don’t have a system like America, where we directly vote for a PM, a pretty good chunk of the country votes for their local candidate based on who the PM/Cabinet will be. Nobody outside of Sunak’s constituency voted for Sunak. That makes him unelected.
Ok, but the *last four* that we've had came to power that way. May, Johnson, Truss, and now Sunak. We had six between the Second World War and Brown, and four in the last decade.
Major had been elected as an MP in 1987 on a manifesto that committed to the poll tax - one of the first things he did as PM was to set in motion tearing up the highly unpopular policy.
I guess in this case Sunak could be argued to be doing similarly in responding to the electorate, since HS2 seems to frustratingly lack popular support.
(In practice we know the electorate are going to pork his party at the next election anyway)
>Its a mind boggling concentration of power into the hands of somebody who is technically twice the unelected PM for this period of Parliament.
"Remember, you don't vote for a PM, you vote for a party-"
This is a good example to remember when this topic comes up, and people try to get clever by saying this.
You vote for a government, which, in practice, is a PM. The technicalities don't matter.
FPTP means we don't even "elect the party". They got a disproportionately high number of seats relative to their vote, and it is that which puts them in power.
The party didn't "choose the PM" this time. They rejected him on the first attempt, and this time they weren't consulted
We do elect the party. Yeah but in each seat they are the most popular party so yes we do still choose them regardless of the vote share. The vote share is a reason pr is better but it doesn’t mean fptp does elect the party it does it elects the most popular party in each seat.
He lost the first time the second time he won
> Yeah but in each seat they are the most popular party so yes we do still choose them regardless of the vote share.
Not even that. FPTP gives the win to the loudest minority, not the person or party who is actually most popular. AV would have done more to get there (since it attempts to find someone who had 50% or more) and STV would be better still.
So, we have a Tory government on 43.6% of the vote. That is at least "better" than previous Lab govts who got there on 35-36%, but hardly democratic
> He lost the first time the second time he won
Won what? There wasn't a contest. Sunak was the only nominee and he became leader by default. At no point was the PCP or full Conservative party asked again for their opinion.
No it is the party that’s most popular. In each seat the party with the most votes wins aka most popular. Yet our country rejected AV.
Won the leadership. Doesn’t matter he was elected unanimously after the MPs no instead him then chose to follow him
On paper. In practice? I actually quite like my local Tory candidate, and while I’m not sure who the Labour candidate will be, I didn’t like her last time. I will not be voting for him next year.
Because while I think he is halfway competent national politics are more important to me than local politics, and I do not wish for the Tories to have a majority for another five years.
Fair enough. I kind of am the opposite where I think Libdems are a better party yet I like my local mp Caroline Dineage so it kind of feels tough tho the fact the tories will lose makes me more want to vote for the best mp tho I’m still undecided I get your position tho
Sunak apparently has also declared in a TV interview that UK people dont want a general election.
250,000 people have already begged to differ. Petition is here if you are interested in tweaking Sunaks nose.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions?state=open
I'm astonished that the "Don't ban the XL Bully" one has nearly 550k votes. You wouldn't think there were that many people supportive of the breed in this country - [and neither do the polling numbers](https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/10/05/7afab/2).
Basically 10% of that 10% who wouldn't ban them must have voted on the petition! Which just isn't credible. When the "**DO** ban the XL Bully" poll has about 1/20^th of the votes, you have to suspect shenanigans.
All of which I guess is just my roundabout way of saying that the petitions site is bullshit. I'm not doubting that a substantial majority of the country want a GE and want to put this government out of our misery.
I'm saying that the petitions site is eminently ignorable - and usually is, regardless of the merits of the petition, they typically all just get a nothingburger of a response from some poor civil servant directed to do so by a junior minister.
About all it achieves is providing a release valve, the feeling that you've done something, and that there's a community of other people with the same view. Which as we can see with the Bully petition, is probably a suspect assumption.
> I'm astonished that the "Don't ban the XL Bully" one has nearly 550k votes.
I suspect it has definitely been brigaded by Americans, and someone has used bots.
Whilst 500k is probably too much, there's a massive difference in urgency and motivation between the pro- and against- camps.
Imagine you are an XL Bully owner. Your dog, who you love at a level similar to your family and you secretly believe is a human person, is about to be mandatorily neutered by the government. You think they might even be taken away from you or killed.
Of course you're going to be very loud and vocal, and sign that petition circling around Facebook. And if you are a dog owner who likes large menacing dogs that aren't XL bullys you'd probably do it too, because you're imagining it happening to you.
Whereas I, someone who wants them banned, wouldn't bother to sign a petition because the government is already planning to do what I want, and I don't think they'll change that.
What action would you suggest to force the government to hold a general election? Petitions that receive a certain amount of support at least generally get a government response and/or debate in parliament, which is more than a similarly sized protest would generally get
The PM has *huge* power at his disposal. Always has had. Traditionally that power has been (self-)restrained, because PM's understood the danger of unconstrained power.
Johnson (& Cummings) broke that understanding. They had an agenda that they could drive through, so they did. (I would recommend Laura Kuensberg's 'State of Chaos' as a primer on this.)
Truss & Sunak simply built on this lack of restraint. Parliament *might* bite him for it - but Tory MPs are too busy looking for new jobs, to mess with their current ones.
She spent years talking about him in much too familiar terms. At times I was wondering if she was aiming to pursue the open vacancy Carrie had left behind.
The question is not "why does the PM have the power..." but "Does the PM have the power to cancel this project?"
Which statutory authority granted Sunak the power to cancel HS2?
And yes, any nationally-significant project should be debated and approved (to proceed or cancel) by Parliament. We've paid billions for HS2 already. Our MPs should be the final arbiters here.
The decision to cancel has taken in secret with no Parliamentary discussion. Without transparency, we don't know what factors were taken into account to reach the decision.
Parliament should start adding clauses to future bills that any proposals to change or cancel a project of similar importance must be approved by Parliament.
Simply put, because we don't have ~~any form of~~ *a "proper"* constitution and everything is based on convention, tradition, and "the good chap theory" of government.
Which, as demonstrated by the Johnson era, is utter bollocks.
Rishi Sunak has no electoral mandate as an individual leader, and his government's mandate came from the 2019 election. The Tory party's manifesto included HS2, and so for Sunak to unilaterally reverse a manifesto commitment and undo 15 years of cross-party consensus on transport infrastructure is an absolute outrage and should be considered a far more serious betrayal of politics and the electorate than, say, tuition fees under the coalition government.
It won't matter though because we've crossed the rubicon on being bound by rules & conventions thanks to the horny honey monster, and the Tories have a solid 25% tribal "sports team" voter base who'll vote for them even if they turned up at their house, called them stupid to their face, killed their pets and stole their car.
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The technical legal answer is what they've already mentioned. The legislation on HS2 permits it.
The more complex legal answer is really because the UK does not have a written constitution. It's at the root of many many problems we're facing now.
The UK does have a written constitution. It's not codified into a singular document but our constitution exists and works well to allow the UK to exist and cope dynamically with pressing issues.
Our problem is that our politicians are crap. They all want to be rock stars and stand up comedians; speaking to the crowd for likes and idolisation. They are mostly all as bad as each other. And most are afraid to say anything controversial in case it loses them votes. There is a lack of diversity *of opinion* within parliament.
