Keir Starmer: I will abolish House of Lords and will replace it with elected chamber

Politics & Elections
101

That is a fine point. Such a system has the disadvantages of both aristocracy and democracy.

It is obviously not my business to tell the British how to arrange their government. My only firmly-held belief is that it seems obvious that further reforms of the Lords would not do a whole lot to fix whatever problem there is in British governance.

I appreciate kicking these thoughts around with you all. I have no doubt that an entirely random house (something like jury duty) would be perfectly representative. But it would be quite anti-democratic.

Would it matter that Congress (Lords, whatever) has exactly as many Gay women as it “ought to” have? Can’t left-handers be protected by a government with far too many right-handers? Probably not. On the other hand having the right number of single moms, or people who live in public housing might be useful, or at least amusing.

102

Has any country, in modern times, actually used sortition to select membership of a legislative body?

103

I think there are a few single mothers in the House of Commons, depending on how you interpret the term. Angela Rayner is the first one that comes to mind. No idea about the House of Lords. But I think that would be a pretty horrible metric for selection into a House designated to oversee legislation. I don’t want a single mother excluded from the House of Lords. But i very much do not want the main qualifier for her appointment being that she is a single mother.

I also think that if you tried to find an equitable House of Lords based on statistics, it would be far more exclusive than you intended. The UK population is 67.33 million. There are 786 members of the House of Lords. So each bucket needs to have 856.6 thousand people in its demographic. Just to pick one demographic, there are 340,000 people in England registered as blind or partially sighted. Sorry David Blunkett. You get to compete with all the other middle-aged white guys.

104

Given that the House of Lords has the power, basically, not to stop legislation but to require the Commons to reconsider it before confirming it, there may be merit in the idea that one of the ways the Lords can improve the system is by facilitating representation of groups and interests, and the expression of perspectives, that don’t readily find representation in a Commons elected by the UK’s outstandingly crapulous electoral system. The idea that including hereditary peers might help to achieve this is, I think, for the birds; the representative hereditary peers are, if anything, more likely than average to have the characteristics of social, economic and material privilege that already dominate in the UK’s political establishment.

So how can it be done? Starmer is talking about an elected second chamber, but I see problems here. The political establishment obviously won’t want a second chamber with greater democratic legitimacy than the first chamber, since it would then be able to assert itself and its views much more strongly. But, because of the crappy electoral system by which the Commons is filled, this might imply an electoral system for the Lords which is even more egregiously crappy, giving voters even less power and the parties even more, than in elections for the Commons. That would defeat the whole point. So — unless Labour is willing to contemplate a more representative electoral system for the Commons, which I doubt — it might be wise to prioritise the objective of having a more diverse second chamber, giving voice to otherwise marginalised groups and interests, over the objective of having a popularly elected second chamber.

105

Good points. Just throwing this out there (it will never happen) but what if the Commons were elected based on PR, and the upper house on FPTP? That seems to me it might be closer to an ideal system than what we have at the moment. It would mean the primary ‘layer’ of government is more representative of voters’ wishes, and the secondary oversight ‘layer’ retains that element of local representation that is currently the preserve of the Commons. I look forward to everyone pointing out all the problems with this system (aside from the obvious one that such a radical change is rather unlikely).

106

There’s the even more obvious point that it’s unnecessary. There’s no reason why a proportional representation system shouldn’t also feature local representation. Ireland, for example, has a highly proportional electoral system that also very effectively incentivises members of parliament to be highly attentive to the wishes and interest of their constituencies, and of individual constituents.

107

Sounds like its working perfectly. What seems to be the problem?

Of all the indignities that the United Kingdom has had to face recently, having to take good ideas from the Republic of Ireland has to take the cake.

108

How about an upper house chosen indirectly by an electoral college of local councilors like in France? :rofl:

109

As you would expect:

110

Looks like abolition will be part of a big package of constitutional changes. He has Brown on the case creating a report. It will be expensive in terms of political time….so why, when there will be so many other priorities?

Could it be that this is for Labour to win back Scottish voters from the Scottish National Party? That would make sense.

111

Nobody cares about this stuff, other than a few Westminster policy wonks. Least of all the public, who will probably respond with “What’s that got to do with the price of fish?”
It’s like disestablishmentarianism - nobody cares.

112

The Scottish National Party won 48 seats in Westminster in the last General Election. Labour party won 7.

Labour may win the next election because the Conservative vote collapses and the northern Red Wall seats are recaptured. But…without winning some seats in Scotland from the SNP, the longer term success of Labour is far from assured. Moreover the SNP will persist in campaigning for an Independent Scotland and they see the seats they win in Westminster as a vote for Independence.

Brown’s report on the reform of the House of Lords also deals will also increase the devolution of power to the Scottish Parliament, Wales and UK regions as well as making the Lords more representative. It gives Labour a strong card to play to win Scottish voters.

This sounds like a cunning plan to me, makes political sense if you want to win elections.

Whether it is worth the cost in political capital in the first term of a new administration at a time when the country is facing an acute economic crisis. That is another question. The much larger electorate in England will have little interest in this issue.

Starmer is releasing policy statements very sparingly right now. The freedom of movement issue is aimed at the Brexit tendency both inside and outside his party. This constitutional House of Lords reform is aimed at the SNP. Very difficult for the Conservatives or the SNP to attack these policies.

He is laying a couple of safe cards early in the poker game. The big important policies will come later.

I will be interested to hear whether he will have a plan for Nationalisation. The privatisation of the water utilities and the railways have pretty much failed. The Water utilities have become dominated by foreign owned cartels and several rail franchises have failed. But there will be a price tag associated with taking them into public ownership and there are other priorities.

Labour, like the Conservatives, can easily be drawn towards their own set of idealogical preoccupations. It will be interesting to see if Starmer can keep this tendency under control.

Right now the country is facing a lot of strikes over pay and the labour unions are confronting to government. The Conservatives will claim Labour are in the pocket of the Unions. Starmer has to distance the party from this suggestion, but still keep his left wing from breaking ranks.

There is a lot of history here. Many echoes of the ‘Winter of Discontent’ drama of the late 70’s. Starmer would rather the image be of the heady optimism that came with Blair’s New Labour of the late 90’s which was victorious over a deadbeat Conservative party that had been in power for far too long.

At some point Starmer has to make a big statement about his vision for the country and present it with the backing of a united party. But now is not the time, it has to be closer to the general election which will be no later than January 2025.

A lot can happen in two years.

113

The biggest argument for reform of the House of Lords is that life peerages they are used by Prime Ministers to reward major donors to the party. The counter argument is that they have other achievements where these tycoons have demonstrated merit and expertise that will contribute to revising proposed legislation.

This is a quite a weak argument that Starmer will exploit. But he needs a plan because there is a great many more reforms that could be put in place that could easily consume huge amounts of parliamentary time competing against a long list of other concerns.