I, The People's

I laughed out loud when I read the suggestions that I apply to become a People's Peer. But I might just give it a go after all. Not because I would expect to get it, but if anything to illustrate that I wouldn't while, say, the doubtless worthy but hardly demotic Elspeth Howe did, even though she would have been raised to the peerage anyway (see below on that one).

There is a widespread fantasy that, because they have to Crossbenchers, People's Peers have to be non-political, or at least non-party-political. They don't. They just have to sit as Crossbenchers, which is not the same thing at all. The material for potential applicants makes this entirely plain. Is Geoffrey Howe's wife not a member of the Conservative Party? Somehow, I think that she is. For that matter, there is absolutely nothing to prevent them from taking a party whip once they are safely in the House of Lords, even on their first day.

They are picked by a committee, itself picked by another committee, the chairman of which was duly one of the first people to be made a People's Peer. Seriously. That week on Any Questions, even Roy Jenkins had to admit that everyone who was anyone had known that these particular people were going to be given peerages in the next round, and that this scheme just happened to be the next round.

Someone involved in the process made a remark to the effect that "we'd hardly send a hairdresser to the red benches, would we?", and the GMB duly inaugurated a sadly unsuccessful campaign to have a hairdresser among its members made a peeress. Which raises an interesting point: the sorts of people who used to be made Labour peers from trade union and other (such as co-operative) backgrounds would never be raised to the ermine these days, so perhaps they should apply to become People's Peers instead?

An unsuccessful initial applicant was Peter Hitchens, who argued that he articulated a widespread perspective which is nevertheless excluded from the parliamentary process. Well, I certainly hear that. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots are actually at lot more numerous than people who agree with Hitchens about absolutely or almost everything, and account for a significant part of the Mail on Sunday's market lead: they would never or very rarely buy the Daily Mail, but they buy the Mail on Sunday every week largely or exclusively in order to read Peter Hitchens.

There are still some peers like this, but they are really rather old. Age is one of the PC cards that I can play if I have to: I had thought that I was now beyond ever being the youngest person to do anything, but I would still be the youngest person ever to be made a life peer. And, unless I am very much mistaken, and given that Afro-Caribbeans identify as black, there is now no mixed-race member of either House, despite our rapidly growing numbers (one in five children under five, for example).

Anyway, if nothing else, I would have no difficulty writing and placing an article on this little adventure.

So keep watching this space.