The idea of being able to resign a life peerage is completely beyond absurd. All this, just so that Peter Mandelson might one day have a safe Commons seat arranged for him in order to waft him into Number 10.
As for the end of the hereditary principle, lest the legislative process be contaminated by an aristocratic social conscience informed by muscular Christianity or by Recusancy, what a pity it will be no longer to see in action the practice of never voting for oneself. And the war against hereditary barons is also the war against trade union barons.
But there is a nettle to be grasped here. If the 92 hereditaries are to go, then let them be replaced by one person who has spent at least 10 years as a registered voter in each of the 99 units that are the English ceremonial counties, Scottish lieutenancy areas, Welsh preserved counties, and Northern Irish counties.
By means of STV if there were more than two candidates, each of those units would elect one person independent of party, who would then be raised to the peerage, with the process repeated every 20 or 25 years.
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