So this is socialism. How futile. The same old statist tinkering, bureaucratic expansionism, and headline-grubbing legislation. At times one struggled to remember that Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer had swapped places at today’s King’s Speech. No wonder they were giggling like schoolgirls. This was almost co-authored. My morning editorial was to the left of half of the bills proposed.
Of course, there were a few reminders that we now live under a former editor of Socialist Alternatives. Commissar Louise Haigh, the flame-haired scourge of rail operators everywhere, got her legislation to move our trains back into public ownership and nationalise Trainline. A National Wealth Fund and ‘GB Energy’ were set up, and changes to equalities and employment legislation were signified.
Nonetheless, it was hardly the most radical missive that His Majesty could have read out. Half of it seemed copied from Sunak’s last, including bills on football governance, renters’ rights, leasehold reform, tobacco and vapes, and the so-called Martyn’s Law for public venues. Others were naked posturing, such as Rachel Reeves’s bill to empower the OBR and dredge up Liz Truss.
But Starmer had to prove there was something worthwhile about Labour being back in power, something that the other half of the Uniparty couldn’t be expected to do. Step forward that old chestnut: reform of the House of Lords. As with the bedecking of Downing Street with union flags for Starmer’s arrival, it really does seem like the Labour is a cargo cult for early Tony Blair.
Practically, the removal of hereditary peers is rather pointless. The Lords does much good work, but the creeping barrage of popular democracy has long hobbled it of most of its powers. It cannot block legislation permanently. Labour has a healthy majority in the Commons, meaning it could push through most proposals. The problem for ministers is that they forgot to put much in it.
Reform of the Lords is a case in point. It devolved from Gordon Brown’s grand plans for a ‘Senate of the Nations and Regions’, via a scheme to pack it with cronies and require them to retire at 80, to today’s kicking out of the 92 remaining hereditaries, alongside vague plans for future reform. One wonders what our hereditary monarch made of it, let alone Labour’s Nepo Babies.
One can’t complain if the Bolsheviks are proving rather restrained whilst squatting in the Winter Palace. But if one is interested in such a thing, there are far more sensible reforms for the Lords, to enhance legitimacy and scrutiny, available to Labour, like term limits for new peers and strengthening the Appointments Commission. Both David Willetts and Alexander Horne have more.
Consequently, this looks less like a genuine attempt to improve the functioning of our revising chamber, but a kneejerk act of petty anti-Tory attitude-striking. The hereditaries did little harm. Indeed, they often worked harder than their appointed counterparts, steeped as they were in history, tenure, and a deep-rooted duty. Pax James Price, losing them robs the Lords of a little magic.
Many will say the hereditary principle is indefensible. But I’d judge our Parliamentarians on what they do, rather than how they are chosen. One of the follies of democracy is in thinking it provides better politicians simply because of how they are chosen. The best argument against an elected second chamber is that there couldn’t be anything more ghastly than another House of Commons.
As the superb historian Richard Johnson suggested in his written evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee last year, the least worst option for the House of Lords would be to leave it largely as it is. As with so much of our constitution before New Labour’s wrecking ball, it works precisely because it is higgledy-piggledy, irrational, and deeply confusing.
But the progressive mind abhors the sublime. It must control, it must rationalise, it must plan. Something like the Lords – and especially the hereditary peers – offends its Utopian dreams of fairness, equality, and box-ticking. The edges do not line up. The neuroses are triggered. It cannot be left alone, especially when wide-eyed backbenchers need to know they were elected for a reason.
So 92 long-standing trees are cut down so that Starmer can say he has changed Britain. The hereditary forest laments, so that Labour can perspire. I f I ever doubted my Toryism, I don’t today.
