This blog is shocked, as are many people, by the tawdry list of rejects, toadies and worse who have been elevated to the Upper House of Parliament, of a country which likes to think of itself as a democracy. At one time the only route in was through birth. That was hardly fair and certainly not democratic, but in a perverse way it was honourable. Later appointments of life peers were introduced to modernize the second chamber of Britain’s parliamentary democracy, which itself remained detached from any connection to any process of election. Those early appointments were by and large on merit. Now the whole thing is out of control. It is stuffed with goodness knows whom, chosen for party loyalties, wealth or notoriety and has become the largest government assembly in the world, outside communist China. Nobody of true merit is appointed because any such people would refuse the offer.
It should be shut down and replaced with an elected UK parliament to act as a revising chamber for each of the national parliaments. Until it does or is democratised in some way, this country’s claim to be democratically governed is at best an exaggeration and at worst fraudulent.