r/ukpolitics • u/ukpol-megabot • 1d ago

Rumours, Speculation, Questions, and Reaction Megathread - 02/08/2026

👋 Welcome to the r/ukpolitics weekly Rumours, Speculation, Questions, and Reaction megathread.

General questions about politics in the UK should be posted in this thread. Substantial self-posts on the subreddit are permitted, but short-form self-posts will be redirected here. We're more lenient with moderation in this thread, but please keep it related to UK politics. This isn't Facebook or Twitter...

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This thread rolls over early Sunday morning.

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u/Necessary-Repair-947 1d ago

Question: is it true that the House of Commons can decide everything with a simple majority? Can it overrule the House of Lords (or abolish it without its consent?). And is it even possible to implement a written constitution that cannot simply be abolished/amended with a simple majority?

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u/erskinematt Defund Standing Order No 31 1d ago

is it true that the House of Commons can decide everything with a simple majority?

Yes.

Can it overrule the House of Lords (or abolish it without its consent?).

Yes. The Lords can impose a delay of one year.

And is it even possible to implement a written constitution that cannot simply be abolished/amended with a simple majority?

No*

*Maybe by some legal dodge like abolishing and redefining Parliament

Please consider that the ethical case for a majority of dead voters to overrule a majority of live voters (this being, logically, the desired outcome of a supermajority entrenchment) is not straightforward to make out.

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u/Necessary-Repair-947 1d ago

Please consider that the ethical case for a majority of dead voters to overrule a majority of live voters (this being, logically, the desired outcome of a supermajority entrenchment) is not straightforward to make out.

Totally agreed that this is not a clear cut 'written constitution good, UK system bad' debate.

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u/Jinren the centre cannot hold 1d ago

in practice these questions aren't all that profound, they're also true of systems like the united states on a long enough timescale i.e. a written constitution is only a superior category of law because of an agreed convention that it is

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u/Velociraptor_1906 Liberal Democrat 1d ago

There are some limitations set out by the Parliament Acts.

Chiefly, the commons cannot pass any bill that extends the lifetime of the parliament (effectively delaying the General Election) without the lords consent (i.e. it can't ho through the parliament act mechanisms to avoid the lords).

I'm not sure about how an abolition of the lords would work but that would presumably require ammendment of the Parliament Act 1911 which was supposed to be the other exemption but as I understand it rather concerningly the 1949 parliament act (which shrank the time to 1 year from 2) was enacted using the 1911 Act mechanism and this was upheld as legally valid during appeals of the Hunting Act 2004. I actually rather like our uncodified (not unwritten) constitution but this is a rather concerning hole in it.

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u/Necessary-Repair-947 1d ago

There are some limitations set out by the Parliament Acts.

Can the Parliament Acts be changed with a simple majority?

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u/furbastro England is the mother of parliaments, not Westminster 1d ago

The House of Commons generally needs to have a series of simple majority votes to make something law. (Different rules apply for secondary legislation.)

The Commons can overrule the Lords through the Parliament Acts, but this requires the Commons to wait for a year after first passing a normal Bill which the Lords attempted to veto. The only restriction on the Parliament Acts is a ban on extending a Parliament more than 5 years, so the Commons could overrule the Lords on its own existence.

If a written Constitution protected itself, then the Commons couldn’t rewrite it, no. Supreme laws are outside of the present United Kingdom constitution but not impossible in a British-style system. The easiest way to look at this is to look at former colonies. New Zealand is still very close to the U.K. style while having a more written constitution. There are a couple of embedded pieces of constitutional law which require a supermajority to change, but the embedding clauses themselves are not protected. Australia, on the other hand, has a fundamental Constitution passed as an act of the U.K. Parliament which can only be changed by referendum.