Thread by @Staedtler

I'll tell you what's wrong with Britian's parliamentary system - oh, I'm so glad, I was hoping somebody would.

I've said before that government and parliament should be two separate entities instead of this freakshow we've got where the government is produced from the well of the general parliament.
But why? Oh yes.

It's because there is no restraint. That's what parliament is supposed to be. In its more fantastical moments it even believes itself to be.

Parliament is supposed to be a constraint on government. But it's never going to be that because the parliament and the government are the same thing.

In this country every government has control of parliament. That's the nature. The majority in parliament forms the government.

And the problem is that there is no opposing institution.
The English blabber about parliamentary sovereignty, but they're talking crap

The mythology the English have created around their parliament is a crude joke.
They pretend that MPs are each independent and if you like, sovereign of their own constituency.

Again this goes back to a kind of English gentlemen's obsession with amateurish codes of honour. Pure vomit, of course, but the English believe in it nonetheless

The fact is MPs are not independent. They do not think or talk independently, and they don't vote independently.

So the mythology of Westminster is 650 MPs of independent mind, from the least back bencher to the prime minister, ever MP the same

But the practical effect is that the majority forms the government which then also controls the mechanisms of restraint.
Utterly absurd.

A real parliament acts as a restraint on the government. It has separate powers and is elected separately. That's the only way it can act as a restraint.

But the English are so deeply - and for the most part subconsciously - attached to the idea of an English gentleman that the idea of constitutional restraint is fantastical to them.

The English parliamentary system requires one very specific belief - That an English gentleman is capable of restraining himself.
That's why they don't think they need a constitution.

When the English are ready to grow out of that nonsense and accept that the English upper class are just as corrupt as anyone else on the planet, then they will be ready to establish a grown up constitution.