Only in Britain and in Iran do the mullahs sit in the Legislature.
The British Legislature has two Chambers – the House of Commons and the House of Lords. For any legislation to be passed it needs to receive the consent of both Chambers. Members of the Commons, MPs, are elected to represent individual constituencies. Most members of the Lords are there because they’ve been nominated by a past Prime Minister – there is a well-respected convention that the nominations must include people from opposition parties and from totally outside politics.
However, a few members of the Lords are still there by historic right. These include 26 people who are Bishops in the Church of England. Incredible as it may seem to people from other countries, these Bishops can declare their total opposition to a piece of legislation and their determination to stop it becoming law. In the case of the current Assisted Dying Bill, they have declared just that.
Each of these 26 people has been nominated by the Archbishop of Canterbury and all are professional members of the clergy. There are no other religions represented and there are no representatives for the Catholics or other elements of the Christian faith. Only 12% of the British population feel affiliated to the Church of England.
Most members of the House of Lords, deeply conscious that they lack the democratic accountability of the House of Commons, usually confine their debates to sensible amendments of intended legislation. It is almost unknown for them to mount a full-on battle against a new law which has already been passed by the Commons. Yet, throwing caution to the winds, all the Bishops are now charging into the voting lobbies in headlong opposition to the current Bill, ignoring as they do so that it commands 70% support amongst British voters and, apparently, the active support of George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury himself.
Will they succeed ? It is reassuringly unlikely that they will be able to defeat the whole thing but, just possibly, they could be kicking up just enough of a time-consuming fuss to ensure the Bill simply gets bogged down in procedural niceties and never actually reaches the Statute Book.
