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Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

310 points by divbzero 7mo ago

shablulman 7mo ago
[flagged]
JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
“…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?
- pjc50 7mo ago
  Doesn't need to be in the text of the law. The Crown can appoint an arbitrary list of life peers - possibly at any time (see Chiltern Hundreds). As the article points out, the life peers are arguably worse. People like Mandelson.
- graypegg 7mo ago
  Odd! I think this is the bill? https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3755/publications https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3755/publications It's rather hard to read because the amendments are written as a diff, but it seems to imply the undisclosed number is 87 peers. I guess they need to decide amongst themselves who the lucky 87 are? https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0295/240295.pdf https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0295... Bill 295 2024-25 (Lords Amendments) “1. (2) (2) No more than 87 people at any one time shall be excepted from section 1.” --- Edit: Wow, is this ever hard to pin down. I think section 1 of the lord's amendments were dropped here: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3755/stages/20179/motionsandamendments/746 https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3755/stages/20179/motionsa... which I guess means that the text remains the same as the original text in HL-49 (https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/56858/documents/5337 https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/56858/documents/533...): # Exclusion of remaining hereditary peers Omit section 2 of the House of Lords Act 1999 (exception to exclusion of hereditary peers from membership of House of Lords). which is a patch onto another law, that is linked to in the PDF but for whatever reason does not resolve for me: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1999/34/contents https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1999/34/contents.
  - KK7NIL 7mo ago
    > It's rather hard to read because the amendments are written as a diff That's a feature, not a bug ;).[0] 0: Any episode of "Yes, Minister!"
- tialaramex 7mo ago
  All primary legislation is published. But this needn't be in the primary legislation since there is no need to legislate to make it happen. It's a side deal, the government agrees to do this, the Lords agree not to get in their way. Much, but not all secondary legislation is also published. A typical means by which Secondary Legislation is brought into existence is that a Law says there shall be some list or reference established by some particular minister, and that document is Secondary Legislation. For example maybe a Law concerning Clown Licensing says there shall be a list of Clown License Offices, and the Secretary of State for Hilarity shall write this list, that list isn't voted on by Parliament, the list gets written by some bureaucrats working for the current Secretary of State for Hilarity. This "undisclosed" list needn't be in secondary legislation either.
- tomatocracy 7mo ago
  The idea is that some of the current hereditary peers will be given new life peerages under existing rules which would enable them to stay in the chamber. Granting new life peerages is mostly within the gift of the Prime Minister (although there are committees which vet appointments and conventions about allowing opposition parties to nominate some), so this is not part of the legislation but a back-room deal by which the votes were secured by the government.
alopha 7mo ago
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.
- fmajid 7mo ago
  Including rapists like the Bishop of Lincoln.
iberator 7mo ago
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:)
- dude250711 7mo ago
  Yep, getting rid of nobility is how USSR lived happily ever after.
  - coldtea 7mo ago
    Well, for all USSRs issues, getting rid of their nobility was one of the best things they did.
    - dylan604 7mo ago
      It's what fills the vacuum that matters, just as POTUS is finding out in Iran. If you don't have a plan for after creating the vacuum, you're probably not going to be happy with how it is filled
  - stvltvs 7mo ago
    Getting rid of hereditary nobility has worked out pretty well for the USA.
    - dylan604 7mo ago
      Has it? By what metric are you using for that? Two Bush presidencies off the power of the senior patriarch. Current president comes from family wealth. Most of the oligarchs come from family wealth. It's not until the recent tech billionaires that became first generation oligarchs.
      - stvltvs 7mo ago
throw_rust 7mo ago
From hereditary buffoons to patronage pissoir and party hack retirement home, not much better off methinks.
- nephihaha 7mo ago
  The hereditary buffoons were more independent-minded, and sometimes progressive, than the appointees. Not a fan of the old system but this is not an improvement.
meitham 7mo ago
It’s not just about the seat they must lose their “lord” title
theodric 7mo ago
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.
- Chinjut 7mo ago
  The Senate is, while not the whole story, a significant part of the reason the government constantly fails to do what is either the desire of the people or what's in their interests. I wouldn't lament losing the Senate.
  - jfengel 7mo ago
    The US Senate is designed to check and balance the House of Representatives. But that often puts the Congress as a whole in deadlock, meaning it can no longer balance the other two branches. When they could get anything done they delegated a lot of power to the Executive. Which worked ok, but eventually a "unitary executive" appropriated even more power, and the Legislature is powerless to prevent it.
    - pjc50 7mo ago
      Unpopular opinion: deadlock is fine. Most legislation is bad. What really matters is the budget. And the rule that failing to pass a budget can automatically force an election avoids the absurd US "shutdown" that isn't a shutdown.
