Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

https://apnews.com/article/uk-house-of-lords-hereditary-peers-expelled-535df8781dd01e8970acda1dca99d3d4

by divbzero • 4 months ago

310 394 4 months ago

“…a compromise that will see an undisclosed number of hereditary members allowed to stay by being ‘recycled’ into life peers.”

What? Are the membership roles and the text of this law confidential?

pjc508• 4 months ago

Doesn't need to be in the text of the law. The Crown can appoint an arbitrary list of life peers - possibly at any time (see Chiltern Hundreds).

As the article points out, the life peers are arguably worse. People like Mandelson.

graypegg• 4 months ago

Odd! I think this is the bill?

https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3755/publications

It's rather hard to read because the amendments are written as a diff, but it seems to imply the undisclosed number is 87 peers. I guess they need to decide amongst themselves who the lucky 87 are?

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0295... Bill 295 2024-25 (Lords Amendments)

    “1. (2) (2) No more than 87 people at any one time shall be excepted from section 1.”

---

Edit: Wow, is this ever hard to pin down. I think section 1 of the lord's amendments were dropped here: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3755/stages/20179/motionsa...

which I guess means that the text remains the same as the original text in HL-49 (https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/56858/documents/533...):

    # Exclusion of remaining hereditary peers
    Omit section 2 of the House of Lords Act 1999 (exception to exclusion of hereditary peers from membership of House of Lords).

which is a patch onto another law, that is linked to in the PDF but for whatever reason does not resolve for me: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1999/34/contents.

KK7NIL3• 4 months ago

It's rather hard to read because the amendments are written as a diff

That's a feature, not a bug ;).[0]

0: Any episode of "Yes, Minister!"

tialaramex3• 4 months ago

All primary legislation is published. But this needn't be in the primary legislation since there is no need to legislate to make it happen. It's a side deal, the government agrees to do this, the Lords agree not to get in their way.

Much, but not all secondary legislation is also published. A typical means by which Secondary Legislation is brought into existence is that a Law says there shall be some list or reference established by some particular minister, and that document is Secondary Legislation. For example maybe a Law concerning Clown Licensing says there shall be a list of Clown License Offices, and the Secretary of State for Hilarity shall write this list, that list isn't voted on by Parliament, the list gets written by some bureaucrats working for the current Secretary of State for Hilarity. This "undisclosed" list needn't be in secondary legislation either.

tomatocracy3• 4 months ago

The idea is that some of the current hereditary peers will be given new life peerages under existing rules which would enable them to stay in the chamber. Granting new life peerages is mostly within the gift of the Prime Minister (although there are committees which vet appointments and conventions about allowing opposition parties to nominate some), so this is not part of the legislation but a back-room deal by which the votes were secured by the government.

alopha• 4 months ago

Now we're down to just an upper house absolutely stuffed with hundreds of washed up political hacks given a comfortable retirement and party donors. And a few priests.

fmajid4• 4 months ago

Including rapists like the Bishop of Lincoln.

iberator• 4 months ago

Win for democracy and fair representation of the working class!

Being Noble is like saying 'i used to have slaves(even if not, then feudalism was the de'facto slave system too!) and made profits from it'

Such people are enemies of humanity and democracy and markets. I hope one day they all just go.

King and his small family is fine btw. Cultural reason:)

dude250711• 4 months ago

Yep, getting rid of nobility is how USSR lived happily ever after.

coldtea2• 4 months ago

Well, for all USSRs issues, getting rid of their nobility was one of the best things they did.

stvltvs2• 4 months ago

Getting rid of hereditary nobility has worked out pretty well for the USA.

coldtea2• 4 months ago

Win for democracy and fair representation of the working class

In Britain? Good luck with that.

pydry• 4 months ago

Until the UK military pledge allegiance to democracy rather than the king, the royal family is also a risk to democracy.

Thailand is an object lesson in how monarchy is repeatedly used as a lever by military and business elites to overthrow democratic representation "in the name of the king".

It almost happened in the UK once, too, in the same way it happened in Thailand.

The reason the media is so keen on the institution is because it functions as a "break glass in case of emergency" for elites. It's not an organic part of the culture, it is shoved down our throats.

anon84873628• 4 months ago

Should have used it to prevent Brexit.

Just look at the US right now to see how civil military control can go off the rails too.

fmajid4• 4 months ago

It happened in Australia in 1975, and Chuck was directly involved in it.

kbelder3• 4 months ago

It's not "I used to have slaves...", it's "My ancestors used to have slaves...".

Having a class of nobles is an embarrassment for a country, and they should have been kicked out of parliament a century ago. But don't attribute to the child the sins of the father; that's the same category of error that the concept of hereditary nobility falls into.

fmajid4• 4 months ago

Sure, they are parasites descended from thugs as opposed to thugs descended from thugs. But you don't see them renouncing their unearned wealth built on rapine, slavery and colonial exploitation, which is to this day largely exempted from property taxes.

throw_rust• 4 months ago

From hereditary buffoons to patronage pissoir and party hack retirement home, not much better off methinks.

nephihaha5• 4 months ago

The hereditary buffoons were more independent-minded, and sometimes progressive, than the appointees.

Not a fan of the old system but this is not an improvement.

meitham• 4 months ago

It’s not just about the seat they must lose their “lord” title

theodric5• 4 months ago

The point of the hereditary peerage was the same as the point of having a non-elected Senate. Now both will have been lost in the name of "democracy" - a system of government that constantly fails to do either what is the desire of the people OR what is truly in their interests. From here on out it'll just be whoever manages to connive their way into power through connections, payola, corruption, island meetups, and so on. I strongly suspect this will lead to a worse government, not a better one.

Chinjut2• 4 months ago

The Senate is, while not the whole story, a significant part of the reason the government constantly fails to do what is either the desire of the people or what's in their interests. I wouldn't lament losing the Senate.

jfengel3• 4 months ago

The US Senate is designed to check and balance the House of Representatives. But that often puts the Congress as a whole in deadlock, meaning it can no longer balance the other two branches.