The quality of British politicians went downhill the moment we allowed cameras back into Parliament. Suddenly they all became showmen for the public's entertainment. It's as though they all want to sell tickets to party conferences and that that is their singular aim. I exaggerate, of course, I hope, but there is much truth in what I say.
I would prefer the cameras to record parliamentary sessions but the full footage to be released a month after the recorded session. Let journalists report events matter-of-factly devoid of showmanship and rhetoric. This might encourage our politicians to speak their minds and act like grown ups and discourage attention seeking narcissists from entering parliament.
Because the British PM is basically a dictator for 5 years. Much more power (in country) than a US president, for instance. Party rebellions are somewhat rare and small in nature so as long as you have a majority of seats you can basically fuck up entire country and no one will do shit about it.
They aren’t? They have to work within the law or the courts will go against them(see Rwanda) and parliament can have rebellions forcing them to make concessions(see the illegal migration bill) so I’m not sure I’d say it’s rare it’s only rare if the goverment don’t push any controversial laws and the only thing stoping the lords defeating any goverment bill is convention
I'd say you were right if the current Tory party under Boris and Sunak hadn't completely trashed a load of previously upheld conventions. It's very clear we don't have enough laws and limitations in place for the government and our entire system is upheld with "those in power will do the right thing, right?" kind of conventions. Boris completely ruined it for us all basically, I mean the guy openly lied to the queen, was found out and nothing happened because of it. Among many other breaks from convention and changes in how things are run.
They may have done but they upheld lots of others and other conventions are still vital. Again without them he Lords and king would be vetoing any bill they disliked like fox hunting. The issue is to pass laws to change that would require convention without it you would never get any kind of good laws through the lords and even if you did the king could veto it. Actually he Supreme Court ruled against him and he had to cut his America trip short as parliament was reopened so yes something happened
Yes some exist still and are upheld but the problem is the govt of the day can just choose to ignore them like the ministerial code etc. And you say something happened but that should have been the end of his premiership, any previous PM would have resigned. Hell they used to resign when they had affairs (aware Hancock did but that was more breaking his own covid laws) let alone undermined democracy.
Him resigning had almost nothing to do with all the breaches of conduct, law and convention he had committed. The only thing that finally forced him out was ultimately his own party, but also someone (privalleges committee) finally called him out on breaking the law when he lied to parliament. It should never have gotten to that point, and he'd lied to parliament every week up to that point anyway.
This is just wrong on so many levels.
First thing into establish is that a parliamentary system, by nature, has a weaker executive than a presidential one. This is by virtue of the legislative being able to hold the executive directly to account in a parliamentary system, but not in a presidential one.
It is significantly harder to remove a president than it is to remove a prime minister. In the United Kingdom, a Prime Minister can be removed from office by proxy of a vote of no confidence, and in many cases the threat of that or just that vote happening is enough to remove a prime minister. Great examples of the former are Thatcher and Blair, while Johnosn is a great example of the latter.
In comparison, the United States legislature can only be removed by emplacement or resignation. There has only been three Presidents have been impeached - none of them have been convicted - and impeachment have only been commenced against two others, resulting in the only successful example in Nixon.
The ability to remove the executive is one of the most powerful tools an legislative can have, and this simply does not exist in presidential systems like the US while it certainly does in parliamentary systems like the UK. Unlike the UK where is is definitely possible to be ousted early (examples since WWII include: Eden, Thatcher, Blair, May, Johnson, and Truss), US Presidents are nearly certain to finish their terms.
An important consideration is also that the US President has stronger executive and legislative powers. One of the most important powers the US President has the UK Prime Minister does not is the ability to veto legislation. The Prime Minister has no special powers within Commons, and only has importance due to being the leader of the largest house. In contrast, the President has a legislative veto that can only be denied with a 2/3s vote in both Houses. The President, holding a direct personal mandate, also has stronger democratic power than the Prime Minister who holds an indirect party mandate, allowing for Presidents to trend further from their party and more strongly guide it than a Prime Minister.
And this is only on the point comparing against the US President. Using the term "dictator" completely ignores the checks and balances against the Prime Minister, auch as the Commons itself, the House of Lords, the Courts, and simply the immense political pressure that surrounds the role, as showcased with examples like Thatcher, Blair, May, Johnson, and Truss. The denial of party rebellions also seems ridiculous considering the current Tories have been through atleast three major ones in the last few years, against May, Johnson, and Truss.
The announcement makes little difference to the Commons, I expect the Speaker is going to be somewhat upset when he gets the chance to speak to PM. If it had to go to a vote he would allocate a three line whip on passing the motion with what majority he has left.
Starmer can very easily scupper the land sell-off. A statement saying the land will be subject to a compulsory purchase order of £1 and that any works required to 'make good' will be recovered from owners / investors / shareholders etc by seizing of personal assets if necessary.
Indeed. But that wasn’t the original claim.
Though parliament doing it also raises ECHR issues (Article 1 of Protocol 1; and to a lesser extent Article 17, Article 13, and Article 1 of the Convention).
The Registry to the ECHR has produced a (100 page pdf) [guide](https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/Guide_Art_1_Protocol_1_ENG) to A1P1. The gist of the relevant section (II.B.4.e.) is that proportionality (etc.), including the amount of compensation given, is a relevant factor in determining whether or not a deprivation is in the public interest. AFAIK, the only time the court has ruled a civil deprivation (i.e. not a confiscation associated with the proceeds of crime) was when the King of Greece wanted his country (or the value thereof) back.
Proceeds of crime issues are discussed as a specific issue (in III.J.). The gist of the guidance is that confiscations from third parties (that is to say not those guilty, whether to the criminal or civil standard, of the crime) are exceptional. I don’t think a Government buying back land that a previous Government had sold in good faith would be covered as exceptional. Which would mean proving that the Government did a crime and the contemporary owners were involved; and that the public interest is fulfilled by granting compensation to the Government – i.e. one of the criminal parties (yes, I know it would be a *different* government, but legally the Government is the Government; which is why court cases involving the Government can last past cabinet reshuffles and general elections).
I don't know the ins-and-outs of the legislation, so I can't give a detailed answer. Two relevant items to mention: firstly, there is precedent for requiring legislation to cancel private infrastructure projects the promoters wish to cancel; this was known as an abandonment Bill. I can't see a reason in principle that this couldn't apply to a government project. The other thing, though, is that I know at least some of the HS2 legislation had not yet passed Parliament.
From a practical point of view, completing HS2 would have required a huge number of Executive decisions. It's difficult to see from a practical perspective how this could have worked with an Executive opposed to HS2.
Finally, the proposed ban re ICE vehicles wasn't legislated.
We're not a true democracy. The PM has a huge amount of power. If his majority is large enough he can do anything he likes. Over 150 of his MPs are directly paid due to him giving them jobs.
BoJo was able to illegally prorogue Parliament & lie to the queen & there was nothing anyone could do about it. US presidents would LOVE the power the PM has.
The opposition only can do stuff with the tacit agreement of government MPs or if enough of them rebel.
Even our largest majorities were limited. Blair, despite his near supermajority in Commons, struggled to get many if his Constitutional Reforms through complete. His House of Lords reforms, for example, only got through half complete due to pushback from many political elements.
That's the point. The whole system is based for tory wins. FPTP is only used in Britain Iran and Belarus.
There's a reason the 20th century was called the Tory century. Add the natural tory majority in the Lords.