      - fc417fc802 7mo ago
        This is now my second favorite idea, after a nationwide ban of first past the post voting schemes. My third (previously second) is outlawing political parties. The problem with that one is it would be really difficult to implement in a way that doesn't run afoul of freedom of association and freedom of speech. Probably worth figuring out though.
amadeuspagel 7mo ago
> 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.
- throwaway7783 7mo ago
  Does House of Lords have any real power today?
  - pjc50 7mo ago
    Sort of. They can and do amend bills, but they can't overrule the Commons on anything the latter regards as important.
    - rgblambda 7mo ago
      With a very small number of exceptions, including changing the maximum duration of Parliament from 5 years.
    - tomatocracy 7mo ago
      "Important" is quite a high bar in this case though if the House of Lords is insistent enough to actually vote something down. The cost in terms of parliamentary time for the government these days of using the Parliament Acts is very high (especially for things which government would normally do via secondary legislation), and it also requires at least a one year delay; by extension the potential political cost to the government of using the Parliament Acts to pass something unpopular or controversial is set at a high enough bar that it's an effective veto. This feels like quite a sensible safety valve to me.
mindwok 7mo ago
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.
- rvz 7mo ago
  > British democracy and government is cool. Oh sweet summer child. The government there does not care about you and will promise anything to get another 5 years in power despite causing the issues they promised to solve in the first place. You are essentially voting in the same party to be in government and progress there moves in the hundreds of years; hence the riddance of the scam that is unelected hereditary nobles which it took more than 700 years to remove them.
  - tjpnz 7mo ago
    What on earth are you talking about? They were elected in 2024. If anything its the issues caused over the previous 14 years which must be fixed.
  - pjc50 7mo ago
    In fairness, this is not unique to Britain. For America read "4" instead of "5".
    - rvz 7mo ago
      Are there unelected hereditary nobles somewhere in the US that is entitled to having a seat in congress and can vote against laws being passed? Nope. I don't think so, not even the length of the term is the same.
      - fc417fc802 7mo ago
        And yet all of your objections apply to us in equal measure. Almost as though hereditary nobles don't have much to do with them.
aaronrobinson 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
Also in the pipeline: elimination of jury trials https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2x01yne13o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2x01yne13o
- infotainment 7mo ago
  > The proposals, which return to Parliament on Tuesday, would replace juries in England and Wales with a single judge in cases where a convicted defendant would be jailed for up to three years. Wow, this is literally the plot of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney video games. I'm sure it will go great with no downsides.
  - YawningAngel 7mo ago
    I'm a little torn on this one. On the one hand, people are bad epistemologists and lots of countries manage with similarly limited jury trials. On the other, we're doing it for cost reasons, which I think is the worst basis imaginable for such a move
- derriz 7mo ago
  It's simply a fact that common law jury trials are time-consuming and expensive and cause long delays and bottlenecks in the justice system. Different common-law countries have addressed this issue in various ways. Restricting jury trials for more serious offenses (in this case for more serious charges - ones that could potentially result in a sentence of more than 3 years) is one way than many common law jurisdictions have taken. It's not ideal but it's infinitely better in my mind than the practice used in the US to reduce jury trials. To avoid the cost/expense of a jury trial, public prosecutors threatens to press for a large number of charges or some very serious charges - carrying the potential of very long sentences - a sort of Gish-gallop approach. Even if the chances of successful prosecution is relatively small for any one of the charges, the defendant is forced to take a plea-deal to avoid the risk of spending years or decades behind bars. Thus the defendant ends up with a guilty record and often a custodial sentence without any access to a trial or the chance to present their case at all.
  - 7mo ago
electedmafia 7mo ago
[flagged]
jongjong 7mo ago
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.
- hdgvhicv 7mo ago
  Unlike many progressives I actually think the lords works well as a location for people who are expert in fields other than getting reelected. But heredity lords, no I don’t get that at all
- Nursie 7mo ago
  Oh piss off. It's removing the nobs from the system, people who are there by right of birth alone. There is no reason a modern democracy shoud cow-tow to such people or allow them any power over the rest of us.
  - nephihaha 7mo ago
    Appointees are even worse. We already have MPs who are supposed to be elected but enact the same UN NGO and WEF programmes as other countries without democratic assent.
    - Nursie 7mo ago
      They really aren't. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather some real democratic reform of the Lords, but there's no chance of that any time soon. In the mean time getting rid of as many people as possible who have no democratic legitimacy whatsoever is a good thing. And at least appointees were in general appointed by someone who had the democratic mandate. People who were born into it are so far from accountable it's not funny. When the brexit referendum was going on, I lose count of the number of times I was told that having appointees in the EU Commission didn't undermine the democratic nature of the union... >> We already have MPs who are supposed to be elected but enact the same UN NGO and WEF programmes as other countries without democratic assent. MPs ... who are elected? Seems like they do have democracy behind them, no?
fmajid 7mo ago
But they still haven't kicked out the Church of England bishops, including the rapist bishop of Lincoln.
kgwxd 7mo ago
To make room for something worse no doubt.
endoblast 7mo ago
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.