When they could get anything done they delegated a lot of power to the Executive. Which worked ok, but eventually a "unitary executive" appropriated even more power, and the Legislature is powerless to prevent it.

fc417fc8028• 4 months ago

Aren't you supporting parent's point? The senate is elected these days after all ...

crooked-v• 4 months ago

The Senate was fundamentally from the start a compromise in favor of the slave-owning ogliarchy. You just have to look at free and slave states being admitted in pairs to preserve the status quo of slavery to see how that went.

tartoran• 4 months ago

Why would a hereditary system work any better? Plenty of monarchies based on heredity ran themselves into the ground.

theodric5• 4 months ago

It provides an additional check. Much like a monarch, a noble's interests are tied to the welfare of the country itself. Without the country, they're just a toff with some money and an overinflated sense of self-importance.

taylorius• 4 months ago

Heredity is only one of many flavours of cronyism.

bonoboTP• 4 months ago

It's interesting how people never even learn about any upsides to that. Even if the balance comes out on the side of elected officials, it's good to at least have some idea of why so many societies have worked like that (other than "they were dumb and evil I guess").

The main thing is long-term stability and limits on backstabbing and ruthless competition. Sure it doesn't bring it to zero, plenty of bloody examples from history. But when someone gets close to power for the first time and might be out of there quite soon, and have to watch out for being replaced quickly, they will behave quite differently than someone who plans ahead in decades and generations (if all things go well). If you have a short time under the sun, you better extract all you can while it lasts.

It's kind of like a lifetime appointment or like tenure, except also across generations. Tenure allows professors to ignore short-term ups and downs and allows them some resilience and slack (though funding is still an issue). Similarly a nobleman can "relax" and take a longer-term view on things. The failure mode is that they stop caring and become lazy and just enjoy their position.

kbelder3• 4 months ago

How about a chamber populated by random lottery? Like jury duty?

KK7NIL3• 4 months ago

Perhaps you're joking, but Athenian democracy had a significant amount of randomness, with candidates being chosen randomly from the top vote winners. Terms were also only 1 year for most positions.

These, and other systems, helped prevent any one person from monopolizing power.

This is a good video on this: https://youtu.be/pIgMTsQXg3Q

npunt• 4 months ago

Read/watch this interview [1] with Ada Palmer on her new book about the Renaissance. Florence did this for a time.

You put names in a bag. You examine all of the merchant members of guilds. You choose which ones are fit to serve, meaning not ill and dying, not insane, not so deeply in debt that they could be manipulated by the people whom they owe money to. Their names go in a bag. You choose nine guys at random. They rule the city. They are put in a palace where they rule the city from that tower.
They’re actually locked in the tower for the duration of their time in office because if they left the tower, they could be bribed or kidnapped. They rule the city for two or three months. At the end, they are thanked for their service and escorted out, and then a different nine guys share power for the next three months. It’s a power sharing that is designed to be tyrant-proof because you need consensus of nine randomly selected guys to decide to do anything.

[1] https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/ada-palmer

fc417fc8028• 4 months ago

How about both? A chamber of life peers and a chamber of temporary randomly selected representatives.

perilunar3• 4 months ago

AKA sortition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

“Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it.”

― Plato

rexpop• 4 months ago

Extraordinary, and disgusting, to see monarchism touted by literate professionals in the 21st century.

The "point" of hereditary peerage is, from the perspective of the nobility, to preserve privileges with only self-interested regard for the welfare of the public—which very obviously resolves into tyrannical despotism at the earliest opportunity!

Utterly unconscionable to carry water for the literally medieval political economy that brought us, eg the calamitous 14th century.

Countless—countless—examples of the hideous cruelties of hereditary nobles abound since the institution's inception. You'd have to be a blind pig to ignore the myriad failure states. My God, man, do you want your children to be slaves??

amadeuspagel• 4 months ago

The case of Peter Mandelson, who resigned from the Lords in February after revelations about his friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, drew renewed attention to the upper chamber and the problem of lords behaving badly.

But Mandelson wasn't a hereditary noble. His example is an argument for abolishing the House of Lords entirely (which I agree with in any case) but not specifically for ejecting hereditary nobles.

Labour remains committed to eventually replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber that is “more representative of the U.K.” If past experience is anything to go by, change will come slowly.

Why does the House of Lords need to be replaced at all? Most countries are gridlocked enough with one chamber of parliament.

throwaway7783• 4 months ago

Does House of Lords have any real power today?

pjc508• 4 months ago

Sort of. They can and do amend bills, but they can't overrule the Commons on anything the latter regards as important.

protocolture3• 4 months ago

Why does the House of Lords need to be replaced at all? Most countries are gridlocked enough with one chamber of parliament.

Depends how it is designed. The australian senate, before 2015 or so, used to contain enough fun cooks that legislation had to get broad support to make it through. It was a pretty decent check against the beige dictatorship. But since they updated the voting rules to prevent the cool minor parties from holding the balance, its just been a massive rubber stamp. I loved seeing randos from minor parties getting to grill public servants on whatever their constituents were complaining about, particularly firearm legislation.

skissane3• 4 months ago

The australian senate, before 2015 or so, used to contain enough fun cooks that legislation had to get broad support to make it through. It was a pretty decent check against the beige dictatorship. But since they updated the voting rules to prevent the cool minor parties from holding the balance, its just been a massive rubber stamp

Current numbers in Australian Senate: Government 29, Opposition 27, Crossbench 20, 39 needed for majority. So if the opposition opposes a government bill, the government needs 10 crossbench senators to vote for it - if the Greens support it, that’s enough; if they oppose it, the government can still pass the bill if they get the votes of the 10 non-Green crossbench senators (4 One Nation; 3 independents; 3 single senator minor parties)

I can’t see how this is by any reasonable definition a “rubber stamp”

tim3334• 4 months ago

Gridlock can be good if you get a daft leader. Those things do happen.

mindwok• 4 months ago

British democracy and government is cool. It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitution, it's this organic thing that they've stumbled towards over the last ~800 years with small changes like this one gradually evolving them into a modern liberal democracy.

rvz2• 4 months ago

British democracy and government is cool.

Oh sweet summer child.

The government there does not care about you and will promise anything to get another 5 years in power despite causing the issues they promised to solve in the first place.