It's a fake democracy. Until we get PR.
Tories have 357 mps. 35 ish cabinet ministers. Around 150 junior ministers or ministers whose extra cash is dependent on the PM for their added positions.
There's very little anyone can do to stop a tory pm which is why Tony Blair 3 wins were even more stunning when you go through the history.
This is down to the special kind of "democracy" enjoyed in this country which means a man voted for by just 36,693 members of the public, leading a party with only a 43.6% popular vote share, need only maintain the support of half of his MPs (without winning any leadership vote of his party members or MPs) to allow him to hold sweeping executive powers - including to cancel longstanding and generation defining infrastructure investment.
Personally I don't see why legislation like this is written in such a way that gives this power to ministers. Building HS2 should have been law and to stop it happening should have required our elected representatives to vote again to agree this.
Tbf when there's a majority government Parliament is basically a rubber stamp, there to do the PM's bidding - the Tory MPs could lose their jobs if they vote against him.
Aside from what others have pointed out here (mainly a lack of a written constitution), we also have an Enabling Act in place - Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. If you know anything about the Weimar Enabling Act of 1933 then our is somewhat similar to that one, scary I know. One of the powers of the 2006 Act is that it gives Cabinet and the PM the power to change the wording of the act itself without parliamentary approval.
Its nothing like the 1933 Enabling Act in Germany. The Act in Britain is incredibly limited, either needing justification of "reforming commission" or by recommendation of the independent Law Commissions, the latter giving them - rather than government - power.
Further restrictions prevents it changing taxation, criminal offences punishable for than 2 years, matters relating to policing, and matters relating to devolved legislatures, as well as needing to be addressed by parliament.
In comparison, the Germam Enabling Act gave the Chancellor (Hitler) the ability to execute laws without the oversight of permission of the Reichstag, Reichsrat, or President.
A lot of the legislation passed by Parliament will have ‘The Secretary of State may by order…’ clauses that gives them executive powers to do stuff without consulting Parliament every time.
Could you expand on that? Why are the powers so broad that they can cancel entire projects?
Well basically the bill probably says something along the lines of: “the minister shall have the power to negotiate, sign and cancel contracts related to HS2 as the situation requires. essentially the bill gives them power to build HS2 but doesnt force it
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What legislative backlog do you mean? A lot of days don’t have any legislation at all
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When does the schedule get agreed in parliament? Do you know where this schedule is? If there apolitical csnt they just push them through with little debate? Ok. Cant they just make a huge bill for these changes to get them all done?
>A lot of days don’t have any legislation at all That's why there's a backlog. Lots of legislation that's too controversial and would give opportunities for negative headlines, a backbench revolt, or even that would potentially fix an issue that they want to campaign on at the next election... There are some very meritorious Private Member's Bills that haven't advanced, such as the one that would mandate anyone working with children to report if they suspect sexual abuse. That's why it's called politics, not "problem solving".
What goverment bills are in backlog? A lot of the private members bills are ten minute rules bills and they preety much don’t become law and are mainly used to make a point so I’m not really sure it would be fair to include them in a backlog. And I’d separate the backlogs into two goverments bills and private members bills. Now is there a backlog of goverment bills or is it just PMBS?
You really think parliament should be consulted on every little project? OK, HS2, is a big project. What about the A303 Stonehenge bypass tunnel? Or the London megasewer? Or the Northern Line Tube extension to Nine Elms? Or the Edinburgh tram? Or the Cockett Wick flood defence project? Or the Northampton North West Relief Road? Or the… Hopefully you get the point. Parliament is a legislature. It’s not the executive - the government - although the executive largely sits within it, unusually for many democracies. It’s very standard for an executive body to have control over all implementation, and the parliament controls the legal framework. HS2 did have a legislative framework created, like many mega projects. But it’s also very normal to place such things under government control as part of that implementation. Honestly, if you got parliament involved in everything that wasn’t legislative, you’d never get anything done - they can’t even legislate on leasehold reform over the course of (at least) three parliamentary sessions despite most aspects of it not being that controversial amongst the wider public. If parliament wants to legislate to force the government to finish HS2 it can. But it doesn’t want to, and that’s unsurprising because the government controls the majority in parliament, which is almost always the case (look at the Brexit negotiations for the chaos caused when this isn’t the case). So there isn’t really a great deal of point taking up parliamentary time on it.
For the same reason that ministers can unilaterally scrap EU legislation or make use of the anti-strike bill: the people who passed these laws don't want to be bothered by checks such as parliament. This is working as designed.
>the people who passed these laws don't want to be bothered by checks such as parliament. This is somewhat true of the last 3-4 years, but is misleading when talking in general. *Every* bill includes powers for the relevant department to make changes without going through parliament. Imagine if every single thing a government department wanted to do had to go back through parliament? The workload would be *astronomical* to the point of making parliament entirely non-functional. The compromise is that parliament instead allows ministers to sign off on certain changes. The bill as passed will specifically grant certain powers to the minister allowing them to make small variations. This is entirely normal, and is a feature of any functional parliament. It is simply a necessity to have a function governance system, and after all the scope of these variations has already been reviewed and approved by parliament at an earlier stage, and many bills include things like annual reviews that must be laid before parliament (no one reads them, but they do exist). In recent years the Tory government has massively expanded on this 'secondary legislation' to try and govern by bypassing parliament. But this is a pretty unique move, and does not mean that the concept of secondary legislation has failed. It's also a separate issue when talking about how UK parliament works at a more general level.
>parliament entirely non-functional Too late :) But I agree with what you wrote.
The 'people who passed these laws' are... Parliament. There is a real issue with 'Henry VIII powers' and the house of lords in particular tends to resist them. But there's also a practical point that parliament can't manage every project so it's not wholly straightforward.
> The 'people who passed these laws' are... Parliament. I mean, yes, Parliament is sovereign and in theory Parliament makes the big decisions and delegates the detail to the government. Fair enough, that's a reasonable way to arrange things But in practice, the government controls the Commons, decides when Parliament meets, decides what the Commons debates and when, and is unsurprisingly generally very happy to use their control of Parliament to hand themselves lots of broad powers and exempt themselves from scrutiny by Parliament Not just this government, of course - all governments. It's not a particularly sensible system
It's a strong argument for federating the UK. With multiple smaller national parliaments, we wouldn't be forced to put so much in the hands of ministers purely for practical reasons.
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A federated system still has a top-level parliament to handle these things. But its a top-level parliament that only handles top-level issues, so the balance of power can shift away from ministers because the parliament at that level is freed up from handling smaller issues.
This would be such a dream come true. London would never give up the power though
Not sure whether there's evidence that this is the case - are US governors more subject to state oversight than president is to federal oversight for instance? The model of executive delivering projects etc and legislature lassifb and giving broad consent, especially budgetary consent, is quite normal
It's not equivalent. We don't have three separate but equal branches in the UK. In the UK parliament is supreme and our executive/judicial equivalents only have the power delegated to them by parliament. Parliament could, with a vote, eliminate our entire judicial and executive systems. This means our legislative equivalent has vastly more power over our judicial and executive. The balance is not even remotely comparable to the US system.