- alexpotato 7mo ago
  To play devil's advocate: Some people argue that the difficulty of passing laws in the United States is "a feature not a bug" b/c it prevents the US from creating laws too quickly. You could argue the House of Lords did the same: by vetoing bills, it acted as a "speed bump" to laws that might cause too much change too quickly.
  - post-it 7mo ago
    The House of Lords isn't going anywhere. The majority of the chamber are life peers, functionally identical to Canadian senators.
    - tialaramex 7mo ago
      And for many years now, even the remaining minority of hereditary peers in the chamber are elected to that job, albeit not by the general public. My guess is that all those who are actually useful will get "grandfathered in" by this legislation making them life peers so that they can keep doing the exact same job. Many life peers (who are all entitled to be there) rarely attend, so it would be kinda silly if Lord Snootington, the fifteenth Earl of Whatever is kicked out for being a hereditary peer despite also being the linchpin of an important committee and one of the top 100 attendees in the Lords, while they keep Bill Smith, a business tycoon who got his peerage for giving a politician a sack of cash and hasn't been in London, never mind the House of Lords, since 2014...
scrlk 7mo ago
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_peers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_excepted_hereditary_pe...
- cm2187 7mo ago
  Yeah, the assumption is that the non hereditary peers are somehow more representative, but all they represent is being friends of the PM of the time. It's a historical oddity of questionable usefulness. Meanwhile the house of commons can wipe out any civil liberty with a majority of 50% plus one vote. It is remarkable how a system that seems so unstable and prone to abuses of power has served the longest continuously running democracy for so long.
  - scrlk 7mo ago
    As Walter Bagehot wrote in The English Constitution: "An ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered." Absent ideological capture, it is perhaps one of the best forms of government ever created due to its pragmatic nature and its Lindyness is proof.
  - tehjoker 7mo ago
    50% + 1 is called democracy. Civil liberties are more liable to be swept away by minorities that come to power. In the US, the republicans often do this because they have minority popular support but a disproportionate representation in government. So the key is to make sure that it's 50% + 1 but also representative of the real population. The nobility is another example of a minority with disproportionate power. It's important that they are reduced to ensure civil liberties.
cuuupid 7mo ago
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.
- fc417fc802 7mo ago
  Did they _need_ you or were they seeking the perspective of someone they considered well informed or valued for some other reason? What's the context here?
  - cuuupid 7mo ago
    They wanted someone knowledgeable about GDPR to explain it to them as they didn't understand it. I was a freshman in undergrad who had no knowledge of it other than some stuff I saw on LinkedIn, just had a bunch of LinkedIn connections I guess, so I turned it down.
- klelatti 7mo ago
  You don’t think it’s a strength that they have the courage to seek views from as wide a range of perspectives as possible, including from outside the UK?
  - cuuupid 7mo ago
    That's not what this was about at all, literally just needed GDPR explained to them
xp84 7mo ago
“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!
- jazzpush2 7mo ago
  Kennedy, Bush, Clinton, Newsom related to Pelosi, etc... This guy might be onto something!
- tym0 7mo ago
  “It should never be a gallery of old boys" How else would you describe all the life peers who's sole qualification was to be mate with the prime minister at the time?
cbeach 7mo ago
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.
- Latty 7mo ago
  They gave 16 year olds the vote, and 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote? They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless. They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so they will keep their seats. Your framing of all three of these is obviously intended to mislead.
  - cbeach 7mo ago
    > 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote? That's a separate argument. My point is Labour's change to the rules is very politically convenient for themselves. In the most recent polling, 32% of 16-17-year-olds would vote Labour, while only 17% of the overall electorate would vote Labour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_U... > They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless. They allowed individual incumbent councillors to choose whether elections were cancelled. This was politically convenient for the Labour and Tory parties because the Reform Party is new, and while it's polling well ahead of Labour, it doesn't have many incumbent council seats. When a court challenge loomed, Labour quickly u-turned on the latest round of cancellations. Funny how something can seem sensible one day, and can then be u-turned at the slightest whiff of legal scrutiny. > They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so they will keep their seats. Can you name a single Conservative hereditary peer that will be given a lifetime peerage in Starmer's reform plan?
ineedaj0b 7mo ago
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.
- Nursie 7mo ago
  And if an American told me it was blue, I'd have no need to check, I could have confidence it is not, and that their evaluation would change to another false answer in five minutes.
