Peers fight for a place in the House of Lords

IT IS the most exclusive of elections. Those standing are an array of earls, viscounts and even a duke. It is also one of the most surreal. One candidate’s manifesto suggests an analysis of whether his future colleagues are “right-brained” and creative or “left-brained” and analytical. (“I personally can only offer...my right-side of the brain.”) Another brief pitch ends: “Flexible working hours allowing attendance. Politically independent.” A third mentions his presidency of the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club, a society for glee music. Welcome to the world of by-elections for hereditary peers in the House of Lords.

These by-elections are a modern quirk in a place of more ancient anachronisms. Tony Blair pledged to abolish hereditary peers, who pass on their titles, from Britain’s unelected second chamber. As a compromise to get the policy through the very body that he wanted to overhaul, 92 were kept. Rather than dwindling as a result of death or retirement, their numbers are replenished in by-elections. This was supposed to be a stop-gap until further reform. But two decades on, that has yet to arrive.

Instead, whenever a hereditary peer hangs up his ermine, a pantomime of democracy follows. Only those with hereditary titles may register to stand. The electorate consists of hereditary peers from the same party as the departing member. This just about works for Conservative hereditaries, who number 48. In 2016, however, there was a by-election to replace a Liberal Democrat peer, which meant that an electorate of three chose from among seven candidates. This summer two by-elections are needed to replace Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, a former French and German teacher turned cross-bencher, and Lord Glentoran, a Tory peer who once won an Olympic gold medal in the bobsleigh.

Some peers are trying to end the pantomime. Lord Grocott, a Labour peer and former MP, has proposed a bill to scrap by-elections. The remaining peers would then die out and the House of Lords would become an entirely appointed chamber. “It is nothing personal, it’s just a stupid system,” says Lord Grocott. After all, the hereditary peers are not without merit, he adds. Earl Howe, for instance, has been a sharp and able Conservative minister. But even for an institution as anachronistic as the House of Lords, the by-elections jar.

Watching the Lords swings between the heartening and the depressing. Sometimes it resembles the letters page of the Daily Telegraph come to life. Crusty men in suits that once fitted rise slowly to their feet to make confused points. Yet it offers rigorous scrutiny of the sometimes ham-fisted laws that are thrown its way by MPs in the Commons. Its select committees do especially valuable work. During Brexit, the Lords have taken on outsized importance, demanding fundamental and worthwhile changes to the government’s fitful efforts to negotiate Britain’s departure from the EU. Farcical by-elections can only undermine an undemocratic yet still effective second chamber.