Building an Infrastructure for Tyranny in the UK

One of the peculiarities of Great Britain is that they have no constitution, so they can change what should be inalienable rights with a law.

A few years back, for example, they removed the right to remain silent in a criminal investigation, and so juries can now explicitly use non-testimony against the defendant.

Well, as part of the coalition deal the Tories and the Lib-Dems, they intend to
set a fixed 5 year term for the parliament.

The current state of parliamentary terms is a maximum of 5 years, but new elections can be called before then, and have to be called before then if there is a failure of a confidence vote.

Well, Conservative David Cameron, Liberal-Democrat Nick Clegg have decided to go with a fixed term of 5 years, requiring at least a 55% vote of Parliament to dissolve the institution.

It appears that this was done because Clegg is concerned about getting cut loose as soon as it is convenient for Cameron.

While this is understandable it is a major change in the way British governance works.

In the US, with the exception of the (thankfully rare) impeachment, terms are fixed, and state actors are controlled by checks and balances from competing branches of government.

This is not the case in a parliamentary system. The Prime minister has much greater powers, particularly in the UK, where there is no formal constitution.

What prevents excesses in government by the ruling party is the threat of government turnover at any time: the no-confidence vote can put the shoe on the other foot in very short order.

If you remove that, you remove many of the constraints on the behavior of the executive.

Clegg is being penny wise, and pound foolish.