You are essentially voting in the same party to be in government and progress there moves in the hundreds of years; hence the riddance of the scam that is unelected hereditary nobles which it took more than 700 years to remove them.

pjc508• 4 months ago

In fairness, this is not unique to Britain. For America read "4" instead of "5".

jongjong3• 4 months ago

No idea why this was down-voted, it's true. It's replacing one hereditary system based on inheritance of titles with another hereditary system based on inheritance of capital.

tjpnz• 4 months ago

What on earth are you talking about? They were elected in 2024. If anything its the issues caused over the previous 14 years which must be fixed.

t435626• 4 months ago

The governments don't really cause the issues. The big issues are just things that face the country no matter who is in control - how to pay for everything, how to deal with population aging etc.

It's not a simple country - it's a machine with millions of complicated parts and therefore it's difficult to come up with simple things to do that will make everyone happy.

The public don't all have a 10000 foot view, which I don't think any 1 person could comprehensively understand anyhow, and are susceptible to being sold "simple solutions" by politicians - in fact they won't elect anyone who doesn't pretend at least to offer simple solutions.

protocolture3• 4 months ago

I see brits describing it as "Dictatorship with Democratic characteristics" and "3 weasels leading the 4th rabid weasel around by the tail" it doesnt seem "cool" by any stretch, except maybe if it was fictional and the people it hurt were not real.

pjc508• 4 months ago

I go back and forth on this. It's a lot like the palace of Westminster itself: charming, whimsical, historical, connected to the past, hopelessly impractical, postponing repairs until things break, and at significant risk of being burned down.

On the other hand it avoids the illusion that power resides in a text and that you can legal-magic your way past a power structure.

bartread• 4 months ago

There is something to be said for your written constitution though: having the fundamental principles on which your nation is founded enshrined in that way should, at least in theory, make it a lot easier to settle arguments (though in practice, and particularly recently, that does seem not to be the case). Constitutional wrangling in the UK is always really fraught though because it's all done by precedent and is therefore incredibly hard work to get to a clear understanding of what the situation really is.

scj• 4 months ago

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was established in 1982. We're still in the process of figuring out what it means (and as a living document, the interpretation will change over time).

It's messy. But I'd much rather that than need to ask "What would Pierre Trudeau think of this situation?"

inglor_cz3• 4 months ago

Well, SCOTUS sometimes produces really weird Humpty-Dumpty explanations for very common words.

Such as that growing marijuana plants in your own home for your own consumption influences interstate commerce and is therefore within powers of the Congress to regulate/ban.

runako• 4 months ago

The USA's written constitution should not be used as an exemplar of written constitutions in general because the founders didn't even enforce it the day after it was ratified. It took a civil war to even turn towards the words as written. The document itself was more aspirational than a reflection of how the founders intended to live and govern.

As a result of all of that, we have developed a culture of sophistry around simple words. We pretend the Constitution binds us, but in practice the structures that govern the country are much more opaque and therefore more difficult to change.

(This is why every so often we have to ratify a new amendment codifying rights that are clearly enumerated in the articles of the Constitution or in an earlier amendment. At some point, the sophistry tips over and we have to amend it to say what was plainly written in at some earlier point.)

s_dev• 4 months ago

If cool means interesting then yes, it is cool because it's archaic and different but it's not effective. It's the equivalent of a verbal contract. It's simply not as clear or coherent as a written one.

Irish democracy in contrast uses STV voting and a written constitution and is modeled between the best of what the UK, the US and France had to offer when it was drafted and is a very representative democracy with many political parties compared to the duopolies in the US and the UK. It's also why Ireland is largely immune to hard shifts to the left or right relative to the UK and US.

kimos• 4 months ago

I love this about Ireland because they are such a young republic. And democratic systems are a technology. Something that we understand better over time, and somewhere new can pick and choose from what is best, where it is _extremely_ hard to change existing systems in established countries.

tialaramex3• 4 months ago

It's simply not as clear or coherent as a written one.

No. As you have surely seen, the US written constitution just gets contorted to "clearly" mean whatever it is the partisan Justices decided suits their current purpose. The effect is extremely corrosive - they even decided it means their guy is above the law.

I agree that using a better voting system (STV) is a meaningful benefit and worth replicating elsewhere, but I don't agree that having a written constitution is better. I think Ireland would be in roughly the same place if it had the same arrangement as in Westminster in that respect.

For example when Ireland wrote a constitutional amendment saying abortion is illegal under basically any circumstances, the people the Irish were electing would also have voted against legislation allowing abortion, but by the time the poll was held to amend to say abortion must be legal, the legislators elected were also mostly pro-choice. So if there was no written constitution my guess is that roughly the outcome is the same, in 1975 an Irish woman who needs an abortion has to "go on holiday" abroad and come back not pregnant or order pills and hope they're not traced to her, and in 2025 it's just an ordinary medical practice. Maybe the changes happen a few years earlier, or a few years later.

Edited: Clarify that the abortion prohibition was itself an amendment, as was the removal of that prohibition.

williamdclt• 4 months ago

duopolies in the US and the UK

for better or worse, the duopoly is disappearing in the UK. Both Tories and Labour are getting passed by Reform and the Greens

tshaddox2• 4 months ago

Note that even though the U.S. has a Constitution, the entire U.S. government is still, like the UK, highly reliant on inexplicit norms many of which go back hundreds of years before the U.S. was founded. They’re both still English common law systems.

t435626• 4 months ago

Documents are meaningless. In rotten countries they simply get rewritten or ignored. Nothing beats an electorate who value honesty over being told what they want to hear and who punish corruption.

foldr3• 4 months ago

I’m not sure if you can talk about a duopoly of parties in the UK at present.

zrn900• 4 months ago

What part of hereditary aristocrats and religious and otherwise lifetime appointees being able to send back bills to the parliament an infinite number of times until they are changed as they want them. There are cases in which they sent bills back as many as 60 times until they got them changed.

kergonath2• 4 months ago

It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitution

It’s also very brittle and one charismatic populist away from unraveling like the American government. Too much depends on gentlemen agreements and people trusting other people to do the right thing. It works in a stable environment, but shatters the moment someone with no shame and no scruples shows up.