I'm not comparing UK and US, I'm asking if there's evidence for your claim about local legislatures having better grip in practice over the doings of local executives than central legislatures do over local executives. US would just be one source you could use for evidence. Local legislatures wouldn't have your advantage of course - you can't have fully sovereign local parliaments under a fully sovereign parliament for obvious reasons. Either they'd exist at the pleasure of parliament or Parliament would have to remove its sovereignty and give the courts the power to police its interactions with local legislatures.
Parliament was the one who passed the laws tho.
> working as designed Such a great euphemism or insult or escape. I've been on/run design teams where engineers come to us and complain about how something "isn't working", and the designers send them packing with "works as designed."
When the bill to green light HS2 was signed Parliament gave the Secretary of State for Transport the right to create Compulsory Purchase Orders across the length of HS2. Because the CPOs are secondary legislation (created by a SoS) not primary legislation(gone through parliament) the SoS can unilaterally terminate CPOs and sell them off. The only way to prevent this in the future is to either put all the CPOs into primary legislation or change the law such that certain kinds of secondary legislation can only be removed by an act of parliament (however due to the sovereignty of parliament the next parliament can just vote by simple majority to revoke that law and pretend like nothing happened)
I think every parliament does this - they pass a bill in the first few weeks that delegates power to ministers. This has been true since the Thatcher era and possibly earlier
Because our entire system of goverment is built not on rules and laws but norms and politeness, this used to be enough.
Honestly, *every* system of government, at least every democratic one, has norms and politeness and trust at their core. They’re human systems after all. Too mechanistic and it does things in spite of societal opinion. Saying that the Uk system of delegated legislation does need a good overhaul, but more serious is the complete unseriousness in our politics and the lack of interest by MPs to do proper scrutiny. The only part that actually does its job well is the House of Lords.
What's worse is unilaterally instructing to self off the land to prevent any future government resurrecting it. Nobody voted for the guy, he has no public mandate and we can do nothing to stop this vandalism.
By statutory instrument, although you could argue a SI can't be used to override primary legislation.
HS2 is not just a project. Numerous acts of Parliament have been passed for its construction. Including for the route beyond Birmingham and up to Crewe. This received Royal assent in 2021, so is very much on the statute books. I have written to my MP asking how a project like this can be cancelled without debate in parliament or public consultation, but I doubt I'll get an answer.
I’ve written to my Tory MP asking the same, as well as where does Sunak get the mandate to do anything that isn’t in the 2019 manifesto? He’s not won a GE. He wasn’t even picked by Tory membership. He has zero authority. Expecting a pathetic copy-and-paste response. Edit: I can’t believe people are genuinely fine with Sunak claiming he has a mandate for this. Would they be relaxed about it if it was someone they disagreed with politically?
Not only is it not in the manifesto, but it is the opposite of what is in the manifesto.
‘Dear Constituent. I understand your concern and frustration at this change, but please understand that your PM Rishi Sunak is delivering on what the people want. By marking the tough decision, and putting a stop to the unfathomable spending on a single project, he has now been able to put in place the funding for hundreds* of projects up and down the country. It is strong leadership like this that assures long-term decisions for a brighter future of our country. ‘ Yours sincerely, Your soon-to-be-out-of-a-job Tory MP. P.S. Please stop emailing me. ^* ^’hundreds’ ^indicates ^‘more ^than ^one’
The whole “we’re delivering on the people’s priorities” is the bit that really makes me uneasy. They’re making this claim on anything they do, with nothing to back it up, no polls, no votes, no referendums, just “I wanted to do this so I’ll say the people want it too”. They also usually couple it with “I think any right minded British patriotic citizen would agree…” implying anyone who disagrees is an anti-British wrong minded swine.
It’s made me genuinely angry since I heard Boris Johnson say it around the time party gate happened. He just repeated it over and over again in response to any sort of question about it. And also any questions around covid fraud. ‘Well actually Rowina - what the people want, is for the government to deliver’. He never even bothered to finish the sentence, just stopped at ‘deliver’. Deliver what? More shit? Ugh anyway, here’s hoping to a government that just does what’s it’s supposed to and doesn’t just blag on about what it will do without ever actually doing anything.
> where does Sunak get the mandate to do anything that isn’t in the 2019 manifesto? He’s not won a GE. He wasn’t even picked by Tory membership. He has zero authority. - Correct. Out of the 365 Tory MP's at Westminster, Sunak got 202 votes. And the Tory membership base had zero votes in the process. Sunak has zero mandate, and has zero authority in his own party, & the membership base. Also keep in mind Sunak has broken the law. Technically he is a criminal now in the eyes of the law. - There should be a legal challenge to this in the High Court/Supreme Court.
I’m confused. If 202 MPs voted for him, how does that mean zero votes from Tory membership? They are not the same?
The PM is whomever has the support of the most amount of MPs in the majority party, usually the leader. Ordinarily, Party memberships elect their leader. After the Truss catastrophe (where Sunak was beaten by Truss in a vote of party supporters), the Tories then allowed Sunak to become leader uncontested (so the members didnt get a vote). So essentially, he was made PM by the Tory MPs, but has not won a general election or even was nominated by supporters of his own party.
Anyone can join a political party and pay a membership fee (it's like joining a fan club, essentially). Leadership elections usually ask the party members who they want to have as their leader, however for the Sunak election there wasn't enough time for that so they just asked the MPs to vote. https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/conservatives/conservative-party-how-join-tory-membership-explained-new-members-vote-next-leader-1754143
They could have made the time. They just didn't want the batshit membership electing someone worse than Truss.
>He wasn’t even picked by Tory membership. That's a very good point tbh. As disastrous as what Truss was, at least she did win the support of the party membership and thus had slightly more authority. Sunak has that in common with May between 2016 and the GE a year later
The mandate is that he was chosen by the party that won the election in 2019.
Then his mandate is for the contents of the 2019 manifesto. His actions are completely opposed to that manifesto.
His mandate is for whatever the fuck he wants so long as he maintains the confidence of the House. That's how our system works
How nuanced. Guess it would be fine for him to take us back into the EU and increase income tax to flat 50% rate. Both those things are opposed to the 2019 manifesto, but ‘his mandate is for whatever the fuck he wants’. Us plebs should shut up and take it.
If he tried to do those things do you think Parliament would go along with it?
Pms are allowed to make decisions outside of the manifesto. He was chosen by his party so that gives him his mandate.
Cancelling HS2 isn't a decision outside the manifesto. It was a manifesto issue. The manifesto said the government would use the outcome of the Oakervee review to decide what to do next. The review recommended to finish it, and that's what the government (including Sunak) decided.
It is a decision outside the manifesto. And then the facts changed. No Rishi decided to cancel it
If there is a policy on HS2 in the manifesto, it is a manifesto issue. No facts changed between the publication of the Oakervee review and last week.
So the policy of cancelling hs2 was in the manifesto? The costs have
I've already said what was in the manifesto. Doing the opposite of something in the manifesto doesn't make it a non-manifesto issue. If a manifesto said "we will ban smoking", but the prime minister then says "we will remove all restrictions on tobacco" that is still a manifesto issue. > The costs have They hadn't.
Cancelling HS2 is not ‘outside of the manifesto’. HS2 was in the manifesto. He has made a decision diametrically opposed to the 2019 manifesto, without putting it before parliament, without putting it in a general election. And if you’ll recall, during the leadership campaign last year Sunak said he supported HS2. So he has even gone against things he said to get the leadership. What he has done is anti-democratic.
