If the political
parties must name 30 new members of the House of Lords
every year (as they would have been perfectly free to do if the hereditary
peers had all still been in place, so that that House would have been even
larger), then here is how they ought to go about it.
The 10 candidates
nominated by the most branches of the Labour Party (including trade union and
other affiliated branches), the 10 candidates
nominated by the most branches of the Conservative Party, and the 10 candidates
nominated by the most branches of the Liberal
Democrats, ought to be put out to an election by the nation as a whole, with
each of us voting for one candidate from each party, and with the highest
scoring six candidates from each party then raised to the peerage.
Any other registered
political party that had arrived at a candidate by means of an all-member ballot, as the
Greens already do, ought thus to acquire the right to nominate that candidate in
a fourth election, on the same model as the first three.
And there ought to be a
fifth, among the 10 Independent candidates who had received the most nominations by
registered parliamentary electors.
All five would of course be held on the same day, presumably the first Thursday in May.
Five times six.
Thirty.
Every year.
How utterly absurd.
The pass has been sold-the Upper House was wrecked by those constitutional vandals known as the Labour Party.
ReplyDeleteFoot promised to abolish them in 92-Blair did it for him in 99.
Labour would get rid of the hereditary Monarch too if they could (they cannot yet, because the public support isn't there).
The expulsion of 600 peers paved the way for the appointment of so many replacements.
If those 600 hereditary peers remained in place, no party would ever have been able to nominate as many new Lords, since it would have swelled the House to absurd proportions.
And it would have looked quite obviously like they were trying to crowd out the hereditary influence.
Most importantly of all... the hereditaries were the last independent voices in the Lords.
All but 92 have been extinguished forever by the vile constitutional vandals otherwise known as Labour.
If those 600 hereditary peers remained in place, no party would ever have been able to nominate as many new Lords, since it would have swelled the House to absurd proportions.
ReplyDeleteYes, they would have done, and yes, they would have done.
That process was already very well-advanced by 1997. For most of the history of the House of Lords, it only had about 200 or 300 members.
Go to bed. Even I should, and I'm a grown-up.
Any Edmund Burke fan would know why your idea is horrific.
ReplyDeleteThe whole point of the Lords is to be unelected.
The whole point of the House of Lords is to be unelected, and thus a revising chamber not a rival chamber, an independent chamber not a slave to party machines, donors, focus groups, whips (and media moguls), a restraining force on the Commons not a mirror image of it, a repository of the kind of experts who'd never stand for election, and a chamber that stands for age, tradition and inheritance, sits on a thousand years of history history and so can defend the British Constitution against the scornful, youthful hyperactive revolutionaries in the Commons.
Michael Foot, Tony Benn, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair knew this only too well-which is why they were so keen to destroy it.
Socialists hate any institution independent of them, which might get in their way.
Edmund Burke fans, however, know that is precisely why it must be protected.
The monarchy's powers are purely vestigial (which is why the Labour Party leaves it alone, for now) but the Lords were the one true bulwark against voracious state power.
Blogging at half past three in the morning! Are you guys crazy?
ReplyDeleteThe idea that the hereditary lords are somehow independent is nonsense. Even if you agree with the hereditary principal. They are not independent of their own financial and property interests. Independence may be over-rated. It suggests a sort of god-like superiority to the mundane concerns of ordinary working folk.
I largely agree with Anonymous, though I don't approve of anonymity on the web. The hereditaries had a place in the Constitution which was totally illogical but which happened to work. Being left-wing isn't about what's "fair" or which ambitious sharp-elbowed bourgeois gets access to power, it's about the advancement and protection of the poor against the rich. End of. Dr Johnson once noted that republics were better for the rich, and monarchies for the poor.
ReplyDeleteJames from Durham seems to have problems with basic comprehension.
ReplyDeleteI clearly said the hereditaries were independent of the state, not that they were independent in the sense of being objective (which would mean having no personal interests or opinions...and hence would exclude all of humanity).
"Independence is overrated".
That is what the communists thought-which is why they always got rid of churches, monarchies, charities and any institutions they couldn't completely control.
It is increasingly what many British people think-since they have no idea of the totalitarian roots of these Constitution-wreckers.
And you really think our political class represent the "mundane concerns of ordinary working folk"?
Have you been outside lately?
Tim-thanks. Indeed the Lords is illogical-like most of Britain's wonderful Constitution, which grew from a series of happy accidents.
Unlike the US, Britain's Constitution is a forest, not a city-it wasn't built, it grew.