to the manor born
What, with the all the current deceit, corruption, racism, bullying and porky-pie-telling shenanigans taking place in Parliament, could there possibly be an even stranger place of work than the House of Commons? Well, now you mention it, yes there is and the good news is you don’t need to travel too far to find it. Just next door in fact at the Palace of Westminster. The House of Lords is, at almost 800 members, one of the most bloated assemblies in the world, surpassed in size only by China’s National People’s Congress. How exactly did we come by such an institution and what purpose does it serve?
The House of Lords forms one element of the ancient triumvirate of the British constitution, along with the House of Commons and the monarchy. It shares the task of making and shaping laws and challenging the government’s work via its supposed independence and impartiality, and includes the exotica from our gilded aristocracy such as dukes, earls, viscounts and barons. Many, if not all, openly believe they were born to rule and laud it over the commoners, and, thanks to one of the weirdest quirks in our eccentric and outdated system of government, they were indeed ‘to the manner born’.
The fact that, unlike ‘the other house’, not one of its members is directly elected is seen by most rational individuals as illogical, but the continued presence of hereditary peers who remain in situ merely by birth-right, is viewed as borderline outrageous. Furthermore, it doesn’t help that all of the ninety-two such peers are white and male, and almost half attended Eton. WTF.
Mind, only two short decades ago, before Tony Blair wielded the reform-axe, hereditary peers actually numbered 750 and formed the lion’s share of the house. Attempts at reform had been going on for more than a century, from the 1911 Liberal government’s move to clip its wings in their Parliament Act, but each and every opportunity became bogged down in the Lords’ own intentional procedure, filibuster and eventual gridlock. With Blair’s 1997 landslide an agreement was eventually struck that a vastly depleted number of ninety-two fixed hereditaries would remain and only be replaced by one of their own. When one retires or eventually pegs-it, an extraordinary and highly anachronistic by-election takes place, where another peer on a reserve list of more than two hundred is chosen to take their place.
You would be forgiven that, taking into account its fundamental rule-approval cum making status, these by-elections would be tremendously hard-fought and testy affairs, and again you’d be wrong. There have been approximately 40 such contests since 2002 and the relevant manifestos are downright bizarre: in 2015, the Earl of Limerick ended his plea with “from your seats so well entrenched, please vote that mine may be embenched”; Lord Ashcombe’s stated relevance was that he “races on the Solent and gardens enthusiastically”; Whilst Lord Milverton offered a succinct six word Lordships pitch to be “as objective and reasonable as possible”. Blatant lobbying is frowned upon and campaigning positively dissuaded.
Notwithstanding the ninety-two, and the twenty-six automatic archbishop appointees, the vast majority of life peers are formally appointed by the Queen upon the advice of the Prime Minister. Supposedly representing a wide range of professions it may come as no surprise that most are political appointees, with Tories currently numbering 31% and Labour 24%. Thankfully, it’s the independent crossbenchers that appear to hold the balance of power and ensure a modicum of common-sense and proportionality in the discharging of their duty.
If you need any further evidence of its idiosyncratic and dysfunctional nature then I’ll leave it to my learned friend, the self-appointed right honourable member of the eighteenth century, Jacob Rees Mogg, who proudly declares the system “wonderfully arcane and rather splendid!”. Enough said, other than perhaps, proportional representation anyone?
