Turning down a peerage does not abolish the House of Lords, which in any case is hardly a priority in the struggle for economic equality and international peace. It just denies yourself a platform.
Trade union leaders accepting ennoblement has a very long history, and the previous Labour Leadership should have been even more enthusiastic than the present one at conferring the ermine.
From within and beyond the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn had the time to nominate 50 Peers from the Left, and they all should have accepted. They would now have been there for life.
There were a few, of course, but a bloc of that size, in what is always a hung chamber, would have made a very significant difference. If anyone in the present Government wanted to blow a gigantic raspberry at Keir Starmer, then names would still be available.
Didn't George Galloway once say live on air that he would take a peerage if you did?
ReplyDeleteYes, but he now says that he would not take one under any circumstances.
DeleteOn his show just after the old Queen died, George refreshingly confirmed that he would like to be President of a British Republic. He is the only republican politician that I have ever heard say that out loud, although of course we all know that that is what they think.
“That is what they think”
ReplyDeleteYes that is the logic of all leftwing republicanism from Tony Benn to Tony Blair, regarding all independent institutions as a threat to their power and to implementing their utopian ideas (there’s a reason all communist regimes always abolished the monarchy). Peter Hitchens noticed New Labour’s abolition of hundreds of hereditary peers was similarly a deliberate blow at the hereditary principle that also sustains the Monarchy…
Except that it evidently wasn't. I never understood the fuss about hereditary peers, on either side. They didn't do any of the things that their defenders said that they did; in fact, those defenders spent the rest of their time bemoaning the absence of those things. Nor did sort of abolishing them achieve anything, not even the things that the other side had feared that it would. See also the monarchy, the electoral system, and the voting age.
DeleteIt was intended as a blow against the monarchy because New Labour were just as fervently republican as the likes of Benn but they knew their position wasn’t popular so they couldn’t go the whole way immediately. So they went for the salami-slicing option-start with one hereditary institution, thereby undermining the principle, before eventually moving onto the other one…
DeleteThe “fuss” was that the hereditaries, unlike the appointed peers, owed their seats to no Prime Minister and so were free in principe to vote independently of the government. That was why New Labour hated them, seeing them as an obstacle to their policy programme (particularly as the hereditary peers repeatedly joined the Opposition in voting against the Blair Government’s policies). When they even voted against Blair’s introduction of PR for European elections,( rightly seeing this as a blow aimed at the First Past the Post system for General Elections) then Labour brought forward its plan of abolishing them.
They were forced to compromise and keep a few in the end, but the damage was done.
None of that is true. None of it, just as the other side's arguments weren't, either. I doubt that you can remember it. It struck me recently quite how long ago the first Blair term was. It seems like a different world because it was, yet the future will look on it and today as a single era, plus plenty of time on either side, as we now talk about "the Victorians".
DeleteI laughed out loud at, "When they even voted against Blair’s introduction of PR for European elections (rightly seeing this as a blow aimed at the First Past the Post system for General Elections), then Labour brought forward its plan of abolishing them." That is just hilarious.
No one, absolutely no one, was or is more dedicated than the Blairites to the cause of First Past the Post for the House of Commons. It is one of their very few utterly fixed political principles. And as for the idea that this was why the hereditaries were mostly removed, I mean, where does one even begin? Has it occurred to you to ask anyone who was politically active at the time?
The hereditaries were only ever "independent" of Labour Governments, that much is true. They adhered to a public school honour code of never questioning the top people in their own party. But even in your own terms, what "damage" has been done by their removal? What specific difference has it made to anything?
I’m yet to see you point out which part is untrue then. If as Blair’s Labour did, you denounce the hereditary system as an unjust, unequal and irrational basis for choosing the Lords how can you defend the same system for choosing our Head of State? To denounce one hereditary system in such strong terms clearly implies a denunciation of the other.
ReplyDeleteAs for “They adhered to a public school honour code of never questioning the top people in their own party”-that’s an old leftwing myth but it’s plainly not true, because the Lords inflicted many defeats on both Thatcher and Major. Look it up.
If Blair supported FPTP, why did he introduce a European PR system for other elections and indeed a European PR system for choosing elected “mayors” etc.
What “damage” has been done is that the Lords have been neutered-look how many times they defeated Blair before 1999, compared to how many times the Lords ever stood up to him afterwards.
You weren't there. The first Blair term ended 21 years ago. If you were born, then you were only just. How do I know? If you have to ask, dear boy. If you have to ask.
DeleteAnd you haven’t answered my question. If New Labour loved FPTP so much, why did it undermine the principle by choosing PR for every other system from European elections to Scottish and Welsh devolved Parliaments?
ReplyDeleteAs with their abolition of hereditary peers, they were taking aim at the principle in preparation for its wider abolition.
Anyone who knew them, anyone who still knows them, knows that while there are not many things for which they would go to the stake, the First Past the Post electoral system for the House of Commons is one of them. (Brownites tended to have a slight soft spot for AV; up to a point, it was one of the ways of telling them apart. There no longer really are Brownites.) If you did not already know that, then you do not know what you are talking about.
DeleteNow I know I'm right about your age.
ReplyDeleteI’ve just disproved that by showing that the Blair Government chose PR as their preferred voting system for everything else, from European elections to the devolved Parliaments they created. The hereditary peers went down fighting Blair’s introduction of PR-defeating his government a record five times in its attempts to introduce PR for European elections.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course New Labour knew in abolishing hereditary peers it was not only implicitly attacking the Monarchy but also stripping the Royals of their voting rights in the Lords. At least Tony Benn had the honesty and consistency to openly oppose both the hereditary peers and the Monarchy for the same reason. New Labour agreed with him but was never open about it.
I’m sorry that the facts don’t support your position,
You have not disproved a thing. First Past the Post for the House of Commons was, and is, an article of faith for Blairites; a badge of identity, primarily but not exclusively against the Brownites. I truly believe that you have never met a Blairite.
DeleteIt’s also true that hereditary peers, since they owed their own position to tradition and history, tended to defend conservative institutions and were thus by definition more likely to vote against revolutionary/reformist Labour governments than Conservative ones.
ReplyDeleteOne of the main arguments for hereditaries is that, as they stood on centuries of British history, they provided a conservative counterbalance to the reformist tendencies of the Commons.
Well, nothing in particular ever came of that, then. Pure wishful thinking on your part. What next, the aristocracy as a bastion of sexual continence? I am starting to think that you are some sort of foreign Anglophile. They sometimes imagine things such as you have just written. As I always ask them, tell me when anything has ever come of it. Or even when any claim of that kind has ever been made by the objects of your affection. But mostly, tell me when anything has ever come of it.
DeleteI have of course disproved it. If you introduce a new voting system for other elections you undermine the principle of FPTP for this one, just as if you attack the hereditary system as an unjust anachronism and abolish it in Parliament, you implicitly undermine it elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteAnd the very fact the hereditaries were so effective in defending our traditional institutions against revolutionary Labour governments was the main reason Blair abolished them. What came of it? Look at how many bad Blairite policies they blocked before they were tragically removed.
You read all that in a book, didn't you? Not a very good book.
DeleteThe House of Lords cannot block almost anything. It can only delay, and even that can be circumvented. Changing it was one of Blair's ways of looking as if he was doing anything. Some of us were unimpressed even at the time.