Why Two Houses, If One Will Do?

Liberal Democratic leader Nick Clegg, quoted in the Telegraph:

The Lords is perhaps the most potent symbol of a closed society. The Lords as currently constituted is an affront to the principles of openness which underpin a modern democracy. So we will have a Lords Reform Bill in the second session of this parliament.

Mr Clegg would like to see a British “Senate“. However in that choice of name aimed at greater “democracy,” apparently he forgets “senate” comes down to us from one of the most elite-based and “closed” bodies of all time: the ancient Roman “senate”. That senate was, in fact, the Roman equivalent of the pre-1999 (and especially the pre-1832) UK House of Lords.

The deputy prime minister’s view brought back to mind an old post by yours truly — in August 2008, interestingly about a month before what is now considered “the start” of the economic downturn (and what some also call a “depression”):

One thing yours truly had noticed years ago was if one watched the hereditary peers in action in the House of Lords, one was usually treated to a high quality of debate, focus on the country as a whole and a real breadth of substantive insight. That likely was at least in part because those peers, owing to their generational ties to this land (“nowhere men” they are definitely not), seemed to see their role as “national caretakers.”

They weren’t aspirational regarding their own political careers (they didn’t have those) which meant they were not usually short-termist and politically posturing in the manner nearly all voters loathe. Rather, they tended truly to embrace a more expansive and necessary sense of a personal here today/gone tomorrow, while Britain is “eternal.” In comparison, you rarely see anything even approaching such coming from any elected members of the House of Commons.

That being so doesn’t mean that such lords should govern Britain; but those who would take the time to attend the salary-less House of Lords were obviously very committed people, and their advice and views were often weighty and earnestly expressed. Few seemed to appreciate at the time, and fewer seem to now (or are willing to admit to), the huge loss to debate and governing experience the hereditary peers’ ejection would eventually reveal. For despite what they could clearly contribute and long had, in the last decade they have been replaced mostly by mediocre political appointees of some sort: what had been dirisively (and often quite accurately) christened “Tony’s cronies.”

Thus Lords “reform.” Interestingly, all Labour prime ministers have reportedly valued the weekly private talk with the Queen, and those in the Lords — albeit with a smattering of power to hold up legislation that she does not have — could have been seen as providing much the same “advice.” Instead, New Labour has simply discarded those with a similar sense of noblesse oblige, who have opinions of value and serious life experience. Their “successors” in the “reformed” House of Lords?: those with a decided sense of meself oblige, walking super-egos (who often have little to have much ego about) who raise party money and crave the word “Lord” in front of their names.

And, about as one would expect given what most are, new “lords” in the salary-less House are evidently angling somehow to get themselves higher personal “expenses compensation.” One almost can’t wait for a Labour plan for “Monarch Reform.” Perhaps a monarch appointed similarly by an “independent commission?”

So the House of Lords that had evolved by 1999 into essentially little other than a gathering of interested “national grandparents”, was “reformed” by Labour into a shambles inhabited by political hacks. Within a decade as well, the country was driven off an economic cliff by the same know-it-all “kids” running riot in the House of Commons.

Coincidence that? The then hereditary House of Lords certainly did not prevent the Great Depression of 1929-33. Still, in 2009 a Scottish writer reasonably noted this:

…Since an hereditary peerage no longer confers a seat in Parliament, such creations should continue, but revert to the personal gift of the sovereign, like the Orders of the Garter and the Thistle. It would be illuminating to compare the calibre of the nominees: life peers from the Prime Minister, hereditaries from the Queen…

Indeed it would. Insofar as yours truly is aware, Mr Clegg has not yet stated publicly that if he became prime minister he would reject the traditional weekly private audience with the ultimate “symbol of a closed society,” the Monarch, to fit in one instead with the (unelected) “President of the European Council.” Yet given his stance on the Lords, and his evident perception of Britain as subservient to the European Union, it would seem hard to understand why he would not?

His main suggestion is not only to create another Commons-like elected creche. He (and others) aim for one that is also unable to compete with the House of Commons in serving as the center of representative UK national decision-making. So it would come down to two elected houses, but only one will wield true authority.

At least the House of Lords pre-1999 did not — and still does not — function under the false impression it is elected. But if any mostly elected legislative body is not to have legislating authority, that begs the fundamental question as to what precisely is its reason for being? Just to hand out salaries and perks, to produce nothing concrete?

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Don’t think for an instant, though, that taking sledgehammers to a long-tested constitution is restricted just to some Britons. NPR:

‘We The People’: NPR Readers Would Ratify Four New Amendments

Just what Americans need. Those “four new” amendments helpfully emanate from the keyboards of readers, some of whom, in all likelihood, cannot even name their state senator. They include one that abolishes the Electoral College that helped give us President Abraham Lincoln… and not a President Stephen Douglas or a President John C. Breckinridge.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

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