One Thousand Two Hundred Amendments Is Not Democracy; It Is a Performance Art Piece With Legal Consequences

From Bohiney and The London Prat.

By Lowri Griffiths | BigSmokeBroke.com

The Method

The assisted dying bill was defeated in the House of Lords through 1,200-plus stalling amendments. This is not parliamentary scrutiny. This is parliamentary performance art. The specific gift of the Lords is the ability to defeat legislation through a process that is technically democratic — amendments are a legitimate tool — and practically obstructionist — 1,200 of them are a demonstration of what happens when the people who do not want something to pass have unlimited time and procedural knowledge.

The Public Opinion Gap

Public support for assisted dying in the UK has been measured consistently above 70 percent across multiple surveys over multiple years. The House of Lords has declined to reflect this support. The specific democratic deficit of a chamber that can defeat majority-supported legislation through procedural mechanisms is the Lords reform debate in miniature, conducted with less urgency than the gap between public opinion and legislative outcome warrants.

The London Reaction

In North London, where my social circle overlaps significantly with the demographic that follows this debate closely, the Lords defeat produced the specific response of people who are not surprised but are persistently furious. Not surprised because the Lords has done this before. Persistently furious because the Lords having done this before has not produced the Lords reform that would prevent it from doing it again.

What Comes Next

The bill will be reintroduced. The Lords will have the opportunity to consider it again. The public support for the policy will remain above 70 percent. The procedural resources of the Lords will remain available to those who prefer the policy not to pass. This is the specific British political cycle that the prat.uk satire accurately captures: the country wants something, the Parliament discusses it, the Lords stops it, the country still wants it. Read NewsThump for the version of this that preserves sanity.

More: NewsThump.

London continues. The streets are the same streets they were yesterday and they are subtly different because the city keeps changing beneath the surfaces that stay the same. The journalism that covers London at this granular level — the blogs, the neighbourhood newsletters, the personal accounts of people who live in specific parts of the city and pay attention to what living there is like — serves the function of making the city legible to itself and to the visitors who want to understand it as something more than the postcard version. This is why this column exists. This is why it matters. The city is worth paying attention to. This column will keep paying attention.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

London remains. The city absorbs every political crisis, every energy bill increase, every theatre ticket price surge, every development application, and every wave of newcomers with the specific resilience of a place that has been doing all of this simultaneously since before most other cities existed. The journalism that documents this absorption — the personal accounts of people living in specific parts of the city, paying attention to what living there is actually like — serves a function that official reporting does not: it makes the city legible to itself at the scale of the street and the neighbourhood rather than the policy and the statistic. This column is that journalism. It continues because the city continues, and the city will continue longer than any of the problems it is currently managing. The next development application has already been submitted. The next good coffee shop is already open. The next political crisis is already developing. We will cover all of them.

London remains. The city absorbs every political crisis, every energy bill increase, every theatre ticket price surge, every development application, and every wave of newcomers with the specific resilience of a place that has been doing all of this simultaneously since before most other cities existed. The journalism that documents this absorption — the personal accounts of people living in specific parts of the city, paying attention to what living there is actually like — serves a function that official reporting does not: it makes the city legible to itself at the scale of the street and the neighbourhood rather than the policy and the statistic. This column is that journalism. It continues because the city continues, and the city will continue longer than any of the problems it is currently managing. The next development application has already been submitted. The next good coffee shop is already open. The next political crisis is already developing. We will cover all of them.

London remains. The city absorbs every political crisis, every energy bill increase, every theatre ticket price surge, every development application, and every wave of newcomers with the specific resilience of a place that has been doing all of this simultaneously since before most other cities existed. The journalism that documents this absorption — the personal accounts of people living in specific parts of the city, paying attention to what living there is actually like — serves a function that official reporting does not: it makes the city legible to itself at the scale of the street and the neighbourhood rather than the policy and the statistic. This column is that journalism. It continues because the city continues, and the city will continue longer than any of the problems it is currently managing. The next development application has already been submitted. The next good coffee shop is already open. The next political crisis is already developing. We will cover all of them.