Noblesse Oblige

We need a new second chamber, but it needs to be as good as the old one. Democracy and liberty are not the same thing. But they are both important. Anyway, I'm not sure why the New Labour types (of all parties) over on things like Harry's Place are complaining: this is now a House stuffed full of them and theirs. Yet even they could see the problem last night. (Although the Government has not been "forced into a humiliating climbdown", or anything like that. Rather, Parliament has done what Parliament is supposed to do. Just for a change.)

We need equal county-based representation (as the hereditaries were in theory, and very historically) regardless of population, parliamentarians with only national responsibilities (life peers), representatives of moral and spiritual values in general and of our Christian heritage (still professed by at least seventy-two per cent of the population) in particular, both party figures (reflecting the breadth within each party and, if you like, its Lager) and Crossbenchers, terms of sufficient length to guarantee considerable independence and reflectiveness, no provision to remove the whole Senate at once, powerful Committees with powerful Chairmen, and procedures that serve, like all the foregoing, as checks on majoritarian tyranny, which is as bad as minoritarian tyranny.