
Ah, there’s nothing like an archaic institution based on wealth, accident of birth and patronage to make a country run smoothly – and wind up lefties while it’s at it!
This was seemingly the thinking of some of the Tories’ most Toryish Tories when the issue of a House of Lords reform popped up in 2012 under the coalition government. “Let’s smoosh the Lib Dems and protect unelected privilege!” they probably thought, striding through the No lobby to vote against reform.
If passed, the Bill would have made the upper chamber mostly elected. But Tory rebels put paid to that.
But now. Now, look. Those Lords. Those posh peers. Who wear ermine and whose cheeks are ruddy with port and who have loads of cash and seem just like Brexity Tories. They’re betraying them. They’re voting against Brexit. So much so that they’ve defeated the government 14 times on the EU Withdrawal Bill.
Well, the Brexiteers can’t be having that. They don’t have a mandate! They’re unelected! They’re BETRAYING THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE.
So furious are they with the Lords that they are calling for a “complete overhaul” of the chamber in a story in today’s Daily Mail – whose splash screeches “IT’S TIME TO PULL A PLUG ON THE LORDS”:
DAILY MAIL: It’s time to pull plug on the Lords #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/osBpEY55r6
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 9, 2018
In the story, assorted right-wingers including Iain Duncan Smith, Bernard Jenkin and Jacob Rees-Mogg complain about the institution. Rees-Mogg, whose voting record shows he’s voted consistently against a wholly-elected House of Lords, and consistently against removing its hereditary peers, is quoted saying “It raises the issues of reform again”.
Here are all those Tory Brexiteer MPs who voted to defend the House of Lords back in 2012 (thanks to the Telegraph’s Michael Deacon for collecting and tweeting the names):
Jacob Rees-Mogg
David Davis
Steve Baker
Philip Davies
Nadine Dorries
John Redwood
Bernard Jenkin
Bill Cash
Penny Mordaunt
John Whittingdale
Edward Leigh
Philip Hollobone
Andrew Bridgen
Anne Main
Zac Goldsmith
David Amess
Adam Afriyie
John Baron
Bob Blackman
Conor Burns
Christopher Chope
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Richard Drax
James Gray
Adam Holloway
Julian Lewis
Andrew Rosindell
Nadhim Zahawi