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Goodbye (almost) to the hereditary peers, voted out on Tuesday night. But they didn’t go without a vicious tooth-and-nail fight. Labour should be making much more noise about how the Tories blackmailed and threatened to the very last to hold on to the hereditary peerage (almost all Tories), despite 66% of voters wanting a democratically elected second chamber.
Tories in the Lords, fully backed by Kemi Badenoch, did that despite the abolition pledged in Labour’s manifesto. They trashed the Salisbury convention, which expects the Lords to nod through anything in a government’s manifesto that has been approved in an election. But never mind conventions: the good chaps who are supposed to keep the unwritten constitution on its feet are no more. Instead of upholding convention, they vandalised it.
The absurdity of the final Lords debate may add to Samuel Johnson’s gaiety of nations. Enjoy Lord Hamilton’s searing honesty, when he said that a reason to keep the hereditaries was that once they were gone there would be “nothing other than political chancers, like me, and donors and members of the blob of one sort or another”.
Or Lord Moore, who said their “lack [of] legitimacy” was a badge of honour as “you behave a bit better because you are a little doubtful about whether you should be there”. Or the Earl of Devon, who said that under normal employment law, there would be discrimination concerns “given the regrettable commonality of protected characteristics among our hereditary peers”, presumably as all-male, all-white, blue-bloods. When I debated with the earl this week on the Nicky Campbell show, he said his crusader ancestry was especially valuable now, with “what’s going on in Israel and in Gaza”.
Does it matter much? Yes, and the disgraceful way they departed shows why. The Tory leader in the Lords, the misnamed Lord True, went full Tony Soprano, threatening to stop all government business unless Labour compromised. In the Sunday Telegraph, he warned that if the “purge” of the hereditaries went ahead, Labour would face “very aggressive procedural action” on all the rest of its legislative agenda. This could be filibustering, wrecking amendments and using “ping-pong” delays by bouncing bills back and forth between the Commons and Lords. He made an “offer to the government” they couldn’t refuse: he would back off if a “goodly number” of hereditaries were allowed to remain. “It’s not a threat. But I think if relations broke down, as night follows day, you would find that a lot of people, perhaps on the backbenches, would put down amendments that would slow things down.” So 15 hereditaries are reprieved, converted into life peers.
Watch how just a handful of lords are killing off the assisted dying bill, despite a majority for it in the Commons, backed by three-quarters of the public. It now has no chance of passing, as a small group of filibusterers prevent a vote being taken, as day after day they talk very slowly, making identical speeches on 1,200 identical or crass amendments. The Lords could stop it by limiting talking time for bills, as does the Commons, but they devise their own absurd rules. Look how the Tory-dominated Lords forced a watering down of new employment rights, also pledged in Labour’s manifesto. But as an employment minister warned the Commons, the alternative to compromise was “being stuck in parliamentary limbo for another year”. The government could use the Parliament Act to force its will on the Lords – but that’s an alarming precedent if hard-right authoritarians form the next government.
Tinkering reforms will cut its huge 842 membership. This could include sacking those who fail to turn up and considering an age cap: all out at 80. But that will eject some of the most valuable, such as Alf Dubs and Michael Heseltine. Better by far to give parties a fair quota and let them decide who is most useful.
Even with hereditaries (almost) gone, we retain many of the splendorous anachronisms that prevent us from making real constitutional change. Why keep any (former) hereditary peers making laws, or 23 bishops despite minimal C of E attendance? That spirit of “sovereignty” bound into nostalgic British traditions led directly to the disaster of Brexit. All the extravagant Lords folderol fuels mistrust of Westminster politics.
It would be a category error to call the Lords corrupt, when corruption is built into its foundations, out in the open for all to see: donations buy peerages. Twenty super-donors in the Lords, mainly Tory, gave £92m between them. Transparency International research shows that £48.2m in donations are alleged or proven to have bought access and/or honours. The current weak elections bill fails to cap donations or to prevent, say, Elon Musk’s rumoured $100m gift to Reform if it came from his UK-generated profits.
Since 1911, attempts to reform the Lords have always been stymied by conflicting alternatives. The warning is that we will end up like the US – with chambers blocking each other – yet all of Europe manages second chambers of different hues, none unelected. Summon a commission (yes, royal probably). It’s not beyond the wit of the British to devise a senate, and the Electoral Reform Society has the alternatives laid out. The public strongly backs proportional representation to reform our dangerously dysfunctional electoral system. This government needs a radical legacy: it should use its rare majority for this.
But the rumour is that Labour is retreating on reform. The excruciating waste of time and effort on what should have been the easy expulsion of hereditaries has cooled what was, anyway, only modest enthusiasm for constitutional change. If so, that will be the revenge of the departing born-to-rule peers.
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Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink? On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss the threat to Labour from the Greens and Reform – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here or at guardian.live
