Hiya Kali
By all the available evidence, Galloway appears to be a crook and con man. However, his outspokenness and sheer chutzpah, unusual among our politicians, has won him a lot of grudging (and delighted) respect among the anti-war faction among others.
Someone over the pond clearly boobed by not doing their research into this guy. They failed to advise the senate committe what they would be in for if they attempted to arraign him. We all knew over here, of course. And we were gurgling in anticipation for weeks before the event. The entire nation, as far as I can tell, gathered round their television sets to watch the fun as he simply used the committe as a forum to attack the American Government over its war mongering. ROTFLMFAO
On reflection, I agree with Kal about how easy it would be to elect the Lib Dems into power - if they got votes in the right places. That is what is so absurd about the first-past-the-post system. The Lib Dems have been getting very respectable voting percentages in recent elections, but it has never translated into many seats in Parliament. I guess it is similar in the U.S. It is the distribution of votes that elects a party to government here not the overall percentage.
As happens not infrequently, a party with a minority of votes may end up with a majority of seats in Parliament and therefore, according to the UK 'constitution,' forms the next government.
You probably know about the 'constitutional' issue here in the UK. England has not been sucessfully invaded or had its political institutions disrupted by external influence since the Norman Invasion of 1066. That means the English have a legal and constitutional system that is older than (and completely unlike) anything else in Europe. Everything here is based upon the ancient common law, precedent and traditional practice.
The reason we have so many bizzare and anomalous institutions is because we've never had anything like the French Revolution, so there has never been an opportunity or an incentive to tear up the system and start again on a rational basis. We just adapt what we already have to new circumstances. That is why we have medieval institutions mixed up with modern ones, eg. a hereditary King or Queen presiding, as head of state, over a modern 'democratic' system. And if we haven't got any suitable 'ancient' traditions to hand, we invent some. We're quite good at that.
The'constitution' is no different, it is just a huge pile of ancient practice and tradition. Nothing is written. Within this tradition, the 'Will of Parliament' is sovereign. Parliament can do anything it damn well likes and there is no legal power to stop it. A simple majority in parliament could change the constitution wholesale any time it wanted. That doesn't happen only because the weight of tradition hangs heavy on the mental processes of British politicians and the British populace. The state must adapt, to new circumstances, the theory goes, but the weight of tradition ensures that it will change only slowly and carefully. The main stabilising force in British law and governance is therefore historical inertia (not written documents or checks and balances).
The main counterbalance to the power system is a long history of rioting, political activism and a skeptical approach to political and legal authority among the general population. This might surprise you. We are a pretty surly lot. Yes, the British appear to be docile at present, but I suspect you will find that is skin deep.
(I get the impression that most Americans appear to be ignorant of their own grass roots political traditions, where the populace regularly confronted power on the streets and often with great heroism and self sacrifice right from the early settlement days up to the mid-20th century. After the 1940s, radical political opposition was effectively silenced and curtailed. Popular history, as far as my reading goes, seems to has been written out of the school history books in the US by the same Post World War II propaganda campaign I mentioned earlier. )
In the UK the relationship between Parliament and government have never been clearly defined and they change slightly as governments suceed one another. Over recent years the office of the Prime Minister has become increasingly dominant both over the government and over Parliament, and this, according to many, is leading to a constitutional crisis.
As you probably know, there is no clear 'separation of powers' here, so the members of the government also have seats in Parliament. Strictly speaking, in the British system we do not elect a government. We elect individual politicians to parliament. The party which has the majority of politicians elected in parliament is, by tradition and practice, invited by the Queen to form a government. That party's leader becomes Prime Minister (usually) and he selects his major ministers, who then form 'The Cabinet,' which is the core of the UK Government.
From an establishment point of view, this all works pretty well. And, relatively speaking, it has some positive consequences. For instance, unlike most western nations who have a Bill of Rights we have none. Americans often think this is a bit scary and regard their system as superior, offering more protection for the individual. That's debatable, however. It is actually the very lack of a Bill of Rights which secures individual freedom in British society. Almost everwhere a Bill of Rights exists, the principle is 'everthing is forbidden unless it is specifically included in the Bill.' Under the British system, everything is permitted unless it is specifically forbidden by law'. And that right to do anything you like so long as it is not illegal is maintained by the 'common law,' the same ancient, weighty pile of tradition I was speaking about earlier. The problem with a Bill of Rights, so the argument goes, is that it cannot codify everything that a citizen might want to do even though it might not be specifically outlawed by statute. A Bill of Rights is therefore likely to limit rather than permit individual freedoms.
In practice, looking at it from a dissenting perspective, it probably doesn't matter a damn. I don't see any particular advantage any way. Whatever way you have of codifing power relations, the result is the same. The whole legal and constitutional system as well as the doctrinal system changes and develops according to the needs of Capital, and the interests of its owners, not the needs of the population at large. That's as true here in the UK as it is in the US or anywhere else.
I must be nuts spending New Years Day writing all this stuff. But there you go. I must be filling an evolutionary niche somewhere.
I've been invited over to some friends to celebrate New Year, sitting round their log fire and eating mince pies, scones and damson jam. yummie! The British Constitution will look after itself. Gotta go!
