| > Having moved from the US to a Westminster country, I have to say that even British MPs can look an awful lot like rubber-stamp voters. The system is set up to punish them severely if they dare to seriously endanger anything the cabinet wants. Not really. Parliament inflicts major defeats and signficant amendments quite a lot, several times a decade. Which is a lot. And you have to understand that there is implicit context here, which is that Parliament really doesn't like having the piss taken out of it, doesn't accept disrespect, and hasn't for several hundred years. It does take a long view of the British parliament to understand how the longstanding collective spirit of parliament as an entity, a community, influences which legislation government even tries to put before it. There are some notable exceptions (particularly in this parliament) but as a general rule, ministers don't have the whipping power they tend to think they have. What you see is a series of acquiescences, but what government sees is a process/approach that rules out things they would want to do that they won't ever get through parliament. Select committees in particular are brutal. We are heading towards a period of time where the government of the day is going to have a lot more power, and what you will see is paradoxical: longstanding members on the back benches of the government side will become even more vocal about the importance of respecting parliament. It's amazing the way it happens, and it is often underwritten by a little bitterness about not getting a ministerial or PPS job that becomes a balancing force. |