Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

JumpCrisscross

“…a compromise that will see an undisclosed number of hereditary members allowed to stay by being ‘recycled’ into life peers.” What? Are the membership roles and the text of this law confidential?

alopha

Now we're down to just an upper house absolutely stuffed with hundreds of washed up political hacks given a comfortable retirement and party donors. And a few priests.

iberator

Win for democracy and fair representation of the working class! Being Noble is like saying 'i used to have slaves(even if not, then feudalism was the de'facto slave system too!) and made profits from it' Such people are enemies of humanity and democracy and markets. I hope one day they all just go. King and his small family is fine btw. Cultural reason:)

throw_rust

From hereditary buffoons to patronage pissoir and party hack retirement home, not much better off methinks.

meitham

It’s not just about the seat they must lose their “lord” title

theodric

The point of the hereditary peerage was the same as the point of having a non-elected Senate. Now both will have been lost in the name of "democracy" - a system of government that constantly fails to do either what is the desire of the people OR what is truly in their interests. From here on out it'll just be whoever manages to connive their way into power through connections, payola, corruption, island meetups, and so on. I strongly suspect this will lead to a worse government, not a better one.

amadeuspagel

> The case of Peter Mandelson, who resigned from the Lords in February after revelations about his friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, drew renewed attention to the upper chamber and the problem of lords behaving badly. But Mandelson wasn't a hereditary noble. His example is an argument for abolishing the House of Lords entirely (which I agree with in any case) but not specifically for ejecting hereditary nobles. > Labour remains committed to eventually replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber that is “more representative of the U.K.” If past experience is anything to go by, change will come slowly. Why does the House of Lords need to be replaced at all? Most countries are gridlocked enough with one chamber of parliament.

mindwok

British democracy and government is cool. It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitution, it's this organic thing that they've stumbled towards over the last ~800 years with small changes like this one gradually evolving them into a modern liberal democracy.

aaronrobinson

The title makes it sound like they’re removing the remains of lost Lords gathering dust on the seats although that’s probably not too far from the truth.

sb057

Also in the pipeline: elimination of jury trials https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2x01yne13o

jongjong

This is a dark day for the monarchy... and for democracy in the UK. Remove the only people who actually have a long-term vested non-financial interest in the system and replace them with more revolving-door politicians backed by the big money so that the big money can operate with even less friction than before. Great. Just great. The problem with our current democratic systems with unlimited government fiat money is that capital is in control. Not voters. Capital. This should be obvious by now. Someone deprived of food will vote for whoever you tell them to vote for.

fmajid

But they still haven't kicked out the Church of England bishops, including the rapist bishop of Lincoln.

kgwxd

To make room for something worse no doubt.

endoblast

When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte, As every child can tell, The House of Peers, throughout the war, Did nothing in particular, And did it very well; Yet Britain set the world ablaze In good King George's glorious days! (from Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan) Gather a group of the most powerful people in the land; give them ermine robes and manifold privileges; require of them nothing other than that they meet regularly to converse and debate in a prestigious and historical chamber. Allow them only the power to veto or delay legislation. Gilbert and Sullivan were satirising but I think their point stands. It is possible to do nothing and to do it very well . While they're busy doing nothing they're not interfering or messing everything else up, even though they probably could outside the chamber. The fact that heriditary peers are being ejected means nothing beyond the fact that these nobles have lost their inherent power.

scrlk

The irony is that, on a technicality, the hereditary peers were the only members of the Lords who had to win an election to get their seats. > Under the reforms of the House of Lords Act 1999, the majority of hereditary peers lost the right to sit as members of the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Section 2 of the Act, however, provides an exception from this general exclusion of membership for up to 92 hereditary peers: 90 to be elected by the House, as well as the holders of two royal offices, the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain, who sit as ex officio members. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_excepted_hereditary_pe...

cuuupid

Some years ago I, an American citizen and resident, studied abroad briefly and was asked by the House of Lords to speak to them about what GDPR (a UK law!) was, how it worked, and the impact it could have. Further than ejecting nobles, they really should just overhaul the entire chamber, which is surely doing more harm than good if they need a foreign national to explain their own laws to them.

xp84

“It should never be a gallery of old boys’ networks, nor a place where titles, many of which were handed out centuries ago, hold power over the will of the people.” Nobody tell these extreme optimists about America. Replace 'titles' with 'generational wealth' and that's precisely what not just our upper house, but most of our government, is. And they're all elected!

cbeach

Removal of hereditary privilege is a good thing in principle. However, given the Labour party just gave children the vote, cancelled local elections in conservative-leaning areas, and now they're removing the (traditionally conservative-leaning) hereditary peers, it's starting to feel a lot like the Left are gerrymandering our democracy.

ineedaj0b

Directionally the UK gov has arrested more people for speech crimes than the Soviets.. Anything they pass or even look excited for is a negative signal. These people seem inept on every front, and I can’t even generously find something clever about them. Iraq, Brexit, and Speech Laws. If a Brit told me the sky was blue, I’d double check myself.

krapp

OK but can you wield supreme executive power if a watery tart throws a sword at you?