01jonny013• 4 months ago

Britain's problems are due to uncharismatic Blairite socialist.

hardlianotion3• 4 months ago

Most western democracies have exactly the same fault, maybe having unscrupulous, shameless legislators are the end state of the current models of democracy being practiced.

brailsafe• 4 months ago

But they're cycled through much more rapidly, and seem generally more vulnerable than the dictators in the U.S or otherwise. A small concession to be sure.

It seems like a fundamental failure of government that in many cases, there are no consequences for deliberately or accidentally screwing your people. You either get murdered eventually or the country is just left to fix itself later, which disproportionately affects people with little resources.

philistine• 4 months ago

While no democratic system is completely protected from tyrants, at least the UK (and the Commonwealth nations who inherited their principles) uses the living tree doctrine in its courts, which means that the written text is not sacrosanct and the intention and usage is to be considered. That and unwritten tradition has force of law and can be challenged in court. Look at Boris Johnson's reversal of his prorogation as an example.

laughing_man6• 4 months ago

There's really no way around the possibility that whatever you've written down in your constitution will be ignored in the heat of the moment, or become degraded over time.

charcircuit2• 4 months ago

Being able to vote in a strong leader to fix things directly is a feature. Democracy is not always the answer and when it is it can be too slow when time matters.

throwaway85825• 4 months ago

Constitution and laws are just pieces of paper. They only matter if the population acts as if they matter. Liberia has the same Constitution as the US.

tshaddox2• 4 months ago

It’s also very brittle and one charismatic populist away from unraveling

All sufficiently large governments (really all organizations of any kind) are necessarily like this, from the most successful attempts at open societies to the most autocratic. They all require constant vigilance both to perform their intended function and to preserve themselves into the future.

petesergeant• 4 months ago

Strong disagree. It's uncontested that supreme authority lies with parliament, not with the leader of the day. PM can't do shit if parliament doesn't want him to, because they can always simply change the rules on him.

JCattheATM6• 4 months ago

gradually evolving them into a modern liberal democracy.

And yet, they are still not quite there.

There is something to be said for design over stumbling.

t435626• 4 months ago

The stumbling is natural - it's a sort of stable thing deriving out of the state of now.

Design is something put out there which may not stand up to the test of how people actually behave i.e. it may not be stable.

themafia2• 4 months ago

It's significantly ruined by automated royal assent. The balance that's meant to protect the realm has not functioned for decades.

anon2914• 4 months ago

England's 'democracy' is cool insofar as the freemasons are cool. Old men in goofy hats sound fun until they end up raping some kid on an island somewhere in their old colonial posessions.

aaronrobinson• 4 months ago

The title makes it sound like they’re removing the remains of lost Lords gathering dust on the seats although that’s probably not too far from the truth.

sb057• 4 months ago

Also in the pipeline: elimination of jury trials

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2x01yne13o

infotainment• 4 months ago

The proposals, which return to Parliament on Tuesday, would replace juries in England and Wales with a single judge in cases where a convicted defendant would be jailed for up to three years.

Wow, this is literally the plot of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney video games. I'm sure it will go great with no downsides.

YawningAngel• 4 months ago

I'm a little torn on this one. On the one hand, people are bad epistemologists and lots of countries manage with similarly limited jury trials. On the other, we're doing it for cost reasons, which I think is the worst basis imaginable for such a move

derriz2• 4 months ago

It's simply a fact that common law jury trials are time-consuming and expensive and cause long delays and bottlenecks in the justice system.

Different common-law countries have addressed this issue in various ways. Restricting jury trials for more serious offenses (in this case for more serious charges - ones that could potentially result in a sentence of more than 3 years) is one way than many common law jurisdictions have taken.

It's not ideal but it's infinitely better in my mind than the practice used in the US to reduce jury trials. To avoid the cost/expense of a jury trial, public prosecutors threatens to press for a large number of charges or some very serious charges - carrying the potential of very long sentences - a sort of Gish-gallop approach.

Even if the chances of successful prosecution is relatively small for any one of the charges, the defendant is forced to take a plea-deal to avoid the risk of spending years or decades behind bars. Thus the defendant ends up with a guilty record and often a custodial sentence without any access to a trial or the chance to present their case at all.

u1hcw9nx2• 4 months ago

American Bar Associaton agrees. ABA Plea Bargain Task Force Report is sad read. US criminal justice system is horrific and plea bargaining is big reason for it.

tomatocracy3• 4 months ago

The thing is, the reason for the delays and inefficiencies is not really juries. It's mostly much more mundane things like the prison service not sending defendants to court at the right time, translators not turning up when they are supposed to, buildings which are falling apart, technology not working properly, and court time being double-booked. It's an administrative failure, not a problem with the system.

Alongside removing the right to trial by jury, perhaps more alarmingly the government are also planning to remove appeal rights from "minor" cases (from magistrates to the Crown Court). The current statistics are that more than 40% of those appeals are upheld.

The planned changes won't fix any of these things, but it will cause fundamental damage to trust in the system and result in many miscarriages of justice.

tacticalturtle• 4 months ago

You probably know this - but in most jurisdictions in the US, including federal, charges have to be approved by a grand jury of your peers.

There’s an old adage “a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich”* implying that the grand jury is easily mislead - but in my anecdotal experience of serving on a grand jury - this isn’t really true. We definitely said no to overreaches.

And you can also see this happening in high profile cases with the Trump administration:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/us/politics/trump-sandwic...

Ignoring that, it’s not clear to me why removing jury trials would reduce the likelihood of a prosecutor throwing a larger number of charges at a defendant. Prosecutors want to demonstrate a record of convictions. That career pressure is still going to exist without jury trials - they’re going to throw anything they can and see what sticks.

*Fun Fact - Sol Wachtler, the judge who coined this, was later convicted of multiple felonies, including blackmailing an ex-lover and threatening to kidnap her daughter. A bit more substantial than a ham sandwich.

hunterpayne19• 4 months ago

I feel it is important to point out that the UK doesn't have freedom of speech, has never had freedom of speech and at this point doesn't look like it ever will. The idea of freedom of speech actually comes from the Netherlands and was first codified in the US. The UK never adopted it.

The person floating this idea (of removing jury trials) would gain the power to imprison people simply for criticizing the government (and anything he didn't like really). But sure, plea bargaining isn't a perfect idea so whatever the British government does is fine.