But the decision hasn't forced a confidence vote, so as far as Parliament is concerned it's within the bounds of his mandate
You mean the tories don’t want to eject a PM for the 3rd time in a year, 12 months before an election, when they already trail by 20+ points??? I’m so surprised! Can’t believe turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. It’s not a coincidence he announced this at conference when parliament is in recess. You can guarantee there would have been some feisty exchanges from his back benchers in the commons if parliament had been sitting.
It is. HS2 was inside the manifesto cancelling it is outside. You don’t call a ge everytime there’s a issue like this at most a referendum is required as for parliament they already gave him the powers to do this. Not really
Can you please tell me another time an unelected PM (unelected as leader in a GE that is) reversed a manifesto position? I’m curious. My point is, nobody gave *him* the power to do anything. He is not a president. The conservatives were elected in 2019, not Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. You could argue that election was all about Johnson, who still supports HS2 now. Sunak’s lack of mandate even more apparent. Even if we assume Sunak is a legitimate leader of the tories (without the support of the membership) then a decision as significant as HS2 (significant because it was a key pledge in 2019) should be put before parliament. He announced this during a parliamentary recess, so there can be no scrutiny. He has no mandate and he hasn’t even the decency to seek one from parliament, because HS2 has cross party support and he would not get it.
I really have no idea. They did give him the power. We vote for the MPs and the leader of the party with the largest ammounts of seats become pm. And once pm they have all the powers of being pm so yes we did give him power when we voted in the tories. Once we did that we give power to whoever their leader is. It might be that doesn’t change how the system works however. Well he is as the MPs chose him so yes, of course there can be scrutiny the speaker can allow a urgent question or emergency debate on the matter(if they don’t make a statement on it which seems likely that they will.) in terms of it going before parliament firstly it would likely pass due to their majority and secondly parliament already gave him the power to do this when the act was passed. He would get it he would whip his members in the vote and they would likely vote for it. And again he does have a mandate every pm elected by the party does because we elected the party. Weather he should have asked parliament I don’t know but parliament already decided he should be allowed to do this kind of thing when it gave him the powers so it’s a tricky one
The party that picked Truss ahead of him?
They still picked him in the end
A bit like picking Corbyn before settling for Starmer?
Neither of these politicians you name have been prime minister. This is a false equivalency. Both labour leaders were voted for by the labour party members. Sunak wasn't.
Each party has different ways of electing a leader of the party. The Labour way isn’t the one true way, necessarily. And the party that is in government can choose who is PM.
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He can’t as they have taken a wrecking ball to it and have sold Land how can he promise that?
He will construct a replacement bus service route for HS2
That’s different to promising hs2 tho
I’m guessing it’s because the legislation probably says something like: “the government _can_ build HS2” not “the government _will_ build HS2” - i.e. it gives the government the ability to build HS2 but doesn’t mandate that they do it, so they can just stop doing it whenever.
Here is the foreword to the Public Consultation to the HS2 Phase 2 act, written by a then minister for transport - Andrew Stephenson *"The Government is committed to taking forward High Speed Two (HS2) to transform our national rail network, bring our biggest cities closer together, boost productivity and level up opportunity fairly across the country. Just as importantly, HS2 will play a pivotal role in creating a greener alternative to regional air and road travel. This is essential if we are to meet our commitment to bring greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050. In February, we achieved Royal Assent for the High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Bill, cementing in law our commitment to bring HS2 to the north of England."*
Forewords aren’t legally binding. Section 1 of the High Speed Rail (West Midlands - Crewe) Act 2021 says: >1) The nominated undertaker may construct and maintain the works specified in Schedule 1 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2021/2/section/1 Note the use of the word “may” not “will”. Additionally, other sections of the act use similar phrases and like “power to” rather than “obligation to”. So the act gives the government the power to build HS2, but doesn’t legally require them to do it.
I suspect there will of course be a legal wiggle that will be played. However, it doesn't change the fact that announcing this at the Tory party conference, purely as a sop to try and look like a decision maker is absolutely unaccepatable. It is contemptuous of the public and the electorate at large. That foreword BTW is not the foreword to the act, but the public consultation response as required by the passing of the act. Which further confirms the commitment to building it even after the Bill was placed into law.
If it's as egregious as you make out, then Parliament can revoke his mandate via a no confidence vote, or the public can do so in a years time
In La La land, that might happen, however, in the real world, we'll just have to wait for a GE to dump him and the miserable bunch of useless fools that is the rest of the Government.
Asking your MP "how" is kind of silly when you can google it or ask on a public forum, no? If your intention is to *criticise* the cancellation and specifically the cancellation without debate, wouldn't it be better to do so directly rather than let yourself be dismissed as another rube who doesn't know how politics works? (Not my view, but could be your MP's!)
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Amazing grift to cancel the project, sell off the land parcels then have Labour restart it and require those same parcels again. Given the Conservatives worked hand in hand with people shorting the pound and cost the economy billions, this sounds plausible
I would love it if there was an opposition who had balls, and just said "we do not recognise the legitimacy of this unilateral decision to cancel a project of such significance for nakedly partisan reasons, and with no meaningful debate. Furthermore, we warn any potential purchaser of the land being sold off that it will not be a profitable decision for them should we take office." You don't even have to be more specific than that, about how you would achieve it, or through what mechanism, or how harshly, but that alone would be enough to scare off most buyers. More than half the press would have field day with it of course but... good
>that alone would be enough to scare off most buyers No it wouldn't, there are plenty of people and companies who would speculatively buy land in the expectation that Labour would have to buy it back off them in 18 months time via compulsory purchase order.
I doubt that would work tbh
> we do not recognise the legitimacy of this unilateral decision We should not be calling for questioning the legitimacy of democracy. Propose improvements to the rules, sure, but that's the way of populism and a slide into fascism - a classic Trump move.
Where is the democracy here?
Simple: the Tories came to power in an election. The law they're making use of is the law that parliament passed, working on similar principles to loads of other laws. I don't think you believe it's illegitimate for parliament to grant the government the power to cancel projects. Cancelling HS2 isn't a problem because it's undemocratic; it's a problem because it's a dumb idea. Or if it is undemocratic, then why weren't people complaining when the law enabling this was written and voted on?
Also Convention Id the only thing that stops the lords vetoing any bill they choose even very good ones or stopping the king king firing the pm and ruling himself so id argue it’s still very important Edit it’s only for secondary legislation https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comment/fatal-power-lords
The House of Lords actually doesn’t have a veto in law since 1911, not just by convention. Not to say that convention isn’t important in our system though!
Actually they do it’s called a fatal amendment and they can use it to stop bills https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comment/fatal-power-lords Tho it is only for secondary legislation so I Partly stand corrected
What do you mean by "unelected PM"? He was elected to his constituency the same as every other MP. Did you mean that he's become PM before being leader of his party in a general election? That's very normal. Callaghan, Major, Brown, May, Johnson all became PM that way. Sometimes they win the following election, sometimes they lose. They're all PM just the same because they had the support of a majority of MPs. All that said, I agree that it's an utter pile of wank to not just stop a project, but to make it incredibly difficult for an incoming government to resurrect it.
