Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein politician, has decided to step down as MP for Mid-Ulster despite never actually taking his seat in Westminster. There is just one problem: members of Britain’s House of Commons are not allowed to resign their seats.

The prohibition against voluntary resignation is based on a resolution that the Commons passed in 1624. Back then, parliamentary service was often seen as more of a burden than an honor. MPs did not receive a salary, and traveling to Westminster was no easy task. And since Parliament was still more of an event than an institution, MPs would rarely be expected to sit for more than a few weeks anyway.

Several decades later in 1680, the Commons passed a resolution forbidding MPs from accepting offices or ‘places of profit’ under the Crown. Anyone who contravened the resolution forfeited his seat. At the time, MPs feared that having colleagues on the Crown’s payroll would undermine Parliament’s independence.

Similarly, because government ministers were technically servants of the Crown, they had to resign from the Commons and seek re-election upon taking ministerial office. The practice of forcing ministers to seek re-election was not done away with until 1926.

In the eighteenth century, Crown stewardships became a legal fiction that allowed MPs to resign from the Commons. Although there were originally a number of these minor offices, the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 whittled the list down to two: the Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham and the Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead. However, these offices now exist only on paper, and their holders do not receive any sort of salary.

So now when an MP wishes to resign, he or she must write to the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Britain’s finance minister), who then signs a warrant appointing the person to one of the two stewardships. The ex-MP will hold their new ‘office’ until it is needed to allow someone else to resign. In some cases, the tenure can be quite brief: on December 17, 1985, fifteen MPs resigned at once!

Given that Martin McGuinness is a staunch republican, it is ironic that he is now technically one of the Queen’s servants. A spokesman for Sinn Fein was typically dismissive of his new appointment: “as Irish republicans we gave no time for antiquated and ridiculous titles of the British parliamentary system.”

Image Courtesy : UK Parliament

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The Labour party is looking to toughen up the New Zealand Government’s proposed Alcohol Law Reform Bill by introducing amendments including a minimum price and more power for local government to make licensing decisions.

However, Prime Minister John Key has announced he does not believe that minimum pricing will affect people’s drinking habits.

This comment concerns activist group, Alcohol Action NZ, with Professor Jennie Connor, medical spokesperson for Alcohol Action NZ, wondering where Key is getting his information from, especially since “A recent Canadian study has shown that a 10% increase in the minimum price of alcohol reduces its consumption by 16% relative to other drinks.”

Professor Connor suggests that the most effective option to deter binge drinking or ‘pre-loading’ is to combine a minimum unit price with tax increases on alcohol products.

Labour’s Justice Spokesperson Charles Chauvel agrees. “As a community, we need to get real about what encourages people to binge drink. We know that just like tobacco, the price of alcohol is a big influence on how often and how much we drink.”

However, ACT party leader John Banks disagrees, saying the reform punishes responsible drinkers rather than targeting the problem.

“Under Labour’s policy, buying a relatively cheap bottle of wine to go with dinner would be a thing of the past.”

Banks is aloso concerned about where the extra money from price increases would end up; ”because a minimum price is not a tax, all the additional revenue from a price increase will flow straight out of consumers’ pockets, into the hands of liquor companies and retailers.”

Mr Banks also suggests that price hikes will not affect problem drinkers as they are usually not responsive to those kinds of measures.

“A minimum price on alcohol will penalise responsible drinkers and is a policy that should be dismissed,” Mr Banks said.

The proposed price increase may also be accompanied by a change in the age of purchase as the Government looks at a split age system. The age of purchase at an on-licence (bar, pub or club) will stay at 18 years while the age of purchase from a bottle store or supermarket will rise to 20 years.

The Alcohol Law Reform Bill had its first reading in November of 2010 and second reading in September of 2011, with Labour’s Supplementary Order Paper released in April 2012.

The bill faces a parliamentary debate to finalize the details and then a third reading before it can become law. Many drug and alcohol activism and community groups are supporting this move, which could reduce alcohol abuse and the ‘binge-drinking’ culture in New Zealand.

