There are plenty of people in their seventies and upwards in the House of Lords, and not a few people from ethnic minorities. Whereas the House of Commons is increasingly monolithic in its relative youth (that is why by-elections are now such big events - it used to be normal for half a dozen MPs per year to die in office) and remains very white indeed.
Meanwhile, the American primary system managed to produce a contest between a candidate aged 72 and a candidate with, whatever the complexities of his background, brown skin, African facial features, and a decidedly non-Anglo-Saxon name.
Manifestly, proper democracy can do that. Manifestly, so can frank appointment, and that for life.
But the pretend democracy whereby MPs are now, for the most part, appointed while affecting to be elected manifestly cannot.
(Incidentally, why don't American political parties put out the names of their putative candidates to primaries of the registered members of the other party, and of Independents, obviously not to elect delegates, but instead slightly before that election? It's just a thought.)
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