Has the House of Commons stopped dividing on Second Reading itself? On the last two occasions, MPs have bothered only to defeat the reasoned amendment, and then headed straight to the bar.
But on that amendment, in the only division that was held last night on the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill that is the talk of every foodbank, while Reform UK voted with the Official Opposition, three out of four stripes of Unionist from Northern Ireland voted with the Government, and the DUP abstained. They know who has never done a thing for them, and never will.
In similar vein, when the old Queen was still alive, then Richard Tice repeatedly went on record that she should be succeeded by President Nigel Farage. Yet look at him now. Do not try and look at Farage, though. Not on that or most other Division Lists, anyway. Any more than in Clacton. If you want to see him, then you need to look at Freeview 236. He should have been given a peerage instead.
Unionists are always clear eyed about the things Tories can get sentimental about, "show what the hereditary peers have ever done".
ReplyDeleteUnused to being questioned, they usually answer that the whole point of these things is that they do nothing. Point out that they do, just not what was initially insinuated, and they start speaking more slowly and loudly, though still saying the same thing.
DeleteThe Orange tribe stopped falling for that, or bothering to pretend to, when Ian Paisley emerged. The days are long gone when the future Duke of Westminster could be succeeded as an Ulster Unionist MP by his cousin, the future, and indeed present, Duke of Abercorn.
“they usually answer that the whole point of these things is that they do nothing”
ReplyDeleteI don’t know of anybody who has ever argued that about the hereditary Lords. The point was the hereditary peers are the only fully independent legislators since they don’t owe their seats to any politician, they are also the only truly British part of Parliament since they can trace their ancestry back centuries on these islands (there are still grandchildren of the Duke of Wellington and Clement Attlee in the Lords to this day) and they represent tradition and the hereditary principle which also sustains the monarchy. As an inbuilt conservative majority in the Upper House, they also acted as a vital counterbalance against the more radical Commons.
The fact you agree with this constitutional vandalism, though, proves how left wing Starmer’s Labour is.
I would love to know when they had ever actually done any of these things. As would, for example, Jim Allister. If you think that they ever might, then you have never dealt with the upper classes close up.
DeleteYou either didn’t read what I wrote, or didn’t understand it. I said the hereditaries are the only fully independent peers (since they don’t owe their seat to any Prime Minister) the only truly British ones-because they can trace their ancestry back centuries on these islands-and they stand for the hereditary principle which sustains the monarchy. None of your answer had anything to do with any of that. The hereditaries did also vote against all Tony Blair’s damaging reforms in the late 90’s-which only hastened Labour’s rush to abolish them. Like Starmer, not content with a big Commins majority Blair/Brown wanted to abolish all opposition in the Upper House too…
ReplyDeleteThey’re not all “the upper classes” either: many hereditary peers inherited little more than a title and a crumbling house.
As I said. What, did you think that it was defined by, I hesitate, but money?
DeleteThey have a very funny way of showing their independence, and as for antiquity, most hereditary peerages were created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In any case, neither of those would be an argument unless there were anything to show for it. The hard-bitten, unsoppy Unionists labour under no such delusion.