PS A few more sacred cows while I'm at it (just for fun): - The stereotypical British accent was formed after the US Revolution, before that Brits sounded like Americans (and visa versa) - Richard the Lionheart didn't speak English but instead spoke French - Churchill was lousy at military strategy and opposed the Normandy landings

nxm2• 4 months ago

What a horrible idea - your fate should never be decided by a single individual.

themafia2• 4 months ago

In the US it's just called a "bench trial." You can ask for one. It's often advantageous to do so.

glaucon3• 4 months ago

The first sentence of the cited article makes clear the matter at hand is not "elimination of jury trials" but "a plan to abolish some jury trials". The proposal is an attempt to reduce the time which those who are accused must wait for trial.

FWIW the majority of all criminal cases in the UK are dealt with by either a single judge, or three judges[1]. This is hardly surprising as assembling a jury is vastly time consuming and for minor criminal matters is hard to justify.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary_offence#United_Kingdom

cryptonector3• 4 months ago

Any charge that can be punished with imprisonment should require a jury trial.

cryptonector3• 4 months ago

RIP, Magna Carta.

jongjong3• 4 months ago

This is a dark day for the monarchy... and for democracy in the UK.

Remove the only people who actually have a long-term vested non-financial interest in the system and replace them with more revolving-door politicians backed by the big money so that the big money can operate with even less friction than before. Great. Just great.

The problem with our current democratic systems with unlimited government fiat money is that capital is in control. Not voters. Capital. This should be obvious by now. Someone deprived of food will vote for whoever you tell them to vote for.

hdgvhicv• 4 months ago

Unlike many progressives I actually think the lords works well as a location for people who are expert in fields other than getting reelected.

But heredity lords, no I don’t get that at all

Nursie7• 4 months ago

Oh piss off. It's removing the nobs from the system, people who are there by right of birth alone. There is no reason a modern democracy shoud cow-tow to such people or allow them any power over the rest of us.

nephihaha5• 4 months ago

Appointees are even worse. We already have MPs who are supposed to be elected but enact the same UN NGO and WEF programmes as other countries without democratic assent.

fmajid4• 4 months ago

But they still haven't kicked out the Church of England bishops, including the rapist bishop of Lincoln.

kgwxd• 4 months ago

To make room for something worse no doubt.

endoblast• 4 months ago

  When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte,
  As every child can tell,
  The House of Peers, throughout the war,
  Did nothing in particular,
  And did it very well;
  Yet Britain set the world ablaze
  In good King George's glorious days!

(from Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan)

Gather a group of the most powerful people in the land; give them ermine robes and manifold privileges; require of them nothing other than that they meet regularly to converse and debate in a prestigious and historical chamber. Allow them only the power to veto or delay legislation.

Gilbert and Sullivan were satirising but I think their point stands. It is possible to do nothing and to do it very well. While they're busy doing nothing they're not interfering or messing everything else up, even though they probably could outside the chamber.

The fact that heriditary peers are being ejected means nothing beyond the fact that these nobles have lost their inherent power.

alexpotato2• 4 months ago

To play devil's advocate:

Some people argue that the difficulty of passing laws in the United States is "a feature not a bug" b/c it prevents the US from creating laws too quickly.

You could argue the House of Lords did the same: by vetoing bills, it acted as a "speed bump" to laws that might cause too much change too quickly.

post-it• 4 months ago

The House of Lords isn't going anywhere. The majority of the chamber are life peers, functionally identical to Canadian senators.

kergonath2• 4 months ago

You could argue the House of Lords did the same

It can still do the same thing without hereditary peers. A slow-moving, conservative (in the classical sense) upper chamber is a classic in bicameral systems, it is not specific to the House of Lords.

kiba• 4 months ago

It doesn't really help the United States create good law. You could argue that it worsen the quality of laws by forcing kludges to be built on top of kludges.

A sortition panel collecting random people from all walks of life to give feedback on law would probably improve the quality of law more than any amount of procedure and paperwork ever will.

We mistaken paperwork with deliberation and quality control.

scott_w4• 4 months ago

I think a good revising chamber is critical to good democracy, though the Lords recently have been playing silly buggers around the Employment Rights Act and ignoring the Salisbury Convention (which is that they shouldn’t block manifesto commitments).

I do think the USA goes too far, which has led to frustration among the public and contributed to Trump and the resulting behaviour. I’ve said before that I think the US House of Representatives should have a mechanism to override Senate speed bumps, though not without effort. The idea is to encourage the legislature to compromise but maintain the “primacy” of the House if the Senate is being obstinate. Something like the Parliament Act, is what I’d have in mind.

vkou2• 4 months ago

You get something far worse in the US. Which is a government that no longer feels any need to either pass or be bound by laws.

keeganpoppen• 4 months ago

yes. just because it is unfashionable to argue in favor of aristocracy does not mean that it doesn’t have its own intrinsic set of benefits and drawbacks… the drawbacks of ultra democracy (populism, etc.) are all cast aside as the innocent folly of people yearning to be free but not knowing whereof to yearn (“it’s not a system problem, it’s a people problem, but we must no matter what condemn ourselves to people problems because anything else is anathema to “liberty”, or whatever”). but dare utter one word in favor of conservatism in the original, true sense, and it is as though democracy is an unalloyed good with absolutely no downside. like, clearly we should have a direct democracy with no senate and no house, no? anything else is just allowing the Powers That Be to patriarchy everything!

verbify• 4 months ago

Just in case someone gets the wrong end of the stick, the UK isn’t getting rid of the House of Lords, just the hereditary members (of which there aren’t many).

thrance• 4 months ago

It's only a speed bump for progressive laws while the most reactionary garbage gets fast tracked with their approvals.

martythemaniak• 4 months ago

That view is a leftover from a bygone era, when others could look at the US with often grudging admiration. Today? The US itself doesn't think much of itself, and to the rest of us it is a cautionary tale.

trebligdivad• 4 months ago

Note that this change is not getting rid of the Lords; it's just getting rid of Hereditary piers - i.e. those passed down through generations. We'll still have Lords who have been selected by previous governments within their lifetime; so they still provide that speed bump; but do it in a way that means they were at some point chosen by an elected body.

seanhunter• 4 months ago

The Lords doesn’t actually have the power to veto bills thanks to the Parliament act. They also have a principle of ultimate legislative priority under which they defer to the commons in matters where the commons puts its foot down. They generally act as a revising body rather than outright attempting to defy the commons.

