Time To End The House Of Lords

During the English Civil War – also known as the English Revolution or the War of the Three Kingdoms – the House of Lords was abolished as “useless and dangerous to the people of England.” The radical Levellers – see Quote of the Day #83 – demanded that the House of Commons should be “the supreme authority of the people” to be defended against “all pretenses of negative voices, either King or Lords.”

Fast forward nearly four centuries from the execution of Charles I and the (temporary) abolition of bishops and lords and Boris Johnson is being criticised for filled this absurd chamber with yet more placemen.

The House of Lords is an absurdity. Even after Tony Blair tried to reform the second chamber in the 1990s, it remained an absurdity. Blair allowed 92 hereditary peers to keep their seats; one might have thought that this anachronistic element of the constitution would literally die out. But the hereditary element has stayed at 92 because they have been allowed to elect peers to replace those who have passed away. To my knowledge, in no other legislature in a modern democracy are more than 10% of the members selected on the basis that some distant ancestress slept with a seventeenth-century monarch.

The ridiculous Church of England – led by a braindead Islamophile who presumes to lecture us about poverty whilst living in a palace and about privilege despite attending Eton – is guaranteed 26 seats in the Lords. It continues to claim these seats despite average attendance at its churches of 756,000 each Sunday – just over 1% of the population. The queen continues in her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Is the modern UK really happy to be a theocracy?

But the most numerous – and possibly the most corrupt – element of the House of Lords are the life peers. It is this that has got Boris Johnson in some hot water recently. Not only did he appoint his brother to the Lords but also that fine upstanding citizen Evgeny Lebedev, owner of the Independent and the Evening Standard, the man who found a a nice little earner for ex-Chancellor George Osbourne after he was dumped by Theresa May. Nigel Dodds was rejected by his constituents in Belfast but he gets a peerage, as do ex-Chancellors Philip Hammond and Kenneth Clarke; Clarke sat in the Commons for an astonishing 49 years but will continue to suckle at the taxpayers’ teat at 323 quid a day. And what qualifications does Ian Botham have for the ermine apart from vocal support for Brexit?

The House of Lords cannot be reformed and must simply be ended. I wrote a detailed Proposal for Change that advocated a second chamber based partly on appointment, partly on election and partly on sortition (random selection, like juries). You may disagree with any specific proposals but the key point is that we cannot continue with a system that is so corrupt and open to manipulation by the sitting prime minister.

Whilst we’re at it, the monarchy needs to go too. In no other context would such talentless no-marks like Charles Windsor, his boring firstborn and his never-had-a-job missus or his dodgy brother merit the level of attention they get from the media. And that’s before you discuss Harry (‘I got two A-Levels, honest guv’) or the Markle person. I bet the queen is secretly a republican when she looks around her dining room table.