Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 11 January 2002
If anyone had suggested even five years ago that the Tories would adopt a more democratic stance than Labour on reforming the House of Lords, he or she would have been dismissed as a fool.
But that is precisely what is happening today. As the second stage of Lords reform, the Government wants a second chamber with just one-fifth of members elected. The Tories have yet to declare their hand, but it is increasingly clear they will push for at least 50 per cent of members of the new Lords to be elected.
How on earth did things come to this? Part of the story is Tory opportunism. The Conservatives are aware that 177 MPs, nearly all Labour and Liberal Democrat, have signed a Commons motion calling for a wholly or substantially elected upper house. And they reckon that by playing the democratic card they will be able to attract enough support to defeat a Government Lords reform bill in the Commons.
But the only reason the Tories are in a position to be opportunist is the mix of pusillanimous caution and cynical love of patronage that has characterised Tony Blair’s approach to changing the Lords ever since his (completely unnecessary) retreat from removal of all hereditary peers during the first stage of reform.
On Blair’s initiative, each step the Government has taken in defining its proposals for the second stage of reform – from the appointment of Lord Wakeham, a known opponent of an elected second chamber, at the head of a Royal Commission on the Lords, through to Lord Irvine’s White Paper last year – has taken it further away from support for a democratic upper house.
The Government says that it wants a largely appointed Lords because it does not want to undermine the primacy of the democratically elected Commons. But this argument is fatuous. A largely elected upper house could easily be prevented from sabotaging the decisions of the lower house.
Most obviously, its powers could be limited by law, as the powers of elected second chambers are everywhere else in the world. Alternatively, or in addition, its democratic legitimacy could be diluted by making it indirectly elected, for example by regional assemblies (as in Germany or Holland) – though in Britain’s case this would clearly require the completion of the process of devolution left unfinished by Labour in the last parliament.
Of course, even an indirectly elected second chamber would have the democratic legitimacy to force the Commons and the Government to listen to it and to account for their actions – which a largely appointed second chamber, stuffed with the washed-up cronies of party leaders along with a smattering of the non-party great-and-good, could never have. Which is the reason that Blair and his fellow control-freaks want a largely appointed second chamber – and the reason that their anti-democratic scheme should be scuppered.
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On a related theme – well, it’s related insofar as it’s about the Labour leadership’s control-freakery and contempt for democracy – I was somewhat surprised to hear that the editor of this organ has been omitted from the shortlist in the selection of the Labour candidate to fight the forthcoming by-election in the late Ray Powell’s seat of Ogmore.
It’s not just that Mark Seddon is a member of the Labour National Executive Committee (albeit a Left-wing trouble-maker), has already been a Labour parliamentary candidate (albeit in unwinnable Buckingham) and has all of the things that Ogmore needs – a battered Jaguar, a lifelong passion for all things Welsh, good looks et cetera.
It’s also that the decision to stitch him up can only rebound on Labour. At the last general election, Ogmore was a safe Labour seat: Powell held it with a majority of 14,000. But that doesn’t mean it will be safe in the by-election – any more than many supposedly safe Labour seats turned out to be so in the elections to the Welsh assembly in 1999, when Plaid Cymru won unprecedented victories in south Wales.
Lest we forget, the main reason for that debacle was contemptuous, heavy-handed fixing by the Labour leadership in London, which demoralised Labour activists in Wales and turned off the voters in droves. Refusing the members of Ogmore constituency Labour Party the right to choose or reject Comrade Seddon – and I’m told the chances that they wouldn’t have picked him were high – is likely to have a similar effect. It’s a bit of a long shot still, but I’m going to bet a fiver on a shock Plaid victory.
