Eight centuries of English history ended at 4.25pm when the House of Lords accepted that hereditary peers should be given the heave-ho.
There was no division on the third reading of the Bill. ‘The contents have it,’ declared Lady Fookes on the Woolsack, from under an orange hairdo that matched splashes of her jazzy jacket.
And that, m’dears, was that. Chop! Exit the dukes and earls and viscounts and hereditary barons. In their absence we will have a Lords entirely appointed by prime ministers. Our political class has distinguished itself. It has made a blot on our democracy even stinkier.
And yet, as human spectacle, the Lords has its moments.
One Lord Spiritual (ie bishop) was in attendance. It was that one from Newcastle who assassinated Justin Welby. She speaks all the jargon about ‘impact assessments’ and wears an old pair of Maurice Saatchi’s spectacles.
Nearby: Kenneth O. Morgan (Lab). Very Welsh. Aged 91, he could be a good 20 years older. Imagine the poet R.S. Thomas’s suave twin.
The Europhile Duke of Wellington (Crossbencher) graced us with his presence, handsome and maybe a little disappointing. More upmarket PR man than a Wellesley. At the far end of the House stood Lady Meyer (Con) in an eyepatch, no doubt the consequence of a recent duel.
The air kept being rent by the bark of a country pheasant. On closer analysis this turned out to be a repeated coughing from Lady Butler-Sloss (Crossbencher), retired beak and formidable aunt of the actor Nigel Havers. PG Wodehouse knew her ilk.
The Europhile Duke of Wellington (Crossbencher) graced us with his presence, handsome and maybe a little disappointing. More upmarket PR man than a Wellesley, writes Quentin Letts
This was no day for worn arguments about hereditary peers, Lords reform and so forth.
The only political gravy swilling around in the bottom of the pan concerned a plea from the Tories that the ejected lords be offered life peerages.
Lord True, Tory leader, suggested he and his lot could go on dirty protest and ignore parliamentary conventions unless a few of the departees were shown some clemency. Former MP and Cabinet minister Lord Forsyth (Con) said Labour had now ‘lit the fuse… for an elected House’ and that could ‘blow everything apart’ both in the Lords and the Commons.
Lord True added that the British people ‘have never been asked to assent to an all-appointed House’. Fair point.
Quick poll for a website, perhaps: do you approve or not of an Upper House that will now be composed entirely of political-party greasers, prime ministerial acolytes and failed MPs?
The tone from departing blue-bloods was one of acidic sorrow rather than anything nastier. Lord Mancroft (Con) felt he and his noble comrades were being ‘thrown out like discarded rubbish’. He had not thought it legal, these days, to be sacked on the basis of your birth. ‘It feels deeply, deeply offensive.’
Lady Smith (Lab), Leader of the House, assured him it was nothing personal; her trouser suit of imperial purple possibly betrayed her truer feelings.
Lord Grocott (Lab), who had long waged class war, gloated.
Lord Mancroft (Con) felt he and his noble comrades were being ‘thrown out like discarded rubbish’, writes Quentin Letts
Telly scientist Lord Winston (Lab), hands in pockets, made an incomprehensible speech
about genes. The 20th Earl of Caithness (Con) thanked Labour for having given him a financial boost in recent years.
Having inherited the earldom in 1965, he recalled that the daily allowance when he first attended was a touch under a fiver. Only when the Blairites started filling the place with their own c.1999 did the rate shoot upwards. Things can only get better.
All of which leaves me little space to describe the jaw-locking dullness of Sir K. Starmer’s session at the Commons liaison committee. Jings, it was joyless.
In the second row of the public seats sat a lass in a blue dress who was fighting hard to stay awake. Her eyeballs kept doing that thing where only the whites are visible. She yawned, sighed, eased her neck but it was no good.
Both eyes shut, she slumped forward, dead to Westminster. Just like a hereditary peer.
