Dissolution Dishonour: it’s time to abolish the House of Lords

The Prime Minister’s behaviour since his unexpected election victory shames our democracy. His dodgy dissolution honours list is only the latest and most egregious example of his contempt for all constitutional and political propriety. As always his actions are extremely partisan in the Tory party cause.

His utter failure to ensure that the electoral register contains the up to seven million missing voters who are far less likely to be Tories, his decision to cut the number of seats in the Commons to 600 and use the inadequate electoral register to abolish 21 existing Labour seats, his arbitrary redefinition of ‘majority’ for strike ballots in his nasty trade union Bill, the inclusion of punitive changes to political fund ballots for trade unions designed to bankrupt the Labour Party whilst leaving the Tory Party’s Russian oligarchs and hedge fund billionaires completely untouched, all of that is bad enough but now we have the outrage of Lord Moat.

Our Prime Minister may fondly imagine that no-one really cares about the increasingly absurd House of Lords, now stuffed to the rafters with his own placemen and women. But his overuse of patronage and his partisan application of it makes the excesses of Lloyd George look positively moderate. He has appointed more peers – including more government peers – than any prime minister since life peerages were first introduced in 1958. And he has appointed over one quarter of them since 2010. The Lords is now the second largest legislature in the world behind only the Chinese People’s Congress and they have a few more people to represent.

At the same time as this inexorable growth in the undemocratic House the Prime Minister is reducing the size of the Commons absurdly claiming that it will reduce the cost of politics. Actually it reduces the size and scope of democratic politics whilst increasing the patronage state.

There is only one answer to this, we need a constitutional convention to look at the entirety of our vandalised system including the electoral system. I would favour abolishing the Lords and replacing it with a Senate of the Nations and Regions either directly or indirectly elected. We need a profound devolution to the English regions and not just the Government’s option of imposed executive mayors amidst the decimation of local government finance which merely devolves the blame for decisions made in Her Majesty’s Treasury. I would also favour a new Act of Union which would regularise and legitimise a new constitutional settlement throughout the United Kingdom and the British Isles. But that is only my view. The whole point of a constitutional convention is to look at the whole system and argue for progressive change until a viable consensus is achieved. Time is short as our system falls further into disrepute. Let’s get on with it.

Angela Eagle MP is standing to be Deputy Leader of the Labour Party