It is 71 years since Britain finally embraced universal suffrage. Yet the British elite continues to treat democracy as though it were some dangerous new-fangled invention. The hereditary principle will survive into the 21st century, in the form of the 92 hereditary peers who will take seats in the supposedly "interim" House of Lords. There will still be 26 Church of England bishops to assist in framing the laws of a country where practising Anglicans are a small minority. New Labour, far from setting out on a fearless journey of modernisation, has simply removed from the second chamber the inbuilt Conservative majority that was most offensive and inconvenient to it. The prospects for a properly reformed second chamber are not encouraging. Early leaks from Lord Wakeham's Royal Commission suggest that the common people will be allowed to elect about 100 out of more than 500 members of a new House of Lords. Even this modest genuflection to democracy may be too much for No 10 which, according to reports, would prefer a wholly nominated chamber.
Many of the arguments used against an elected house will be familiar to students of 19th-century history. Elected members, it is said, would not be independent-minded people of quality and proven achievement. The old argument that they would be slaves to the ignorant popular will is not, admittedly, much heard. But it is replaced by the bizarre argument that they would be slaves to the party machines - bizarre, because the people making the argument themselves control the machines and a self-denying ordinance never seems to occur to them.
Some form of democratic election for every seat in the House of Lords should have been the principle from which the Royal Commission started. The second chamber could have a revolving membership with, say, one in seven seats up for election every year; its membership could, alternatively, be elected for life. These and other solutions all have their merits. A nominated house, comprising assorted cronies, superannuated political hacks and eminent busybodies, has none whatever. Nor have the various proposals for election from Hong Kong-style "functional constituencies" of professional groups and the like, which would turn the chamber into a vehicle for the pursuit of established sectional interests.
Members of the British elite argue that people are bored by public affairs and don't want more democracy. This is self-serving nonsense. People want effective means of checking both government and corporate power. Conventional elections - to a remote European parliament, a powerless local council or a whipped Westminster - seem increasingly irrelevant. This is a fault of the British political structure, not of the democratic principle.
Parliament's historic role was to represent country against court, to restrain an executive that was then based around the monarch. But though government ministers have inherited monarchical powers, the Commons has all but lost the capacity to speak adequately for the country. Most of its members, if not already serving on a front bench, aspire to do so. The leaders they are supposed to check can ruin their careers by withdrawing the party imprimatur. Even select committees are largely controlled by the whips, and a select committee chairmanship is often regarded as a stepping-stone to a ministerial career or a compensation prize for missing out on one.
Nobody seriously believes that, in a general election, they are voting for somebody who will check the executive on their behalf. Rather, they vote for a government, and if necessary will vote tactically to that end. Who can blame them, since this is the only way they can have a say in the matter? If a second chamber were clearly designed to restore parliament's proper role of critical and even cussed scrutiny, the electorate would vote with that distinct aim in mind. That, in itself, would probably restrain the party machines, since too much activity might prove self-defeating.
But we can do better than that. Why not simply ban the parties from financing or labelling the candidates for a second chamber election? Why not ban anybody from standing who has ever held an elected position under a party label? Why not prohibit successful candidates from ever becoming members of the Commons? That way, a genuinely independent and distinctive second chamber could be guaranteed.
These questions, not the unimaginative, behind-the-scenes fix at which he is so adept, are what should command Wakeham's attention.
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