Your Majesty, My Lords

There is apparently a person called Lynne Featherstone, who has so little to do with her time that she is a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament. Ms Featherstone has therefore reported the monarchy to the Equality Commission. Laugh? Yes, I fully expect that they will.

Only one argument can be advanced with the slightest merit, either for changing the law of succession with regard to sex, or for repealing what for us Catholics in the thoroughly useful and beneficial Act of Settlement. That argument is that any of the Realms or Territories retaining the monarchy might cease to do so if the change in question were not forthcoming. And even that would have to be proved conclusively. Can Ms Featherstone produce any such conclusive proof?

Meanwhile, her party colleague David Steel will this week seek to tidy up the mess left by Tony Blair’s failure to decide whether or not he favoured the retention of the hereditary peerage. Margaret Jay’s arguments at that time were grossly offensive: that the hereditaries were obviously a bad thing because they were rural, provincial, heavy with military experience (which had nothing to do with class – it just indicated maleness and being of a certain age), and almost bereft of self-defining “workers”. The last fault stood, no doubt, in marked contrast to that which has replaced them, and indeed to Baroness Jay herself, horny-handed daughter of the toil that she is.

Well, the genie is now out of the bottle. A fully elected second chamber, which was the only serious alternative to keeping things as they were, will have to await more comprehensive constitutional reform, although both the particular and the general need are such that the nation really cannot wait very much longer.

In the meantime, let the 92 remaining hereditaries be replaced with 99 elected life peers, all Crossbenchers, and one from each of the areas having a Lord Lieutenant. In each area, the two candidates receiving the most nominations from voters should contest an election. Vacancies arising from death would be filled by by-election.