House of Lords reform

The unelected pigs are squealing
at the prospect of democracy in the House of Lords.

The United Kingdom is not a proper democracy. This is indisputable for many reasons, the existence of a monarch with the power to dissolve parliament, an electoral system that renders the votes of millions of people utterly worthless and most importantly the undemocratic shambles that is the House of Lords.

The idea of a completely unelected upper house would be utterly incomprehensible to residents of many other countries. Admittedly democratic systems across the world suffer from their own specific defects but the idea of an unelected Senate would be shocking to most people in France, Germany, Italy or the United States.

The votes of around 40,000,000 Brits determine the 650 representatives in the House of Commons yet the 789 members of the House of Lords have been selected by just 9 men and 1 woman since the introduction of the Life Peerages act in 1958 (see table below). At first the Prime Minister selected life peers to top up an upper house stuffed with hereditary peers who had simply inherited their positions of power and authority from their fathers. Before the 1997 General Election Tony Blair promised House of Lords reform but only carried out half of it removing hundreds of Tory Hereditary peers in 1999 but failing to bring in a proper democratic replacement in favour of stuffing the place with 357 of his hand picked unelected political stooges.

Since 1999 the selection of unelected life peers has been an important part of a Prime Minister's job allowing him to alter the balance of power in the upper house to suit his own interests. This is best illustrated by the fact that David Cameron created 116 life peers in his first year in office,  nearly ten times the rate of Tory predecessor Alec Douglas-Home who created only 14 life peers in his one year stint as Prime Minister between 1963 and 1964.

Before the 2010 General Election all three major parties committed themselves to introducing some democracy to the upper house in their manifestos however the overwhelming majority of the unelected rabble that are famously allowed to claim expenses just by signing in and doing absolutely nothing else are obviously strongly opposed to any kind of democratic reform.

The current unelected peers will almost certainly vote down any proposals to apply democracy to the upper house and some have even claimed that use of the Parliament Act to impose reform would be "unconstitutional". They know as well as anyone that the United Kingdom has no written constitution and that the Parliament Act has been used before to prevent the undemocratic Lords from sinking legislation from the less undemocratic Commons.

It is quite pleasant to know that these horrible unelected political stooges are getting so upset at the prospect of losing their power, influence and expenses however this feeling is tainted by the knowledge that they will just be replaced by another tier of corrupt, dishonest, self serving career politicians wearing the rosettes of the three main political parties in the UK, Neo-Liberal Blue, Neo-Liberal Red & Neo-Liberal Yellow.

Peerage dignities created under the Life Peerages Act 1958

Prime Minister	Party	Tenure	Peers	Per year
Harold Macmillan	Conservative	1957–1963	48	9.6
Alec Douglas-Home	Conservative	1963–1964	14	14.0
Harold Wilson	Labour	1964–1970	123	20.5
Edward Heath	Conservative	1970–1974	56	14.0
Harold Wilson	Labour	1974–1976	80	40.0
James Callaghan	Labour	1976–1979	57	19.0
Margaret Thatcher	Conservative	1979–1990	200	18.2
John Major	Conservative	1990–1997	141	20.1
Tony Blair	Labour	1997–2007	357	35.7
Gordon Brown	Labour	2007–2010	34	11.3
David Cameron	Conservative	2010-	116	116
Total			1,226	23.2