   > Under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 it is possible for a bill to be    presented for Royal Assent without the agreement of the House of Lords, provided that certain conditions are met. This change was seen by some as a departure from Dicey’s notion of sovereignty conferred upon a tripartite body.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

DrScientist4• 4 months ago

The idea of a second chamber is not controversial. The argument is how you populate it.

Elected - you have the problem of two chambers claiming legitimacy and potential deadlock, and also the problem of potentially having the same short term view as the other elected chamber.

Appointed - who gets to appoint, on what criteria, who are they beholden to ( ideally unsackable once appointed - I want them to feel free to say what they really think ).

Inherited - Very unlikely to represent the population. No quality filter. Potentially a culture of service built up - and free to say what they think.

Random. - More likely to represent the population. No quality filter.

You can obviously have a mix of all or any of the above.

In my view, the ideal second chamber would be full of people of experience, who are beholden to nobody (unsackable), that represented a broad range of views, with a culture of service.

I'm against a fully elected second house - as that's not really adding anything different to the first house. Appointed has worked quite well in the past, but it has become more and more abused recently as the elected politicians have two much control.

It's tricky - perhaps some sort of mix.

lo_zamoyski• 4 months ago

meet regularly to converse and debate

Senators play a similar role. Their aim is heavily weighted toward oversight and advisory. Gov’t in general is weighted in that direction, because governments govern which is mainly about being a kind of referee, maintaining the social order, and aiding human beings in attaining their end as human beings through legislation.

Without this function, we have activity with little reflection spurred by politicians pandering to the mob.

jjmarr3• 4 months ago

The purpose of an assembly is to reflect the actual distribution of power in society, not what we'd like it to be.

If interest groups do not feel represented by the system, they will destroy it.

fy20• 4 months ago

these nobles have lost their inherent power

The nobles were the land owners, the business owners, the OG entrepreneurs, they were educated, and their children would grow up to be the same.

Historically the system made sense. But the last 150 years or so have basically taken their power away.

A couple of years ago an estate - that included a 9 bedroom country house, plus an entire village with a population of 100 people, and a church - was sold by noblety near where I grew up. The price was in the low tens of millions, not that much.

telesilla• 4 months ago

Because 150 years ago the labour to keep the estate running was very cheap. Now that labour is expensive, it costs more in maintenance than the property is worth, unless it's highly productive land. Reminds me of the joke, how to make a thousand dollars: buy a million dollar boat.

tasuki2• 4 months ago

A couple of years ago an estate - that included a 9 bedroom country house, plus an entire village with a population of 100 people, and a church - was sold by noblety near where I grew up. The price was in the low tens of millions, not that much.

Entire village? How's that work? What can the new owner do with the village? I imagine the inhabitants aren't enslaved?

DougN7• 4 months ago

My father-in-law always liked to see an exact number of democrats and republicans in congress, or congress held by one and the senate the other, for exactly this reason. With deadlock they can’t screw things up more. I’m not sure I disagree.

cthalupa• 4 months ago

Congress has had one of the lowest approval ratings of anything in government for a long time now because it doesn't get things done. Most Americans are quite unhappy with Congressional deadlock being the norm.

It's also directly lead to the continued rise of the powers of the unitary executive - the EO that have become the norm in the 2000s are in large part because Congress has largely voided all responsibility for legislating.

ifwinterco• 4 months ago

That particular group of nobles have lost their power, we just now have a different group that are not as obvious.

The Iron Law of Oligarchy

scrlk2• 4 months ago

The irony is that, on a technicality, the hereditary peers were the only members of the Lords who had to win an election to get their seats.

Under the reforms of the House of Lords Act 1999, the majority of hereditary peers lost the right to sit as members of the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Section 2 of the Act, however, provides an exception from this general exclusion of membership for up to 92 hereditary peers: 90 to be elected by the House, as well as the holders of two royal offices, the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain, who sit as ex officio members.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_excepted_hereditary_pe...

cm21873• 4 months ago

Yeah, the assumption is that the non hereditary peers are somehow more representative, but all they represent is being friends of the PM of the time. It's a historical oddity of questionable usefulness. Meanwhile the house of commons can wipe out any civil liberty with a majority of 50% plus one vote. It is remarkable how a system that seems so unstable and prone to abuses of power has served the longest continuously running democracy for so long.

scrlk2• 4 months ago

As Walter Bagehot wrote in The English Constitution: "An ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered."

Absent ideological capture, it is perhaps one of the best forms of government ever created due to its pragmatic nature and its Lindyness is proof.

tehjoker• 4 months ago

50% + 1 is called democracy. Civil liberties are more liable to be swept away by minorities that come to power. In the US, the republicans often do this because they have minority popular support but a disproportionate representation in government. So the key is to make sure that it's 50% + 1 but also representative of the real population.

The nobility is another example of a minority with disproportionate power. It's important that they are reduced to ensure civil liberties.

skissane3• 4 months ago

Yeah, the assumption is that the non hereditary peers are somehow more representative, but all they represent is being friends of the PM of the time

There is an informal understanding that the government gives a certain number of life peerages to the opposition and minor parties, subject to the government being able to veto individual appointments they find objectionable. So it literally isn’t true that everyone gets one by being friends with the PM-although it certainly helps

Some parties reject their entitlement-the only reason why there are no SNP life peers, is the SNP has a longstanding policy to refuse to appoint any. There are currently 76 LibDem peers, 6 DUP, 3 UUP, 2 Green and 2 Plaid Cymru. SNP would very quickly get some too if they ever changed their mind about refusing the offer. The Northern Ireland nationalist parties (Sinn Fein and SDLP) likewise have a policy against nominating life peers.

cuuupid3• 4 months ago

Some years ago I, an American citizen and resident, studied abroad briefly and was asked by the House of Lords to speak to them about what GDPR (a UK law!) was, how it worked, and the impact it could have.