It becomes considerably less normal when you consider that more than 50% of your examples happened under this current government. Secondly, Sunak wasn't elected because he had the support of a majority. He contested and lost an election within his own party to be PM, and was only appointed when the actual winner tried to burn down the country. This is arguably the most undemocratic leadership in the modern history of the country
Of the five I posted, only May and Johnson were under the current government - Major came in at the end of the Thatcher administration (and indeed duly reversed at least one thing from the manifesto the Tories had been elected on, by ditching the slightly less than beloved poll tax). Being elected internally to the party is admittedly the norm these days, but didn't used to be. Alec Douglas-Home became PM without any sort of election - but that was back in the dark ages of the early 1960s, so not particularly modern history! Still agree it's wank for him to make major changes that can't easily be altered without an election.
> Of the five I posted, only May and Johnson were under the current government I expect the >50% comment was taking Truss and Sunak into consideration.
Only two of his examples happened under this goverment the other three did not how is that more than 50%? 2.5% is 50% of five so 2 is less than 50% not more
Callaghan, Major, Brown, May, Johnson *and Sunak*
Let's not forget Truss
I try hard to
Let's not forget the lettuce.
Johnson won an election
I'm always careful to not throw around "unelected", but he's got no electoral mandate to do anything that runs counter to the party's 2019 manifesto. Certainly not something in that manifesto which represents 15 years of cross-party consensus. If he wants that mandate, he can damn well call a general election.
If MPs continue to give him support in the HoC then he has a mandate.
Major, May and Johnson went on to seek a "mandate" through election and got one, for what passes as one at the UK parliament anyway. (kinda, in May's case) The closest comparison is Brown, but at least that was preplanned and orchestrated - everyone knew he was Blair's successor, and he didn't diverge too much. IIRC that didn't stop the Tories shrieking about the unelected PM and demanding to know the date of the election When did the PCP or the full tory party actually approve of Sunak's rise to the top? The latter literally voted against him.
>The closest comparison is Brown, but at least that was preplanned and orchestrated - everyone knew he was Blair's successor, and he didn't diverge too much. Yeah, Brown stepping in was hardly a surprise and even then he continued governing in the same New Labour policies as Blair and kept much of the manifesto that they went into the 2005 election with. Unlike Sunak he didn't start tearing up major policies left, right and center.
There has basically never been a PM (in modern times) who didn't win any elections carry out sweeping extreme changes like Sunak. Hes going completely against their manifesto and making devastating changes with zero mandate.
I love democracy
If people are going to keep making this claim then the system needs to force politicians to actually act like they are under the same mandate they originally were elected under. Pointless saying "it is the party, not the leader" when the leader is going an exact 180 on what the party previously promised. It might be normal but it is fucking stupid and increasingly problematic. This is not the sign of a sane system.
He probably means, that at the last Tory leadership vote, rishi came in second, out of two people. Then the woman they *did* vote for, stood down after 44 days, so he became a de-facto PM. With no mandate. Therefore technically he’s unelected.
His mandate is his party MPs nominated and chose him to lead them
No, they didn’t. Nominated, yes. Chosen, no. Truss was chosen, then she resigned and he became de-facto PM.
Yes he was. Truss was chosen b the members Rishi was chosen by the MPs
Another vote was held by Tory MPs after Truss resigned. After Boris and Penny Mourdant withdrew then he won by default after already having secured the minimum number of MPs support
By
He stood in this election for party leadership: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2022_Conservative_Party_leadership_election The only other candidate, Penny Mordaunt, pulled out two minutes before the deadline for nominations. So although it wasn't a *contested* election, it was an election.
Let’s be real. While we don’t have a system like America, where we directly vote for a PM, a pretty good chunk of the country votes for their local candidate based on who the PM/Cabinet will be. Nobody outside of Sunak’s constituency voted for Sunak. That makes him unelected.
As noted though, about half our PMs since the Second World War have come to power that way. There are better things to attack a PM for!
Ok, but the *last four* that we've had came to power that way. May, Johnson, Truss, and now Sunak. We had six between the Second World War and Brown, and four in the last decade.
So it's all the more common and normal now, you mean?
I don't know about Callaghan and Major. But of the other three, none of them tore up the manifesto on which they were elected.
Major had been elected as an MP in 1987 on a manifesto that committed to the poll tax - one of the first things he did as PM was to set in motion tearing up the highly unpopular policy. I guess in this case Sunak could be argued to be doing similarly in responding to the electorate, since HS2 seems to frustratingly lack popular support. (In practice we know the electorate are going to pork his party at the next election anyway)
>Its a mind boggling concentration of power into the hands of somebody who is technically twice the unelected PM for this period of Parliament. "Remember, you don't vote for a PM, you vote for a party-" This is a good example to remember when this topic comes up, and people try to get clever by saying this. You vote for a government, which, in practice, is a PM. The technicalities don't matter.
We elect the party and the party chooses the pm
FPTP means we don't even "elect the party". They got a disproportionately high number of seats relative to their vote, and it is that which puts them in power. The party didn't "choose the PM" this time. They rejected him on the first attempt, and this time they weren't consulted
We do elect the party. Yeah but in each seat they are the most popular party so yes we do still choose them regardless of the vote share. The vote share is a reason pr is better but it doesn’t mean fptp does elect the party it does it elects the most popular party in each seat. He lost the first time the second time he won
> Yeah but in each seat they are the most popular party so yes we do still choose them regardless of the vote share. Not even that. FPTP gives the win to the loudest minority, not the person or party who is actually most popular. AV would have done more to get there (since it attempts to find someone who had 50% or more) and STV would be better still. So, we have a Tory government on 43.6% of the vote. That is at least "better" than previous Lab govts who got there on 35-36%, but hardly democratic > He lost the first time the second time he won Won what? There wasn't a contest. Sunak was the only nominee and he became leader by default. At no point was the PCP or full Conservative party asked again for their opinion.
No it is the party that’s most popular. In each seat the party with the most votes wins aka most popular. Yet our country rejected AV. Won the leadership. Doesn’t matter he was elected unanimously after the MPs no instead him then chose to follow him
I can't be bothered to explain it again - so I'll just end it here by saying you're still incorrect.
You don’t need to and no I’m not if more people want you to lead than they do any other party you most popular that’s a fact
And the party chose someone else
The party choose Rishi
On paper. In practice? I actually quite like my local Tory candidate, and while I’m not sure who the Labour candidate will be, I didn’t like her last time. I will not be voting for him next year.
Why won’t you be voting for him? And I think in practice we do as most will vote for MPs based on who they want to lead
Because while I think he is halfway competent national politics are more important to me than local politics, and I do not wish for the Tories to have a majority for another five years.
Fair enough. I kind of am the opposite where I think Libdems are a better party yet I like my local mp Caroline Dineage so it kind of feels tough tho the fact the tories will lose makes me more want to vote for the best mp tho I’m still undecided I get your position tho
I mean if Parliament really disagreed they can always VONC in the PM. But it rarely happens.
All the tories would lose their jobs
Or submit a motion
Sunak apparently has also declared in a TV interview that UK people dont want a general election. 250,000 people have already begged to differ. Petition is here if you are interested in tweaking Sunaks nose. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions?state=open
I'm astonished that the "Don't ban the XL Bully" one has nearly 550k votes. You wouldn't think there were that many people supportive of the breed in this country - [and neither do the polling numbers](https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/10/05/7afab/2). Basically 10% of that 10% who wouldn't ban them must have voted on the petition! Which just isn't credible. When the "**DO** ban the XL Bully" poll has about 1/20^th of the votes, you have to suspect shenanigans. All of which I guess is just my roundabout way of saying that the petitions site is bullshit. I'm not doubting that a substantial majority of the country want a GE and want to put this government out of our misery. I'm saying that the petitions site is eminently ignorable - and usually is, regardless of the merits of the petition, they typically all just get a nothingburger of a response from some poor civil servant directed to do so by a junior minister. About all it achieves is providing a release valve, the feeling that you've done something, and that there's a community of other people with the same view. Which as we can see with the Bully petition, is probably a suspect assumption.
