vadinho said:
Let's see.
Britain with a hereditary House of Lords was once the world's foremost superpower. It managed to paint most of the map of the world red.
It deserved respect. Its Lords, not needing to worry about electoral popularity, helped steer the country on a course based on long term strategy.
What now?
How, exactly, will a multi-ethnic, multi-faith "senate" make Britain stronger?
It would be hilarious if it weren't true.
Gosh, what a load of tosh Vadz. The period of the rise to dominance of Britain had little to do with the rigid and hereditary class system that is the absolute curse of the UK today - in fact in was quite to opposite. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 stripped the aristocracy of its pretentious llusions and made it clear that both the aristocracy and the crown existed within the confines of a strict constitutional settlement, unlike in Europe where Absolutism and the concepts of aristocratic and devine right were to reign on for at least another century until finally swept away by the French revolution. The confirmation of the Anglican/Protestant religion as the state religion in1688 likewise cemented a (for the time) moderate religious settlement which united the British and firmly relegated religion disputes to the background, unlike in Europe where ferocious religious conflict continued well into the 18th Century. Britain in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries prospered for precisely the opposite reason you think - it prospered because it had the "least aristocratic" aristocracy Europe that knew its place within the constitutional framework and took part in the political life of the nation (by which I really mean the aristocracy accepted taxation) and was rellgiously very tolerant compared to it's European neighbours. It was all extraordinarliy liberal for the time (Voltaire loved the place) and very conductive for the incipient industrial revolution. The British aristocracy was very flexible at this time, money being more important than breeding as a marker of class. A man made rich by early industrialisation in the west country would build a fine country house, get elected as the local MP and within a generation his family would enjoy all the status and privilege of the oldest noble houses in Britain. By contrast, aristocrats that fell on hard times could and did fall out of the ruling class completely unless they married well (a point I shall come back to). The contrast with, say, the economically backward and poverty stricken Spain (the country which actually closely models the place you clearly Britain was at that tme) where the poorest hidalgo (Don Quixote for example) with a good bloodline both refused taxation and was regarded as the social superior to the richest merchant and where the blurring of church and state was institutionalised could not be starker.
Ironically, it was the very liberality, engagement and flexibility of the British aristocracy that created the seeds of the current extraordinary situation where the UK is now the most class ridden and class concious nation in Europe. The European aristocracy was literally killed off by revolution between 1789-1918. The Fench revolutionary armies swept away all the ancient forms of government and created new ruling elites everywhere except the subsequently oddified Eastern states of Russia, Austria and Turkey, all of which finally collapsed into delayed revolution under the pressure of war in 1917-1918. By contrast the pragmatic and flexible British aristocracy married itself into the new merchant class, and throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that new merchant class internalised the values of the nobility and turned its back on Industry. The decline and fall of British industrial might was, of course, relative in many ways - countries like Germany and the United States simply caught them up then passed them - but the collapse of British economic dynamism, from a race of industrialists and merchants to a race of bankers and rentiers, can also at least partially explain Britain's collapse as a supepower from 1850-1950.
If you really wanted to recapture the dynamism of Britain in the 17th-18th century then abolishing completely the House of Lords is a good start. Closing those bastions of inherited privilege, the Public Schools, would also be a brilliant idea. In the final analysis though the power of the rigid British ruling elite lies in its grip on the finance sector in the city of London. I think to smash the power of the British class system would require the smashing of the power of the city bankers. The trouble is, the ceation of a new poltical and economic settlement to replace that of 1688 would require the same trauma as the period of civil war and political/religious crisis that afflicted Britain in 1642-1688, with no guarantee the "right" side would come out on top. Whether you think that is worth it or not I suppose depends on how serious you believe the crisis to be.
Thinking about the idea of a "multi-faith" senate, I assume this a dog whistle to anti-Islamic secularists from the Torygraph. Personally, I would regard any attempt to admit unreformed Muslim religious leaders into a new upper house an utter and unmitigated disaster of the first order. As I said, the 1688 settlement contained a moderate, liberal and above all robust religious solution that has survived remarkable well for well over 300 years. British religion is constitutionally confined in a way the has proved to be most pragmatic and tolerant, much to the benefit of all involved. Islam never developed such a sophisticated constitutional seperation & blend of church and state, and politically it still dwells in a simplistic theocratic model. The only possible grounds Muslim leaders could be admitted to a new house or senate without admitting the religious settlement of the seventeenth century was finally a dead duck (with all the perils that would entail) would be to first require them to swear an oath of allegiance to the crown and the parliament. Anyone who wouldn't or couldn't simply would have no place in such a senate.
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