The House of Lords and The Attlee Test

Writing in today’s Guardian, Jonathan Freedland returns to one of that newspaper’s favourite themes: "How dare there be an aristocracy other than Us!" This is closely related to "How dare political parties be funded in any way that some glorified committee of Us cannot control!" and "How dare there be an electoral system which does not give Us the final say in stitching up a coalition!"

Both with the aristocratic social conscience and with organised labour, respectively embodied by the hereditary peerage and by the Labour Party’s trade union links, Britain has been more blessed than any other country on earth. The argument against either is the argument against the other. And we are now seen exactly how Freedland’s and his ilk’s bourgeois triumphalism is causing each to be replaced with something immeasurably worse.

On constitutional questions, we should apply the Attlee Test: if Attlee could live with something and make it work, then Blair and Brown should certainly be able to, and should attend, as Attlee did, to more pressing matters. On that basis, there was no need to alter the House of Lords in 1997, nor is there any such need today. And there is certainly no need for the probable "elections" from closed party lists.