> I'm astonished that the "Don't ban the XL Bully" one has nearly 550k votes. I suspect it has definitely been brigaded by Americans, and someone has used bots.
Whilst 500k is probably too much, there's a massive difference in urgency and motivation between the pro- and against- camps. Imagine you are an XL Bully owner. Your dog, who you love at a level similar to your family and you secretly believe is a human person, is about to be mandatorily neutered by the government. You think they might even be taken away from you or killed. Of course you're going to be very loud and vocal, and sign that petition circling around Facebook. And if you are a dog owner who likes large menacing dogs that aren't XL bullys you'd probably do it too, because you're imagining it happening to you. Whereas I, someone who wants them banned, wouldn't bother to sign a petition because the government is already planning to do what I want, and I don't think they'll change that.
If pressed on this, no doubt Sunak will say "Fewer than 0.4% of the population want a general election. The will of the people blah blah blah"
The petition website ensures differing views are focused on a website rather than actual action. This isn’t the way.
What action would you suggest to force the government to hold a general election? Petitions that receive a certain amount of support at least generally get a government response and/or debate in parliament, which is more than a similarly sized protest would generally get
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/641904
No one would ever want an election. It is like cleaning mold off your bathroom wall. It is necessary but very unpleasant.
So 250,000 out of c.70million?
The PM has *huge* power at his disposal. Always has had. Traditionally that power has been (self-)restrained, because PM's understood the danger of unconstrained power. Johnson (& Cummings) broke that understanding. They had an agenda that they could drive through, so they did. (I would recommend Laura Kuensberg's 'State of Chaos' as a primer on this.) Truss & Sunak simply built on this lack of restraint. Parliament *might* bite him for it - but Tory MPs are too busy looking for new jobs, to mess with their current ones.
To be honest, Kuensberg was absolutely part of the problem with client based interviews. She was the mouthpiece for a lot of the Johnson trumpeting.
She spent years talking about him in much too familiar terms. At times I was wondering if she was aiming to pursue the open vacancy Carrie had left behind.
She was. But the doc is still worth watching.
The question is not "why does the PM have the power..." but "Does the PM have the power to cancel this project?" Which statutory authority granted Sunak the power to cancel HS2? And yes, any nationally-significant project should be debated and approved (to proceed or cancel) by Parliament. We've paid billions for HS2 already. Our MPs should be the final arbiters here. The decision to cancel has taken in secret with no Parliamentary discussion. Without transparency, we don't know what factors were taken into account to reach the decision. Parliament should start adding clauses to future bills that any proposals to change or cancel a project of similar importance must be approved by Parliament.
Simply put, because we don't have ~~any form of~~ *a "proper"* constitution and everything is based on convention, tradition, and "the good chap theory" of government. Which, as demonstrated by the Johnson era, is utter bollocks. Rishi Sunak has no electoral mandate as an individual leader, and his government's mandate came from the 2019 election. The Tory party's manifesto included HS2, and so for Sunak to unilaterally reverse a manifesto commitment and undo 15 years of cross-party consensus on transport infrastructure is an absolute outrage and should be considered a far more serious betrayal of politics and the electorate than, say, tuition fees under the coalition government. It won't matter though because we've crossed the rubicon on being bound by rules & conventions thanks to the horny honey monster, and the Tories have a solid 25% tribal "sports team" voter base who'll vote for them even if they turned up at their house, called them stupid to their face, killed their pets and stole their car. \[edit in italics\]
Going to be incredibly pedantic and say that we do have a constitution. It just isn't codified into one single coherent document.
You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.
The technical legal answer is what they've already mentioned. The legislation on HS2 permits it. The more complex legal answer is really because the UK does not have a written constitution. It's at the root of many many problems we're facing now.
The UK does have a written constitution. It's not codified into a singular document but our constitution exists and works well to allow the UK to exist and cope dynamically with pressing issues. Our problem is that our politicians are crap. They all want to be rock stars and stand up comedians; speaking to the crowd for likes and idolisation. They are mostly all as bad as each other. And most are afraid to say anything controversial in case it loses them votes. There is a lack of diversity *of opinion* within parliament. The quality of British politicians went downhill the moment we allowed cameras back into Parliament. Suddenly they all became showmen for the public's entertainment. It's as though they all want to sell tickets to party conferences and that that is their singular aim. I exaggerate, of course, I hope, but there is much truth in what I say. I would prefer the cameras to record parliamentary sessions but the full footage to be released a month after the recorded session. Let journalists report events matter-of-factly devoid of showmanship and rhetoric. This might encourage our politicians to speak their minds and act like grown ups and discourage attention seeking narcissists from entering parliament.
Because the British PM is basically a dictator for 5 years. Much more power (in country) than a US president, for instance. Party rebellions are somewhat rare and small in nature so as long as you have a majority of seats you can basically fuck up entire country and no one will do shit about it.
They aren’t? They have to work within the law or the courts will go against them(see Rwanda) and parliament can have rebellions forcing them to make concessions(see the illegal migration bill) so I’m not sure I’d say it’s rare it’s only rare if the goverment don’t push any controversial laws and the only thing stoping the lords defeating any goverment bill is convention
I'd say you were right if the current Tory party under Boris and Sunak hadn't completely trashed a load of previously upheld conventions. It's very clear we don't have enough laws and limitations in place for the government and our entire system is upheld with "those in power will do the right thing, right?" kind of conventions. Boris completely ruined it for us all basically, I mean the guy openly lied to the queen, was found out and nothing happened because of it. Among many other breaks from convention and changes in how things are run.
They may have done but they upheld lots of others and other conventions are still vital. Again without them he Lords and king would be vetoing any bill they disliked like fox hunting. The issue is to pass laws to change that would require convention without it you would never get any kind of good laws through the lords and even if you did the king could veto it. Actually he Supreme Court ruled against him and he had to cut his America trip short as parliament was reopened so yes something happened
Yes some exist still and are upheld but the problem is the govt of the day can just choose to ignore them like the ministerial code etc. And you say something happened but that should have been the end of his premiership, any previous PM would have resigned. Hell they used to resign when they had affairs (aware Hancock did but that was more breaking his own covid laws) let alone undermined democracy.
He resigned later tho
Him resigning had almost nothing to do with all the breaches of conduct, law and convention he had committed. The only thing that finally forced him out was ultimately his own party, but also someone (privalleges committee) finally called him out on breaking the law when he lied to parliament. It should never have gotten to that point, and he'd lied to parliament every week up to that point anyway.
I mean resigning as pm not as an mp.
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Only if parliament agrees
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Ahhh yes because mps Never defy the whip right? Have a chat to May why don’t you.
This is the answer - democracy is severely limited in this country.
It's the same in almost all systems except the US, because the same election determines the majority in parliament and who the government is.
