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  1. Politics
  2. Brexit
10 May 2018updated 24 Jun 2021 12:22pm

Tory Brexiteers are raging against the House of Lords – six years ago they voted to keep it

All the pro-Brexit Tory MPs who voted against its reform.

By Media Mole

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.

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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”:

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

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