If we want Britain to stay as it is, the House of Lords will have to change
House of Lords 2019 (PA Images)
At times of national emergency, it is always fascinating to note how the most ancient parts of the British state continue to function. Like some vast Heath Robinson contraption, the institutional mechanisms sputter, whirr and chug into action. The Queen in Parliament, the medieval nerve centre of our unwritten 17th-century constitutional settlement, has a life of its own of which the public catches only fitful glimpses. Embodied in offices whose origins are lost in the mists of time, the cumulative wisdom of the centuries still pilots the ship of state through typhoon and tempest.
That is the theory, at least. The practice is somewhat different. No other nation on earth has such an attachment to tradition. We love our history because it has mostly been benign. Most other peoples are less fortunate. It is a blessing to have been spared the horrors of revolution, civil war and dictatorship for so long. Sometimes, though, it is right to re-examine the established ways of doing things. The British system has survived because it has usually had a sound instinct that tells it when to jettison the ballast of the past, when to innovate rather than to emulate — in short, when a practice, office or institution has outlived its usefulness. As Prince Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa famously says in his novel The Leopard: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”
One example is the Office of the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures. This advisory position was created by Charles I in 1625 to curate his burgeoning art collection. It has survived until now, despite the damage done by Anthony Blunt. That eminent academic and director of the Courtauld Institute had taken over from the equally distinguished Kenneth Clark in 1945, despite having been a member of the Cambridge spy ring since the 1930s. In 1964 Blunt was unmasked and confessed in return for immunity from prosecution, but remained in post until 1973, only to be exposed as a traitor in 1979. The office survived the scandal, but will now be “held in abeyance” after the present Surveyor, Desmond Shawe-Taylor, and his deputy are retired as part of a cost-cutting exercise by the Royal Collection. Connoisseurship and scholarship in the field are not in short supply in this country, so it is hardly necessary for the monarch to employ her own in-house art historian. The post is redundant. The exigencies of the Covid crisis are the occasion rather than the cause of dispensing with the services of a Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures. Even though public enjoyment of the collection will be unaffected, many will deplore the loss of this unique piece of the tapestry of our history.
The House of Lords, by contrast, is an institution that — in the words of Walter Bagehot — is supposed to be not merely ornamental but also efficient. Just how efficient has come into question after the latest peerages announced this week will raise its membership to 830 — the largest parliamentary chamber of any Western democracy. It does, however, perform various necessary functions, the most important of which is to be the Upper House of Parliament, scrutinising and revising legislation, forcing ministers to reconsider impetuous decisions. Peers can only delay, not prevent, governments from carrying out the policies for which they were elected.
A residual role of the Lords is to enable party leaders to exercise patronage. Unlike their counterparts in most other parliamentary democracies, British Prime Ministers may avail themselves of ministerial talents by appointment rather than election. Some peerages go with the job and some of week’s newcomers come into this category, such as the former Archbishop of York and the former head of MI6. Others are straightforwardly political peers and the appointment of one in particular — the former Tory party treasurer and donor Peter Cruddas — has proved controversial. Not only did Cruddas, a wealthy online entrepreneur, gain notoriety over a “cash for access” scandal, but his conduct was criticised by the Court of Appeal, as a result of which the House of Lords Appointments Commission refused to approve his nomination. The Prime Minister overruled the Commission’s objections, which its chairman, Lord Bew, will elucidate to a Commons select committee in due course. One may well question the rationale of such a quango if the Government is not obliged to respect its rulings.
Three of the new peers are friends and former Telegraph colleagues of Boris Johnson: Charles Moore, Dan Hannan and Dean Godson. (Full disclosure: so is the present writer.) Moore is one of the most admired journalists of his generation (rightly so) and the author of the definitive biography of Margaret Thatcher. Hannan, a former MEP, has been among the most eloquent Eurosceptic voices in public life for more than two decades. Godson is the director of Policy Exchange, the most influential of centre-Right think tanks.
This trio of new peers will contribute to the gaiety of public life more than most. But their elevation is mainly motivated by Boris Johnson’s desire to have men and women about him whom he can trust. Like every Prime Minister, he likes to have his gang — those whom, as he is a classicist, we may call his Praetorian Guard. Better for them to be visible on a parliamentary stage than invisible presences in the corridors of power.
Is this, though, what the House of Lords is for? It has always had some of the characteristics of a club, but London is not short of excellent clubs. Indeed, the overlap in membership between a few of them (the Garrick, the Athenaeum, the Beefsteak) and the Upper House is striking. The survival of an appointed second chamber cannot depend on the convention that each premier will use it to promote his own circle.
Patronage is the grease that oils the wheels of the British establishment. But, like grease, it is messy and sometimes leaves an indelible stain.
Any constitutional commission of the kind advocated this week by Sir Keir Starmer should not only consider the problem of Scotland, as Jimmy Nicholls explains in TheArticle today. It should also reflect on the role and composition of the House of Lords. A federal chamber might provide the glue to hold the United Kingdom together. Constitutional reform might seem a low priority in the present crisis created by the concatenation of Covid and Brexit. Historically, though, reform has usually coincided with such national emergencies. The British state requires a massive shock if it is ever to be persuaded to renew itself. Perhaps Boris Johnson, the Cromwellian cavalier, is the unlikely candidate for a root-and-branch reform of a political system that has been exposed by the crisis as, in part, seriously dysfunctional.
This is the last leading article to appear here before the New Year. TheArticle will take a break until January 2, when normal service will resume. In the meantime, we hope to entertain readers with highlights from what has been a year of almost unprecedented turmoil. We wish all our readers a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
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