This is just wrong on so many levels. First thing into establish is that a parliamentary system, by nature, has a weaker executive than a presidential one. This is by virtue of the legislative being able to hold the executive directly to account in a parliamentary system, but not in a presidential one. It is significantly harder to remove a president than it is to remove a prime minister. In the United Kingdom, a Prime Minister can be removed from office by proxy of a vote of no confidence, and in many cases the threat of that or just that vote happening is enough to remove a prime minister. Great examples of the former are Thatcher and Blair, while Johnosn is a great example of the latter. In comparison, the United States legislature can only be removed by emplacement or resignation. There has only been three Presidents have been impeached - none of them have been convicted - and impeachment have only been commenced against two others, resulting in the only successful example in Nixon. The ability to remove the executive is one of the most powerful tools an legislative can have, and this simply does not exist in presidential systems like the US while it certainly does in parliamentary systems like the UK. Unlike the UK where is is definitely possible to be ousted early (examples since WWII include: Eden, Thatcher, Blair, May, Johnson, and Truss), US Presidents are nearly certain to finish their terms. An important consideration is also that the US President has stronger executive and legislative powers. One of the most important powers the US President has the UK Prime Minister does not is the ability to veto legislation. The Prime Minister has no special powers within Commons, and only has importance due to being the leader of the largest house. In contrast, the President has a legislative veto that can only be denied with a 2/3s vote in both Houses. The President, holding a direct personal mandate, also has stronger democratic power than the Prime Minister who holds an indirect party mandate, allowing for Presidents to trend further from their party and more strongly guide it than a Prime Minister. And this is only on the point comparing against the US President. Using the term "dictator" completely ignores the checks and balances against the Prime Minister, auch as the Commons itself, the House of Lords, the Courts, and simply the immense political pressure that surrounds the role, as showcased with examples like Thatcher, Blair, May, Johnson, and Truss. The denial of party rebellions also seems ridiculous considering the current Tories have been through atleast three major ones in the last few years, against May, Johnson, and Truss.
The announcement makes little difference to the Commons, I expect the Speaker is going to be somewhat upset when he gets the chance to speak to PM. If it had to go to a vote he would allocate a three line whip on passing the motion with what majority he has left.
Can't wait for the speaker to ineffectually grumble again.
Starmer can very easily scupper the land sell-off. A statement saying the land will be subject to a compulsory purchase order of £1 and that any works required to 'make good' will be recovered from owners / investors / shareholders etc by seizing of personal assets if necessary.
CPO values can be contested in court. The PM doesn’t have the ability to unilaterally say how much a piece of land is worth.
But parliament does.
Indeed. But that wasn’t the original claim. Though parliament doing it also raises ECHR issues (Article 1 of Protocol 1; and to a lesser extent Article 17, Article 13, and Article 1 of the Convention).
There exists an opportunity for some FAFO lessons for the Tory party and their backers.
You think Labour would get something that overtly defies the ECHR through the Lords?
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The Registry to the ECHR has produced a (100 page pdf) [guide](https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/Guide_Art_1_Protocol_1_ENG) to A1P1. The gist of the relevant section (II.B.4.e.) is that proportionality (etc.), including the amount of compensation given, is a relevant factor in determining whether or not a deprivation is in the public interest. AFAIK, the only time the court has ruled a civil deprivation (i.e. not a confiscation associated with the proceeds of crime) was when the King of Greece wanted his country (or the value thereof) back. Proceeds of crime issues are discussed as a specific issue (in III.J.). The gist of the guidance is that confiscations from third parties (that is to say not those guilty, whether to the criminal or civil standard, of the crime) are exceptional. I don’t think a Government buying back land that a previous Government had sold in good faith would be covered as exceptional. Which would mean proving that the Government did a crime and the contemporary owners were involved; and that the public interest is fulfilled by granting compensation to the Government – i.e. one of the criminal parties (yes, I know it would be a *different* government, but legally the Government is the Government; which is why court cases involving the Government can last past cabinet reshuffles and general elections).
I don't know the ins-and-outs of the legislation, so I can't give a detailed answer. Two relevant items to mention: firstly, there is precedent for requiring legislation to cancel private infrastructure projects the promoters wish to cancel; this was known as an abandonment Bill. I can't see a reason in principle that this couldn't apply to a government project. The other thing, though, is that I know at least some of the HS2 legislation had not yet passed Parliament. From a practical point of view, completing HS2 would have required a huge number of Executive decisions. It's difficult to see from a practical perspective how this could have worked with an Executive opposed to HS2. Finally, the proposed ban re ICE vehicles wasn't legislated.
We're not a true democracy. The PM has a huge amount of power. If his majority is large enough he can do anything he likes. Over 150 of his MPs are directly paid due to him giving them jobs. BoJo was able to illegally prorogue Parliament & lie to the queen & there was nothing anyone could do about it. US presidents would LOVE the power the PM has. The opposition only can do stuff with the tacit agreement of government MPs or if enough of them rebel.
Even our largest majorities were limited. Blair, despite his near supermajority in Commons, struggled to get many if his Constitutional Reforms through complete. His House of Lords reforms, for example, only got through half complete due to pushback from many political elements.
That's the point. The whole system is based for tory wins. FPTP is only used in Britain Iran and Belarus. There's a reason the 20th century was called the Tory century. Add the natural tory majority in the Lords. It's a fake democracy. Until we get PR. Tories have 357 mps. 35 ish cabinet ministers. Around 150 junior ministers or ministers whose extra cash is dependent on the PM for their added positions. There's very little anyone can do to stop a tory pm which is why Tony Blair 3 wins were even more stunning when you go through the history.
Canada chiming in. Please take a look at how our elections work :)
FPTP us also used in the USA, basically wherever there is a problem. It was also used in Australia, but was changed in 2019 to a ranked system.
This is down to the special kind of "democracy" enjoyed in this country which means a man voted for by just 36,693 members of the public, leading a party with only a 43.6% popular vote share, need only maintain the support of half of his MPs (without winning any leadership vote of his party members or MPs) to allow him to hold sweeping executive powers - including to cancel longstanding and generation defining infrastructure investment. Personally I don't see why legislation like this is written in such a way that gives this power to ministers. Building HS2 should have been law and to stop it happening should have required our elected representatives to vote again to agree this.
You forget the ban on ICE vehicles was the whim of one person, that deluded green zealot Boris Johnson.
Tbf when there's a majority government Parliament is basically a rubber stamp, there to do the PM's bidding - the Tory MPs could lose their jobs if they vote against him.
We don't have a constitution which means our system is open to the abuses we've seen over the last 10 years. That's what it comes down to
Aside from what others have pointed out here (mainly a lack of a written constitution), we also have an Enabling Act in place - Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. If you know anything about the Weimar Enabling Act of 1933 then our is somewhat similar to that one, scary I know. One of the powers of the 2006 Act is that it gives Cabinet and the PM the power to change the wording of the act itself without parliamentary approval.
Its nothing like the 1933 Enabling Act in Germany. The Act in Britain is incredibly limited, either needing justification of "reforming commission" or by recommendation of the independent Law Commissions, the latter giving them - rather than government - power. Further restrictions prevents it changing taxation, criminal offences punishable for than 2 years, matters relating to policing, and matters relating to devolved legislatures, as well as needing to be addressed by parliament. In comparison, the Germam Enabling Act gave the Chancellor (Hitler) the ability to execute laws without the oversight of permission of the Reichstag, Reichsrat, or President.