| Viper1 said:
It opens the doors for further conscriptions, civil service duty, etc... |
Actually, it doesn't. You may or may not have noticed, but Gordon Brown won't do this without putting it in a manifesto and putting it through election first.
That's simply because Parliament will not let the Government get a bill through without a mandate. You can only have a mandate if there's an overwhelming public outcry (read: Dangerous Dogs Act, Hunting with Dogs Act, and whatever Act it was that put on scriter gun control), a referendum on the matter, or if it was in the party's manifesto leading up to election.
A good example of Parliament putting a stop to something that the Government wanted without mandate was the 42-Days Bill that they tried to push through last year.
Of course, this isn't a written rule, merely a convention - but conventions hold an amazing amount of power in the British constitution.
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One other point: The Labour party, since its election in 1997, has sought to increase democracy in the UK, and Gordon Brown in particular has passed a few Acts to increase democracy in the UK, the Supreme Court Act, for example, abolished the Law Lords and has finally seperated the Judiciary and Legislature - something that the Americans have been doing since the birth of their constitution.
