{"id":2735,"date":"2019-08-21T13:09:57","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T13:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2735"},"modified":"2019-10-01T10:27:22","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T10:27:22","slug":"navigating-labours-new-constitutional-position-in-the-lords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2735","title":{"rendered":"Navigating Labour’s New Constitutional Position in the Lords"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yet Labour’s strategy in the House of Lords has not been adapted to this new context. The 2015\u201317 Parliament was the first time in history that the Conservatives were in government with no easily assembled majority in the House of Lords. This has fundamentally altered the role that Labour is able to play in the Lords and, conversely, that peers are able to play in the Labour party. Yet Labour’s strategy in the House of Lords has not adapted to this new context. Labour remains a party that is culturally antagonistic and constitutionally wary of the Lords. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In November 2017, we interviewed key\nfigures of the Labour peers\u2019 group, including the late Baroness Hollis of\nHeigham, about their experiences of navigating this new constitutional\nterritory during the 2015\u201317 Parliament. In this article, we ask how the powers\nof a conservative House can be used for progressive ends.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Power and\nrestraint in the Lords<\/strong><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In 1990, when Hollis entered the Lords, the chamber was still dominated by hereditary peers, with Labour something of an insurgent force. As she later reflected, \u2018we just did what we could \u2026 we used to win things just to sort of raise morale\u2019. Although this sometimes involved the fun of  \u2018ambushes\u2019, during which members were plied with gin and hidden in cupboards until the vote, it was never flippant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Hollis\nknew, effective politics in the Lords depends upon the slow, invisible work of\nbuilding alliances among colleagues from all parties and none. This sits uncomfortably within Labour\u2019s wider political culture.\nAnd while the party may have been happy with the limited victories its peers\nwere able to achieve against the might of the hereditaries, under New Labour\nthe situation changed both numerically and symbolically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Illegitimacy\nand opportunity<\/strong><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Due to\nthe Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, it is only since 2015 that the\ntrue impact of the 1999 reforms on the Lords as a legislative arena has been\napparent. And many Labour peers remain deeply conflicted about the second chamber.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a\nsocial democratic party, Labour has, rightly, imagined itself as the party of\nthe Commons, in opposition to the Lords. While this relationship has often been\nmore congenial in practice than we might expect, the very idea of Commons primacy\nwas based on the historical assumption that a popularly elected government\nmight want to spend money against the wishes of a c\/Conservative upper chamber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is, as the constitutional analysts Meg Russell and Daniel Glover have pointed out, <\/a>what makes the current political situation in the Lords particularly novel. Because Labour’s challenge to the Conservatives tends to be over questions of public spending, the convention that the Commons has primacy on \u2018money bills\u2019 matters in a way in which it did not before. Moreover, the respective roles of the Houses have effectively been reversed, with the Lords defending public spending from a Commons set on retrenchment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet,\nconstitutional politics are lagging behind this changing reality. Labour\nremains cautious about any measures (such as the introduction of elections)\nthat might increase the legitimacy of the Lords, for fear that it would\nthreaten the freedom of action of a future Labour government. But what this\nargument doesn’t allow for is a situation where a Labour?dominated Lords might\nwant to limit the actions of a Conservative government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can\nLabour peers challenge the government on questions of public spending, without\ncalling into question either their own legitimacy or the doctrine of Commons\nprimacy? Hollis\u2019 answer to this question was simply \u2018work the system that we’ve\ngot\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pragmatism\nand ideology<\/strong><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The balance between ideology and pragmatism (or \u2018doctrine and decision\u2019, as she once phrased i<\/a>t) occupied Hollis all her political life. Similarly, many Labour peers focus on their ability to \u2018make a difference\u2019 as a way of reconciling themselves to what one called \u2018the bollocks of lordy?ism\u2019, which is at odds with both their class backgrounds and political identities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since\n2015 the Labour Lords have experienced a number of high-profile clashes with\nthe government, several of which have ended with Conservative threats to\nabolish the House of Lords altogether. While they, rightly, insist that they\nhave acted within the constitutional conventions, this tension highlights the\nextent to which one of the basic\nassumptions of our constitutional system (a radical Commons and conservative\nLords) has been upended. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most\nhigh?profile challenge that the Labour Lords have so far mounted to the\nConservative government was on its proposed reforms to working tax credits.\nInstead of rejecting the legislation, the Labour Lords, led by Hollis, took the\nconstitutionally innovative but politically cautious step of securing a delay.\nThis created time for pressure to build both\nin the country and in the Commons, which resulted in the Government revising\nits own proposals. This was an odd inversion of the roles of the two Houses,\nbut one that was curiously respectful of their respective constitutional roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The power\nto delay is one of the few real powers at the House of Lords\u2019 disposal. Since\n2015, Labour Lords have made full use of this small-c conservative power,\nparadoxically, in the service of \u2018radical\u2019 or \u2018progressive\u2019 policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

From its\nroots as an outsider party, Labour is now a key political force even in the\nmost conservative arena of the parliamentary system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is now crucial for the party to consider how it might incorporate the second chamber into both its practical and symbolic politics, and how it can use this new source of constitutional power without accommodating to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A longer version<\/a> of this article originally appeared in the <\/em>Political Quarterly journal. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In memory\nof Baroness Patricia Hollis of Heigham, 1941\u20132018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yet Labour’s strategy in the House of Lords has not been adapted to this new context. The 2015\u201317 Parliament was the first time in history that the Conservatives were in government with no easily assembled majority in the House of Lords. This has fundamentally altered the role that Labour is able to play in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":2738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1395,1405,1404,1396],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1631,1632],"class_list":["post-2735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-comment","category-government","category-law-and-justice","category-uk"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Navigating-Labours-New-Constitutional-Position-in-the-Lords-charlie-foster-xpkmxDGPz0Y-unsplash-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2735"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}