Further than ejecting nobles, they really should just overhaul the entire chamber, which is surely doing more harm than good if they need a foreign national to explain their own laws to them.

fc417fc8028• 4 months ago

Did they _need_ you or were they seeking the perspective of someone they considered well informed or valued for some other reason? What's the context here?

cuuupid3• 4 months ago

They wanted someone knowledgeable about GDPR to explain it to them as they didn't understand it. I was a freshman in undergrad who had no knowledge of it other than some stuff I saw on LinkedIn, just had a bunch of LinkedIn connections I guess, so I turned it down.

klelatti• 4 months ago

You don’t think it’s a strength that they have the courage to seek views from as wide a range of perspectives as possible, including from outside the UK?

cuuupid3• 4 months ago

That's not what this was about at all, literally just needed GDPR explained to them

xp847• 4 months ago

“It should never be a gallery of old boys’ networks, nor a place where titles, many of which were handed out centuries ago, hold power over the will of the people.”

Nobody tell these extreme optimists about America. Replace 'titles' with 'generational wealth' and that's precisely what not just our upper house, but most of our government, is. And they're all elected!

jazzpush2• 4 months ago

Kennedy, Bush, Clinton, Newsom related to Pelosi, etc... This guy might be onto something!

tym0• 4 months ago

“It should never be a gallery of old boys"

How else would you describe all the life peers who's sole qualification was to be mate with the prime minister at the time?

cbeach4• 4 months ago

Removal of hereditary privilege is a good thing in principle.

However, given the Labour party just gave children the vote, cancelled local elections in conservative-leaning areas, and now they're removing the (traditionally conservative-leaning) hereditary peers, it's starting to feel a lot like the Left are gerrymandering our democracy.

Latty3• 4 months ago

They gave 16 year olds the vote, and 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote?

They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless.

They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so they will keep their seats.

Your framing of all three of these is obviously intended to mislead.

cbeach4• 4 months ago

16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote?

That's a separate argument.

My point is Labour's change to the rules is very politically convenient for themselves. In the most recent polling, 32% of 16-17-year-olds would vote Labour, while only 17% of the overall electorate would vote Labour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_U...

They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless.

They allowed individual incumbent councillors to choose whether elections were cancelled. This was politically convenient for the Labour and Tory parties because the Reform Party is new, and while it's polling well ahead of Labour, it doesn't have many incumbent council seats.

When a court challenge loomed, Labour quickly u-turned on the latest round of cancellations. Funny how something can seem sensible one day, and can then be u-turned at the slightest whiff of legal scrutiny.

They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so they will keep their seats.

Can you name a single Conservative hereditary peer that will be given a lifetime peerage in Starmer's reform plan?

deaux2• 4 months ago

There is no reasonable definition of "the Left" that includes the British Labour party. The only one that fits would be "to the left of the British Conservative party", but that's as arbitrary as redefining it "to the left of Reform UK" and then starting to call the tories "The Left".

cbeach4• 4 months ago

There is no reasonable definition of "the Left" that includes the British Labour party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)

Labour, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party. It sits on the centre-left of the left–right political spectrum

ineedaj0b• 4 months ago

Directionally the UK gov has arrested more people for speech crimes than the Soviets..

Anything they pass or even look excited for is a negative signal. These people seem inept on every front, and I can’t even generously find something clever about them.

Iraq, Brexit, and Speech Laws.

If a Brit told me the sky was blue, I’d double check myself.

Nursie7• 4 months ago

And if an American told me it was blue, I'd have no need to check, I could have confidence it is not, and that their evaluation would change to another false answer in five minutes.

hunterpayne19• 4 months ago

Since it is blue, that tells me everything I need to know about you two.

tim3334• 4 months ago

A lot of the arrests are for bad stuff - harassment, advocating arson etc. see https://www.reddit.com/r/IsItBullshit/comments/1q9pbh1/isitb...

krapp2• 4 months ago

OK but can you wield supreme executive power if a watery tart throws a sword at you?

Ziomislaw• 4 months ago

Will they do the same for hereditary monarchy?

When I was a kid I was appaled that a country in this age can have a king/queen. Then I understood that they are basically like an animal in a zoo, all for show with no actual power.

It's a dreadful fate to be born as a monarch.

whattheheckheck• 4 months ago

The best punishment for thinking they're that important

hunterpayne19• 4 months ago

Royalty are zoo animals kept by countries for tourism purposes.

tim3334• 4 months ago

like an animal in a zoo, all for show with no actual power

I used to think that but it's not true. The military swear allegiance to the crown, as in Royal Navy, which makes it hard for a dictator to take over. You may think that's academic but other European countries ditched the monarchy and got Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco etc.

Kim_Bruning• 4 months ago

Polybius might have an interesting opinion on this. Generally mixed forms of government are supposed to be more stable. If you make everything purely democratic, the structure weakens a bit.

Democracy had pretty good PR in the 20th century, but having institutional counterweights is never a bad idea.

glaucon3• 4 months ago

If you're not British please don't assume that "ejecting heriditary nobles" from the upper house of parliament is automatically going to increase the quality of governance.

For more than a century the majority of those who sit in the House of Lords have been "Life Peers", appointed by a politician and without any heriditary aspect. They include such towers of statepersonship as : Evgeny Lebedev (Russian businessman, son of a KGB officer); Alexander Lebedev (another Russian businessman, he's actually been in the KGB); Charlotte Owen (junior aide to Boris Johnson for three years) ... the list goes on.

This isn't new (although in recent time the dodginess has risen to new highs) and many of those appointed to Life Peerages meet the goal of having significant life experience they can use to illuminate aspects of legislation that might otherwise be missed. Equally heriditary peers are not all some Wodehousian stereotype of bumbling idiots.

JCattheATM6• 4 months ago

many of those appointed to Life Peerages meet the goal of having significant life experience

This is a poor justification for what still amounts to an unelected ruling class.

InvertedRhodium2• 4 months ago

Honestly, I look around the world and don’t see much, if any, practical difference.

The US has had two presidents that were direct relatives, I can’t believe that’s by pure chance or some kind of genetic skill at being president.

