It seems ironic to many of us living in Britain that our government is going round the world telling other countries that they need to become democratic; meanwhile, back home, our democracy is going backwards. Specifically, we have lost 500 years in the last decade. Not many people know that. Few remember that when Tony Blair was elected Prime Minister in 1997, one of the first things he promised to do was to 'reform' the House of Lords. What's that? Most people in the West know that the United States of America has two elected Houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate. This model was designed by the Founding Fathers to be a better version of what England had at the time: a House of Commons and a House of Lords. The Commons were the elected representatives of the people, and the Lords were all appointed by the King (or Queen). Of course, once you became a Lord, it never got taken away from you, and your descendants inherited the title, in perpetuity. It's been that way since England became a recognisable country, under the Saxons, in the 700's. Tony Blair said he was going to end all that. The first thing he did was draw up a list of peers, (that's the 'Lords' to you and me), and tell them that they weren't welcome to sit in the House of Lords any longer. Strangely, he didn't say that to everyone, and there's about 92 Lords that will be allowed to continue. Then, he continued a 'tradition' (that was started by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1957) to appoint so-called 'Life Peers' - which means you can be a Lord, but you can't pass it on to your children. Tony made a good few more of them. Finally, he invented a new category, called the 'People's Peers', who would be 'elected' by ordinary people, he said. (But they weren't: they were appointed by a specially drawn-up Committee, which he appointed personally, for the purpose). So let's sum up: the Labour government said they would abolish the hereditary peers, which they did - but not all of them, (92 left). They put in more Life Peers, (who were mostly found from a pool of their friends, cronies, relatives, and long-time supporters of the Labour Party). And then they said that people would be 'elected' to the Second Chamber, which they weren't; they were simply chosen from a self-appointed short list of community-minded citizens by a bunch of government yes-men. What a mess. Not many seem to have kept up with these developments. Ask people, and they will tell you that the 'Mother of Parliaments' in Britain has two chambers, one elected by the people, (the House of Commons), and the other not, (the House of Lords). Where do 'Lords' come from? Nobody seems to know. The general population don't appreciate that, at the moment, they are chosen at whim by the leader of the country - a situation similar to the one we had under Henry XIII, about 500 years ago. And yet, with this dog's dinner in his own backyard, the Prime Minister of Britain still has the cheek to tour the world and lecture the people about the benefits of the democratic way of life. What 'democracy'? What 'democracy' is there in the UK, when we only have one elected chamber, and a hodge podge in the other, a melting pot of men and women, all coming from different places, as if from random, and only having one thing in common: the Prime Minister likes them, and wants them to stay. It's a disgrace, and an insult to the tradition of 'democracy' which has been building in Britain since the Civil War in the 1600's. It's an insult to the people who voted for a Labour government, and expected that party to 'reform' the House of Lords; they didn't, they simply made it worse than it's ever been. And it's an insult to the people of the world, who are being told by British politicians that they need elected government. Good idea, but when are we going to get it in this country? Only when we have an elected second chamber, maybe like the USA and just about every other European country since 1945. The fact that Britain has chosen to go backwards is a mystery, especially as some Eastern European countries, and even some in Africa and Asia, have decided to follow what they see as the British 'model'. They have been sadly deceived. They have been unfortunate enough to listen to what British politicians say, rather than examine in detail what they do. The House of Lords is a complete shambles, a mess, and yet most people can't see it. Instead, they believe British politicians when they tell them that Britain 'is a democracy'. Sorry, it's not. Not now. Not any more.
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