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Contradicting Europe’s right-wing rise, the Danish Social Democrats have won the Danish Parliamentary election on September 15. The election have ended a decade of center-right majority in the Danish Parliament whilst electing their first female leader, Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

According to three polls released on the 14th September, voters were ready for a change as they prepared to cast their vote on the 15th, in order to elect the 179 members of Parliament. The Prime Minister in office Lars Loekke Rasmussen, who took over two years ago, replacing Anders Fogh Rasmussen who went on to be NATO Secretary General, was not taken too kindly by the Danish people as early voters cast their ballots and criticized his policies. Rasmussen lead a coalition composed of pro-market Liberals and Conservatives and was supported by the Danish People’s Party (DPP), a far-right and xenophobic party.

The election is expected to usher in the end of market reforms and strict border control, while the Socialist Democratic party will make a comeback as the majority leader in the Parliament, after 10 years in opposition.

Even though significant changes aren’t expected, Thorning-Schmidt, 44, hopes to protect the welfare system by raising taxes on banks and the rich and refrain from several austerity measures formulated by the government in order to avoid waves of contagion from debt-ridden countries. Altough Denmark did not hop on the Euro train, its economy relies on the export of national products to other European countries and its currency is subject to the uncertainty attached to the Eurozone.

According to a recent Associated Press interview, “We have a government that has believed that austerity was the right way to achieve more growth in Denmark,” Thorning-Schmidt said, “Austerity and tax cuts are not the right course for Denmark. What we want to achieve is to create more growth, kickstart the economy and then after that create the foundation for a new sustainable growth.”

The votes of Thurday’s election have been accounted for and resulted in a narrow win for the Social Democrats, with 92 seats, against the 87 seats won by Rasmussen’s coalition. Thorning-Schmidt must now manage a left-wing alliance consisted of former marxists, environmentalists, social democrats and liberals, who don’t see eye to eye in a small array of topics. There is some evidence of possible disagreement among the coalition parties. Margrethe Vestager, leader of the Socialist Liberal party, agreed to the austerity package presented by the previous government and is not backing away from that decision:

“We have made a deal which we believe is really good. It means that we will get more money in the chest and a sound economical starting point,” she said. Thorning-Schmidt’s toughest challenge has proved to be finding room in her Cabinet for the leaders of the Socialist Liberal Party and the Socialist People’s Party. According to political analyst Rune Stubager of the University of Aarhus “Her two coalition parties will try to almost tear her apart. The early retirement issue will be a big one for them to deal with.”

Hopefully, the election have created a turning point in immigration policy, as ten years of strict immigration and refugee legislation come to an end.

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Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg unveiled plans on Tuesday to transform Britain’s House of Lords into an elected body.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Clegg said that “People have a right to choose their representatives. That is the most basic feature of a modem democracy.”

“Our second Chamber, which is known for its wisdom and expertise, is none the less undermined by the fact it is not directly accountable to the British people,” he continued.

Currently, most of the 789 members of the House of Lords are appointed for life, but there are also 26 Church of England bishops and 92 hereditary peers.  Clegg’s plans would see the Lords reduced to 300 and 80 percent of its members would be elected for 15 year terms.  In order to avoid duplicating the mandate of the Commons, members of the Lords would be elected using the single transferable vote system.

The other 20 percent would be appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister.  Twelve representatives of the Church of England would continue to sit in the reformed Lords.  Rather than impose reform in one fell swoop, the government proposes phasing elected members in over three five-year electoral cycles.

The draft bill published today will be scrutinized by a joint committee of peers and MPs, and it could be a year before the committee makes a final report.  The proposals could ultimately be derailed by the Lords themselves if they refuse to pass the bill.  Theoretically, the government could use the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 to force the bill onto the statute book, but reports over the weekend suggested that they would be unlikely to do so.

Labour’s constitutional affairs spokesman Sadiq Khan criticized the proposals, calling them “a dog’s dinner, with nobody happy at the outcome—not even the Lib Dem activists, whom the Deputy Prime Minister is trying to appease.”

Any proposal to create a largely-elected House of Lords would not only anger large numbers of peers but also has the potential to upset Britain’s constitutional applecart.  The primacy of the Commons has been a settled matter since the passage of the Parliament Act 1911, but if the Lords ends up being predominantly elected, its continued subordination will be much harder to justify.  Although Clegg maintained that a reformed Lords would continue to be a revising chamber, the specter of US-style legislative gridlock looms large over the government’s proposals.

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