The roll call of second and third-generation political children now ensconced in the upper chamber because their great-great-grandad was big in a 19th or 20th-century cabinet also reflects the compulsive need UK political life continues to demonstrate for ennobling commoners who come within a sniff of political power.
Thanks to the constitutional cowardice of the first Blair government, we have now been forced to benefit from the wit and wisdom of these reactionary aristocrats for a quarter of a century, clinging on to their privileges, popping up to moan about fox hunting in The Telegraph, and generally contributing to the suffocating sense that the constitution of the United Kingdom and the values running through its uncodified codex of conventions, pieties and pomposities remain inimical to basic ideas of democratic citizenship and civic equality.
Having conceived of a plan in opposition to scrap the current membership of the House of Lords and replace it with a Senate of the Nations and Regions (Gordon Brown™), Keir Starmer has decided to revert to the timorous constitutional mean in office, and to use his thumping majority to achieve far less than he might and far less than he should.
Instead of a wholesale purge of the more than 800 peers and meaningfully democratising the upper house, he has decided to tidy up Tony Blair’s reforms by finally kicking all of Britain’s genetic legislators out of the upper house. Another triumph, you might think, for the promise of Brown’s continuing influence over his old party.
If you’ve got any Jacobin sensibilities, the scrabble for arguments to defend these peers’ indefensible privileges has been a joy to behold. Being unable seriously to defend the hereditary principle, their spokeslords have fallen back on arguments rooted in claims to expertise and a touching sense that swanking around the legislature in exchange for £361 a day and subsidised peacock and claret represents some kind of noble and self-sacrificing civic gesture.
“This is a high-handed, shoddy, political act removing some of our most serious, senior and experienced peers. Are there no proposals about removing those peers from the house who very rarely come rather than those who have shown an active commitment over many years,” Thomas Galbraith 2nd Baron Strathclyde girned last week, perhaps sentimentally reflecting on the significant role he has played in British public life in recent decades, despite the fact that nobody voted for him, and nobody anyone ever voted for decided it was a good idea to stick him in the legislature.
It turns out that if you are automatically given a job that you are manifestly unqualified for without interview as soon as your father pops his clogs, you can gain long experience with parliamentary matters just by hanging around the Palace of Westminster and paying attention.
This defensive line is brought to you by the same PR firm who thought it was a good idea to explain Prince Andrew’s exile from his family Christmas dinner as him “honourably withdrawing” from his plate of prawn Marie Rose and roast beef of old England as punishment from his older brother for befriending yet another problematic foreigner.
Hilariously, Darth Michael Forsyth of Korriban – former secretary of state for Scotland – describes the belated effort by this Labour Government to dig out the plantation of hereditary peers as “a naked attempt to disable opposition in this house”, “undermining the ability of us to carry out our duties effectively”.
Antique bloc
The logic behind this was rather more directly explained by Tom Galbraith, who pointed out that one explanation for Labour’s targeting hereditaries for an expedited eviction might have something to do with the fact this antique bloc of reactionaries is overwhelmingly Tory, and support for Starmer’s administration continues to lag behind the Conservative opposition in the Upper House.
But having cheerfully shed the proposal to replace the House of Lords entirely, Sir Keir has begun using his knightly wiles and access to royal prerogatives to chuck around the ermine with furious abandon since taking office. So many small furry animals are being put to the chop to stitch together a stronger Labour presence in the Lords, it’s like watching Cruella de Vil at work.
Just before Christmas, the King was graciously pleased to ennoble another whack of civilians on the Prime Minister’s orders, adding 30 more Labour-aligned weasel-chasers to the House of Lords, including a range of Scottish Labour throwbacks including former party leader Wendy Alexander and Margaret Curran – presumably for services antiquely rendered to the last Labour government.
(Image: Mina Kim/PA Wire)
If making Peter Mandelson your ambassador to the United States seems like a good idea, then I suppose throwing in a few belated baronesses to characters from your party’s political graveyard might also seem like harmless fun.
Labour gongs were also found for conspicuous General Election losers – including Thangam Debbonaire, dumped by the voters of Bristol West in July – and for Sue Gray, for presiding over an impressively dysfunctional couple of months as Downing Street supremo, before accepting then declining the phantom gig of the Prime Minister’s emissary to the nations and regions. This is, to put it mildly, poor consolation for proper reform.
In what might rank as his first good political idea, former Tory whip, tarantula tender and former fireplace salesman Sir Gavin Williamson has lodged an amendment to Labour’s bill proposing to add Anglican bishops to the list of characters who should be excluded from the upper house.
Up to 26 of the 42 of the Church of England’s bishops and archbishops serve as lords spiritual. I’m not sure how they decide which bishop gets the seat but the proposal has prompted parts of the media who like to describe other people as snowflakes to melt.
There are also dark threats that the exclusion of bishops from parliament could undermine the sacred foundation of monarchy itself, pulling the spiritual foundations out from under that deeply morally serious tribe the House of Windsor.
Words of Jesus
One writer suggests that “the presence of bishops in the legislature serves to remind other members of both Houses that we should, in the words of Jesus, ‘render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s’”.
I think this might be an admonition to pay your taxes – though I’m not sure many tax-dodgers and VAT-evaders of the realm are seriously chastened by the risk that they might, if they turn on BBC Parliament, catch the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury excusing his failure while in office to take the physical and spiritual abuse of children in his church’s care. I have my doubts.
If you take these arguments seriously, then I suppose we should be seriously considering recruiting a few religious leaders to automatically accede to seats in Holyrood, as a “counterbalance” to the unseemly business of politicians being elected by popular and democratic ballots and tendency to be influenced by public opinion rather than heavenly voice.
It is the most British of hallucinations, to imagine giving peerages to religious leaders of different faiths alongside a whole phalanx of de jure bishops represents some kind of egalitarian and inclusive manoeuvre. Once again, the UK is creeping towards modernity, reluctantly, centuries late.