How to make turkeys vote for X-mas

Nothing could be easier. Just promise them they won’t be stuffed this Christmas and they’ll be happy. You see, since turkeys aren’t known for their foresight, they won’t realise that what’s on offer is merely a stay of execution, not a full pardon.

You expect such obtuseness from avian creatures, not from the metaphorical turkeys flapping their wings in the House of Lords. Yet their Lordships have just gobbled up the human equivalent of the offer mentioned above.

On behalf of a grateful nation, they voted to kick the remaining 92 hereditary peers out of the upper House. Even those noblemen themselves voted in favour of that political suicide – not just theirs but also Britain’s.

Why were they so meek? Because they were promised life peerages, which will enable them to stay in the Lords until they die. Since their average age is about 70, a generation later the House of Lords will be prostituted to such an extent that it’ll closely resemble a house of ill repute.

You may surmise from my tone that I regard this development as catastrophic. So I do – and so should anyone who has any affection for our constitutional history, or any understanding of how critical the constitutional backbone is to Britain’s body both politic and civic.

The House of Lords goes back at least a millennium, to the times of the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot, the Norman Curia Regis and other councils of elders. That alone should have made it off-limits for modern vandalism – if an institution has lasted that long, it must have something going for it. But this line of thought belongs to the past.

The Lords has evolved over the ages to become an essential component of our constitution. Largely thanks to this hereditary chamber, by the 19^th century England had achieved a balance of power that most foreign countries envied, a few tried to emulate, and none really managed to do so.

The balance was perfect: the monarch’s power (still considerable, if already greatly diminished at the time) was counterbalanced by the elected lower chamber, with the hereditary and therefore unelected Lords making sure that neither end of the seesaw shot up.

The Lords served to dull the edge of populist demagoguery that, combined with an ever-expanding suffrage, threatened to turn British politics into a travesty. It was the peers’ job to keep the Starmers of this world away from the levers of power, and they managed to do so for a long time.

The assumption, proved correct over centuries, was that the constitutional mix should include an element impervious to politicking. Since the hereditary peers owed their position to neither popular whim nor partisan interests, and since they had no fear of losing their posts, they could legislate strictly in national interests, not their own.

Britain is a monarchic republic, not a republican monarchy, like the US and France. An empowered aristocracy is essential to our politics, while it’s no accident that one of the first laws passed after the American and French revolutions eliminated all titles of nobility. Aristocracy is meaningless in the absence of a monarch, but then a monarch is equally meaningless in the absence of aristocracy.

Even though our kings have no executive power, they still have a vital if subtle role to play in the constitutional balance. Most of their power has been delegated to the Commons, but some of it has been vested in the Lords. Without the legs of serving aristocracy to stand on, monarchy becomes a purely decorative knick-knack, as is the case, say, in the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries.

None of this is to denigrate the political systems in any of the countries mentioned. Political virtue is like Rome, to which, as we know, many roads lead. America chose one path, France another, similar one, but Britain stuck to her own road laid out before France became France and long before the first European settlers landed in America.

Alas, Britain has proved vulnerable to anno domini. When modernity triumphed, political power gradually passed into the hands of either ignoramuses or out-and-out vandals.

They have been bleating about the Lords being an undemocratic outrage for decades. This reminded us that, if patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel to Dr Johnson, democracy has to be the first one.

One such scoundrel cum vandal was Tony Blair who in 1999 called hereditary peers an “anachronism” and expelled 600 of them from the Lords. All peers, according to him and his ilk, must be either elected or appointed, making them beholden to the same self-serving give and take as MPs in the Commons.

That put paid to the House of Lords as it was meant to be, reducing it to a pale imitation of the US Senate. At the same time, Blair also vandalised our ancient legal system by creating an unnecessary, redundant and therefore pernicious institution: the Supreme Court.

If those nincompoops love American institutions so much, why not turn our counties into states and apply for incorporation into the USA? I’m sure Trump would be open to the idea, although perhaps not: the US welfare budget would have to go stratospheric.

It’s also useful to remember that American colonists arrived at their political setup by an armed rebellion against Britain. Those who want to transplant US institutions into British soil are also rebelling, although I’m not sure they know against what.

Now the remaining 92 hereditary peers are also on their way out, and our governing gang are triumphant. This latest act of constitutional vandalism, said Lords Leader Baroness Smith, keeps the promise Labour made in their manifesto.

“We have a duty to find a way forward,” she said. Quite. No matter what lurks at the end of the way: forward locomotion is its own reward to these nonentities.  

Bidding good-bye to our ancient institution, the Earl of Devon struck a wistful note.

“I think this House, Parliament, and the public more widely will miss us,” said the man whose family has held a seat in the Lords for 900 years. But then: “I’ll be happy to return, but on merit, not by dint of my hereditary privilege.”

Obviously, His Lordship has learned nothing from his family’s illustrious history. What chance do your average Tom, Dick or Harry, or rather Keir-Angie-Rachel, have? But here’s something else for them to ponder.

Our monarchs also reign “by dint of hereditary privilege”. Perhaps they too should be made elective, rising to Buck House strictly on ‘merit’, seen as such by Keir-Angie-Rachel.

Better still, let’s replace our king with a president. Now there’s a bright idea – and don’t think for a second it hasn’t crossed the minds of our constitutional vandals.