WickyNilliams4• 4 months ago

This is more an argument against political appointees than it is an argument for hereditary peers. I agree that the system has been abused. It's need reforming

dcl• 4 months ago

Anyone else think Britain is going to eject the Royal Family within 100 years?

azeemba• 4 months ago

The author of the article is named Lawless. Is that an inverted nominative determinism? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism

bradleyjg3• 4 months ago

When the logic for bicameralism disappears, you should get rid of the second chamber. Not just find some other random thing to do with it.

See, also, US state legislatures post Reynolds v. Sims.

burnt-resistor2• 4 months ago

The logic is to divide power into as many pieces as possible to prevent tyranny by structure. Unless you admire totalitarianism and unitary executive theory.

bradleyjg3• 4 months ago

The Founders were wrong about this one. We have an overly powerful executive because they split up the legislative power too much and it doesn’t act as an effective counterweight.

Look around the world and find the countries where the legislature rather than the executive is the most dangerous branch as Hamilton suggested. It’s a very short list.

amiga386• 4 months ago

That something is ancient and traditional doesn't mean it's good.

Rotten boroughs also existed for hundreds of years. Parliament got rid of them in 1832, and good fucking riddance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs

For centuries, parliamentary representation and the right to vote in elections to the House of Commons remained largely unchanged from medieval times, even as population and economic activity shifted, contributing to an unequal distribution of seats by the early 19th century. In some constituencies the electorate was so small that seats could be controlled through patronage, bribery, or coercion, and many seats were treated almost as "property" under longstanding family influence. Early 19th-century reformers used the term rotten borough for depopulated constituencies that retained representation, and pocket borough for constituencies effectively "in the pocket" of a patron who could dominate the outcome.

Animats• 4 months ago

Next, the monarchy?[1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/30/charle...

w0de02• 4 months ago

Genuinely regrettable. The appointed life peers system is worse than the traditional ‘hereditary sortition’ (if you will).

The former creates a class of semi-sinecures of equally questionable quality yet beholden to the political system of the moment. Life peerages become awards for donors and loyalists, a legitimized corruption. The house’s composition becomes an ever-growing competition based on unlimited partisan appointment. The house becomes less thoughtful, more unwieldy, more pointless, more expensive. It will inevitably be abolished on this path.

In contrast aristocrats are at least less likely to owe anything to a special interest, and more likely to hold firm to unpopular but perhaps higher ideals: they owe their position to no other power center, neither voters nor parties. They are also inherently invested in the nation’s long term success. It’s hardly democratic but at least it’s not a wasteful partisan circus.

My pitch would be to keep a small number of intra-peerage elected hereditary peers, keep the bishops, add various ex officio academics - but fill the majority of seats by true sortition. Every British subject is liable to be drafted, and paid, into a year or two of part-time lordship. (Though I’d grant the whole house a right to easily expel such members, should they fail to meet basic expectations.)

njrc9• 4 months ago

I wonder if you might find the book “Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case” by Tongdong Bai to be interesting. It delves into exactly these issues: how to ensure that long-term interests, or the interests of future generations, are also taken into account, and not just the interests of the current electorate.

roryirvine4• 4 months ago

Did you ever actually read the candidate statements written for the hereditary by-elections whenever a new spot opened up in the Lords?

Seriously, they're worth a read. A collection of posh nobodies all with a 'long career in business/finance' but rarely any particular concrete achievements to talk about. My favourite is Earl Dudley, who stands at every single opportunity seemingly only in a desperate attempt to promote his semi-pornographic youtube channel.

Sortition sounds great in theory, but I don't think it's well-suited to a permanent chamber. Use it for citizens juries, or appoint a time-limited jury to scrutinise a single reading of each bill, similar to the work of a select ctte today.

thaumasiotes3• 4 months ago

It's worth considering that the life peers system is similar in many ways to the Roman Senate, which worked fine.

Senators got that way by popular election rather than by appointment, which is a significant difference.

Appointed life peers are even more similar, basically identical, to appointed officers in an imperial court. Courts operate on appointments as opposed to heredity when the throne is powerful.

It looks to me like only the king can create peers. If a British king was interested in reclaiming some power, that would be a promising place to start.

Aushin• 4 months ago

What about just no house of lords?

w0de02• 4 months ago

Also superior.

WickyNilliams4• 4 months ago

A lifelong hereditary appointment is an affront to democracy imo. It is regrettable we have a monarchy, but their power is very limited. The Lords however have a regular say in the production of laws. A second house is good. But hereditary appointment is only one degree removed from some divine right.

But I entirely agree about political appointments. You only have to look at the last set from the Tories/Boris to see that the system has been abused.

nephihaha5• 4 months ago

There are so many errors in this headline:

* Britain has not had a parliament for seven hundred years. The current parliament dates back to 1707 or 1801 depending on your POV. This is the usual conflation of England with Britain.

* If you want to take a more Anglocentric viewpoint then Oliver Cromwell ejected hereditary nobles back in the 18th century. So not the first time.

On a different note, it is worth saying that hereditary peers are often more independent. They are born into the role so hold their own viewpoints. Some of them were and are to the left of recent British governments, even though that may be hard to believe. The current Labour government wishes to replace them with appointees so that the entire House of Lords will become another party political machine.

Lio• 4 months ago

There are so many errors in this headline:
If you want to take a more Anglocentric viewpoint then Oliver Cromwell ejected hereditary nobles back in the 18th century. So not the first time.

Which was a neat trick considering he died in 1658... :P

nephihaha5• 4 months ago

Correct and my typo.

But the point stands. The House of Lords has not been running for as long as the article claims. A substantial break during the Commonwealth.

perilunar3• 4 months ago

Government minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said the change put an end to “an archaic and undemocratic principle.”
“Our parliament should always be a place where talents are recognized and merit counts,” he said. “It should never be a gallery of old boys’ networks, nor a place where titles, many of which were handed out centuries ago, hold power over the will of the people.”

Really? About time they got rid of the monarchy then also.

bofadeez• 4 months ago

They still wear crowns?

b3nji• 4 months ago

Out with the old, in with the Goverment appointed Stooges. That will fix it!

Notice there is no mechanism for the citezens to vote on who goes in. This won't go well.

Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

Related Stories