A Senate by Another Name

9 March 2007



British MPs Vote for All-Elected House of Lords

Tony Blair’s New Labour government has altered the British constitution more than any other since the Reform Bill of 1832 and wants to do more. It has devolved power in Scotland and Wales, and it tried to create regional government in England. It tried, and failed, to replace the Law Lords with a Supreme Court. It has removed most of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords. Yet there has been no consensus about its composition for 96 years. That changed this week when the House of Commons voted for a 100% elected House of Lords.

Wednesday night, the MPs were offered a few options. Mr. Blair and Jack Straw (former foreign secretary and currently Leader of the House of Commons and Lord Privy Seal) wanted a Lords that was half-elected and half-appointed. Other choices were 60% elected, as well as 80% and 100% elected. The 50-50 and 60-40 options failed. And while the 80% solution passed, what stunned some analysts was the 337 to 224 vote in favor of a 100% elected Lords.

There are some traditionalist MPs who decided the best hope for keeping things as they are (since they can’t go back to the way things were before Mr. Blair, and since an elected House of Lords undermines the Common's monopoly on democratic authority) was to vote for a 100% elected Lords. They believe that such a proposal is “toxic,” that as one Labourite put it, “The Lords will look at this and say ‘We’re all doomed’, so they’ll throw it out.”

However, the government has tried to make the best of a bad situation. Mr. Straw said in an interview on Britain’s Channel 4 News: “The vote on 80%, a very substantial elected proportion, went through by a significant majority of getting on for 40. This vote [for 100% elected] was probably inflated a bit by that kind of tactic, but there isn’t any doubt that the sentiment of the house is at that end ... An absolute majority in the House of Commons voted knowingly for 100% elected House of Lords.”

Of course, the Prime Minister and party leaders like the idea of appointing some members of the upper chamber; they are, after all, the people who do the appointing. When the current House of Lords votes this down (as it almost certainly will), a new election issue will have been born. And really, if the hereditary peers are gone, is there any point in not having a purely elected upper house? After all, someone needs to keep the Commons from marching the country off to another unpopular and illegitimate war.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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