♞ The House of Lords is an appointed chamber, and people are appointed for a reason

We talk a lot about corporate influence–it’s not that simple

The charitable sector has got some big players, and they have a disproportionate influence over government.

People will sometimes say ‘well, as this particular charity says’ and that's meant to be the last word. We're all meant to go ‘if the people who are pro-children's welfare say it, we've all got to shut up.’

They are interested parties who have a particular political outlook that they lobby for, and we should recognise that.

I don't know that the solution is to ring fence politicians away from any external influences because God knows they're already aloof and, you know, politicians haven't exactly got a finger on the pulse of the United Kingdom.

So, I'm wary of making a general point about the fact that we don't want politicians to be lobbied. Quite the opposite: I want them to listen to a diverse set of opinions.

Small political party membership is a problem for all of us

The Westminster village is completely insulated from the real world. The political parties are often filled by politicians who have gone straight into politics from university, they’ve gone to work for an MP, and then they stand in an election. It creates an elite that lacks the capacity to hear the nation.

What was historically the counter to that village was mass political parties with many hundreds of thousands of members and a loyal voter base of millions, which meant that politics had a really active, lively public square. And so even if you were in your Westminster village, you couldn't avoid the real world. 

As political party membership has so rapidly shrunk, it has left a Westminster village that is completely insulated from that real world. We see the effects of this in how tone deaf politicians are. They are very often contemptuous of what they consider to be populist, beneath contempt attitudes.

Well, maybe they should try and understand why people feel that way.

Labour’s anti-Reform strategy is a good example of this

At the moment the Labour Party are running a series of attack ads which seem to me to be rather unpleasant. The first one was a picture of Nigel Farage with Andrew Tate. So, basically saying Farage is hanging out with rapists.

And then the next one says Reform are responsible for revenge porn because they want to get rid of the Online Safety Act. When you attack Reform like that, you also look like you're attacking Reform voters. Don't do that!

Why don't you, for example, wonder why it is that people are worried about the Online Safety Act having a censorious impact and see if you can tweak it so that it's less censorious?

Accusing anybody who raises any objections as being Jimmy Savile adjacent is tone deaf campaigning. This kind of response is an international trend that started with Hillary Clinton’s ‘basket of deplorables’ comment... it doesn’t work.

We over legislate

There are just far too many laws. It has become a substitute for political leadership that you defer everything to a legalistic framework. Moral leadership is rarely present. It's always ‘can we make a law to make people do this or to stop them doing that?’ What is the problem, perhaps, is that contemporary politicians haven't got a clear enough ideological focus.

Remember: people are in the Lords for political reasons

Too often I feel as though legislation is rushed through the Commons and the idea is ‘Oh well, it's all right because they'll have time to scrutinise it in the Lords.’

This is an affront to democracy. We in the Lords are unelected, and the elected chamber isn't giving legislation due attention. There is a danger in suggesting that the great and the good in the House of Lords can solve all of the problems, because in the end the House of Lords is an appointed chamber.

And people are appointed to the Lords for reasons.

Maybe hereditary peers aren’t so bad?

While it’s very difficult to justify the hereditary principle in 2025, we may well lose something when they go. Many hereditary peers are hardworking, and have a certain independence.

Even if they're in political parties, they're the ones who will often be beholden to no one because ironically if you are an aristocrat–and I'm speculating–you probably don't need to be in the House of Lords to have authority in society.

So many volunteer to be legislators and have a sense of public service that is valuable. There is value in that to society.

But the bigger issue I have with the removal of the remaining 92 hereditary peers is that it has been a way of Labour avoiding doing what it claimed it wanted to do in its manifesto, which is to properly reform the whole House of Lords.

Removing hereditary peers is a superficial reform. 

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