Exactly 100 years ago, with his government embroiled in scandal after scandal that included the sale of nobility, the then Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, was ousted by Tory MPs. Now, as the current Prime Minister has also been unceremoniously dismissed by Tory backbenchers, his attempt in recent weeks to create multiple peerages has put the House of Lords back at the center of scandal.
A confidential document produced by CT Group, the influential Lynton Crosby-led lobbying firm that advises Boris Johnson, and which I have seen, leaves no doubt about the embattled Prime Minister’s aim to pack the House of Lords. The paper proposes that Johnson overcomes all conventions and standards of ownership in an effort to get political candidates who will vote for the Conservative government, especially his bill to renege on the international treaty he has signed on Northern Ireland.
This draft plan to add 39 to 50 new Conservative peers includes an extraordinary requirement that each new peer waive their right to make their own judgment about the legislation before them. They must give, says the newspaper, a written commitment to attend and vote with the government.
The plan also legitimizes direct bribery. In a throwback to the old corruption that was a feature of conservative 19th-century Britain, compliant lords will be “rewarded” with lucrative special envoy positions, while those who do not attend the polls will be in “name and shame”. list, CBE and additional titles will be awarded, responding to what is a seemingly insatiable demand for the already ennobled to be filled with additional honors to their peerages.
But the cynicism of the Crosby company’s role deepens what he calls “useful cover for any media backlash.” The authors this time will claim, completely falsely, that their real aim is to restore the balance between the South East, which has the largest number of peers, and the North of England, Scotland and Wales, underrepresented, as if the nobility award is a genuine way to level up.
The paper also suggests that the “perfect excuse” to flood the House of Lords with Johnson’s cronies will be doubts in the Lords about a hard Brexit, “on the basis that ‘people’s Brexit’ can only be done with such a wedge nova. Tories.” This, he says, will provide “excellent coverage” to get the nominations across. The report is also useful coverage for Crosby, whose firm has had close ties to the tobacco industry, when states that the creation of Conservative fathers is also justified by the refusal of the Lords so far to vote for a “laissez-faire attitude towards tobacco manufacturers and importers”.
The media, according to the Crosby Firm paper, can easily be blinded by the nomination of a few controversial figures or well-known celebrities, which distract reporters from the real issue, which is the scale of gerrymandering.
One of the claims of the House of Lords about its existence is that it is a chamber of review, prepared to take an independent view and provide knowledge on a non-partisan basis; but the plot of the Crosby firm would deny the nomination of these independent fellows.
Opinion polls show the public would oppose the plan: 71% of Britons support an overhaul of the House of Lords and opposition to the current Lords is felt as strongly among Tory as Labor voters, among that remain and those who have left and also in the south. like the north Support in the second chamber has dropped to 12% of the public; and with more than half of the British public thinking that the House of Lords does not work, the solution is to reform the Lords, not reinforce their lack of representativeness.
The Crosby Company paper inadvertently encourages this radical revision. It is “not clear” why most members of the Lords were appointed, he says. Tory ministers in the Lords are “inadequate” with “little to offer”. The Lords leader is “a poor political manager”. All this raises deep questions about what the current system of appointments has produced and calls into question the unfettered patronage of the Prime Minister, who can only recommend appointments to the Queen.
Former Prime Ministers have realized that there must be limits to the use of this power, and Tony Blair and I refused to present the traditional resignation roll, the abuse of which it has undermined the reputation of some former prime ministers.
There are, of course, many honorable, dedicated and diligent members of the House of Lords, who are to be commended for doing their bit for the country and whose contributions to public life favor a reformed second house.
But Johnson’s latest attempt to rig the Lords system is the culmination of years of constitutional vandalism, during which he and his predecessors have been shameless in their appointment of Tory party donors, rewarding them for what they do do to promote a narrow party interest, not the wider public interest.
Since 2010, successive prime ministers have elevated nine of the party’s former treasurers, each of whom gave at least £3 million to the party before their nomination. This has included Johnson’s cheerleader Peter Cruddas, whose nomination Johnson managed even after the House of Lords’ independent Appointments Committee found him unsuitable. “Once you pay your £3 million, you get your nobility,” said a former Tory party chairman.
Money talks, and nowhere more so than at the Lords. Twenty-two of the party’s top donors – who together have given £54m to the Tories – have been made peers since 2010. Not only are these 22 peerless but, as one top Tory donor confirmed this week, Mohamed Amersi, when speaking on “Access Capitalism”, large cash donations give “a privileged few unparalleled access to decision-makers”, adding to “as I fear…an implied or expressed counterpart” that is “undermining the our democracy”. It proposes “a new source of funding that undermines the current system of access for the privileged few.” In fact, the party’s fundraising chief and co-chairman Ben Elliott says, it has taken “crown capitalism to a new level within the party” without any proper transparency, which is why it is aptly known as Mr. Access All Areas. And now we know of investigations involving members of the House of Lords into fast-tracking lucrative Covid contracts.
In 2008 I tried to push through major reform of the Lords, but we were defeated, as previous attempts have been, by the combined weight of peers who did not favor any reform, those who found a reason to disagree with the specifics of our proposed reform and those who claim that the only acceptable reform is total abolition. Now is the time to weed out who really wants to change and who doesn’t. The preamble to the Parliament Act 1911 stated that the power of the House of Lords was no more than a temporary solution until a second chamber constituted on a popular and non-hereditary basis could be brought into operation. More than a century later, the modern constitution envisioned then still eludes us.
The abolition of the current House of Lords was one of 10 commitments that Keir Starmer made when he took over the leadership of the Labor party. Now Boris Johnson and Lynton Crosby have handed him the strongest possible case for long overdue reform.
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Gordon Brown was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2007 to 2010
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