The new Government arrived with several assets, including a cautious measure of public goodwill. But there is one overriding factor: lack of clarity. Few new administrations have ever arrived in power so unscrutinised. There are two ways to interpret that. The first is freedom of manoeuvre. The second, that the intellectual planning for office has been inadequate. When problems occur – which they will – there will be no preparatory rigour to fall back on for guidance. But in the short term, we do not know much about Keir Starmer’s intentions.
There is one exception. He proposes to remove the hereditary peers from the House of Lords. Almost everyone seems reconciled to that. The hereditaries were unfinished business from the Tony Blair era. It appears to be inevitable that Sir Keir will finish the job. Yet it is both a pity and a mistake.
There is one obvious question which has not been answered. What do we want the House of Lords to do? Robert (Lord) Salisbury, sometime Leader of the Lords, has spent fifty years giving this question a great deal of thought. In his view, the composition of the Lords is a second-order issue. The real debate should concern the Commons.
Robert believes that the second chamber ought to restrain the first one. At present, the Commons is an instrument of elective dictatorship. A government with a decent majority can do more or less what it wants. As a result, the lower house functions as a legislative sausage-factory, and the sausages would often fail a health test. Bills make their way along the production line with wholly inadequate scrutiny. Their Lordships often rectify matters, acting as a revising chamber and trying to make sense of some of the worst-drafted legislation. That is a valuable, indeed indispensable function, but Lord Salisbury would like to go further. He believes that if the Lords was stronger, it could challenge the Government and force it to improve its legislative efforts. No more elective dictatorship: no more low-grade sausage-making.
That fundamental reform would require a House with a different composition. Robert Salisbury was the Tory leader who secured the Blairites’ reluctant assent to the survival of 92 hereditary peers. Originally, Mr Blair had offered only 14. It was widely assumed that his Lordship, the successor to a great peerage, had been acting as a – a Schindler’s list to preserve remnants of the old order. Not so: he was merely leaving a stone in the shoe, in order to irritate the Blair government into the fundamental reform which he supported.
The strengthened Lords which he wished to see would have had to be endowed with authority. That meant no place for the hereditaries. He envisioned a new House with a 50/50 composition: half elected for a fifteen-year term – necessary for legitimacy – and half chosen from among the great and the good: senior and distinguished former ministers, civil servants and military panjandrums; businessmen of the highest calibre, ditto academics.
A House thus composed would have great prestige and could undoubtedly challenge the Commons. Many recent ministers have been neither great nor good, with no claim to academic distinction. One could understand their reluctance to confront a group of Nobel laureates, field marshals, captains of industry and former ministers who were household names and universally respected.
That would seem a mighty argument for change. Yet there is a problem. Such a second chamber would inevitably embody the wisdom of a previous generation. Elective dictatorship brought us Thatcherism. With a strong post-hereditary Lords, that would probably not have been possible. A strengthened House of Lords would undoubtedly mean a weakened government. Some see that as an advantage. Others might demur, pointing out that the present arrangements often produce effective governments – and that after all, the electoral system makes it easy to dispense with failure.
It is a difficult choice. As for the surviving hereditaries, if it were proposed to create a second chamber which would include the heirs to titles created by monarchs over the centuries, that might not find favour. Yet we do not need to invent such a second house. It already exists. The current Lords is a link to Britain’s history. Many of the hereditaries also have connections with the land: another important link to the past and a vital tradition. Moreover, most of the current hereditaries are able, conscientious and young. As such, they are prepared to perform some of the routine tasks necessary to make the Lords work. One could not expect septuagenarian former secretaries of state or presidents of the Royal Society to chase the ball to the boundary.
Apropos age and youth, there can often be fruitful relations across veterans and youngsters as well as across different social classes. In the Bishops’ bar, we might find Alfred Edward Briggs, first Baron Briggshaw (73-year-old life peer). Alf left school at 14, then worked down a coal mine before becoming a trade union official and later a Labour MP and government whip. He is sitting next to Peregrine Vavavasour Fitzalan Fauntleroy, aged 27, recently inherited. Eton, Christchurch and the Grenadier Guards: fourteenth Baron, peerage created at Bosworth field. ‘Eyup, young Perry’ says Alf. ‘What happened to that ‘orse of thine on Saturday? I ‘ad a fiver on it, but I don’t think it’s finished yet.’ ‘Don’t worry, Alf; I shall be asking my trainer that very same question. By the way, when my mother arrives, please don’t mention the horse. I’d rather more than a fiver on it and she would not be pleased.’ ‘When I were a young lad, I used to know thy grounds quite well.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Aye – I were a poacher. Mind you, there was some keeper in those days. If he caught me, I’d get such a wallopin’ – couldn’t sit down for a week.’ ‘Alf, you must come and dine at Fauntleroy Towers. These days, you won’t need to worry about the keeper. He’ll just call you “My Lord.”‘
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