  - hunterpayne 7mo ago
    Since it is blue, that tells me everything I need to know about you two.
    - Nursie 7mo ago
      It's white here right now :shrug: So I guess that means you're American?
- tim333 7mo ago
  A lot of the arrests are for bad stuff - harassment, advocating arson etc. see https://www.reddit.com/r/IsItBullshit/comments/1q9pbh1/isitbullshit_the_uk_arrests_more_people_over/nyy23qr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IsItBullshit/comments/1q9pbh1/isitb...
krapp 7mo ago
OK but can you wield supreme executive power if a watery tart throws a sword at you?
taint6969 7mo ago
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Ziomislaw 7mo ago
Will they do the same for hereditary monarchy? When I was a kid I was appaled that a country in this age can have a king/queen. Then I understood that they are basically like an animal in a zoo, all for show with no actual power. It's a dreadful fate to be born as a monarch.
- whattheheckheck 7mo ago
  The best punishment for thinking they're that important
- hunterpayne 7mo ago
  Royalty are zoo animals kept by countries for tourism purposes.
- tim333 7mo ago
  >like an animal in a zoo, all for show with no actual power I used to think that but it's not true. The military swear allegiance to the crown, as in Royal Navy, which makes it hard for a dictator to take over. You may think that's academic but other European countries ditched the monarchy and got Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco etc.
Kim_Bruning 7mo ago
Polybius might have an interesting opinion on this. Generally mixed forms of government are supposed to be more stable. If you make everything purely democratic, the structure weakens a bit. Democracy had pretty good PR in the 20th century, but having institutional counterweights is never a bad idea.
glaucon 7mo ago
If you're not British please don't assume that "ejecting heriditary nobles" from the upper house of parliament is automatically going to increase the quality of governance. For more than a century the majority of those who sit in the House of Lords have been "Life Peers", appointed by a politician and without any heriditary aspect. They include such towers of statepersonship as : Evgeny Lebedev (Russian businessman, son of a KGB officer); Alexander Lebedev (another Russian businessman, he's actually been in the KGB); Charlotte Owen (junior aide to Boris Johnson for three years) ... the list goes on. This isn't new (although in recent time the dodginess has risen to new highs) and many of those appointed to Life Peerages meet the goal of having significant life experience they can use to illuminate aspects of legislation that might otherwise be missed. Equally heriditary peers are not all some Wodehousian stereotype of bumbling idiots.
- JCattheATM 7mo ago
  > many of those appointed to Life Peerages meet the goal of having significant life experience This is a poor justification for what still amounts to an unelected ruling class.
  - InvertedRhodium 7mo ago
    Honestly, I look around the world and don’t see much, if any, practical difference. The US has had two presidents that were direct relatives, I can’t believe that’s by pure chance or some kind of genetic skill at being president.
    - hunterpayne 7mo ago
      If you don't see any difference between people who won US presidential elections and those appointed for political favoritism, then I don't know what to tell you. Also, if you look at the current state of the UK vs US and don't see any difference then you need to get out more.
      - InvertedRhodium 7mo ago
dcl 7mo ago
Anyone else think Britain is going to eject the Royal Family within 100 years?
azeemba 7mo ago
The author of the article is named Lawless. Is that an inverted nominative determinism? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
bradleyjg 7mo ago
When the logic for bicameralism disappears, you should get rid of the second chamber. Not just find some other random thing to do with it. See, also, US state legislatures post Reynolds v. Sims.
- burnt-resistor 7mo ago
  The logic is to divide power into as many pieces as possible to prevent tyranny by structure. Unless you admire totalitarianism and unitary executive theory.
  - bradleyjg 7mo ago
    The Founders were wrong about this one. We have an overly powerful executive because they split up the legislative power too much and it doesn’t act as an effective counterweight. Look around the world and find the countries where the legislature rather than the executive is the most dangerous branch as Hamilton suggested. It’s a very short list.
    - burnt-resistor 7mo ago
      Partially true. None of the mythologically-lionized founders were perfectly omnipotent and couldn't hope to have predicted changes in society, technology, economic development, or pervasive corruption. They also couldn't envision ignorant, craven, leaders of poor character being given immense power and ignoring traditions. It's bikeshedding whether a monocameral or bicameral legislature parts, executive, or judiciary is more important, because currently, all 3 are totally compromised in similar manners that cannot adequately be reformed from within in a reasonable timeframe. The problem is a small cabal of rich people and their enablers have corrupted it to the point where no lasting fairness or integrity can be restored and vigilantly assured. The token "clean money" elected officials are a drop in the bucket when 90% of their colleagues and their large benefactors are legalized and pardoned criminals whom deserve to be imprisoned.
      - bradleyjg 7mo ago
amiga386 7mo ago
That something is ancient and traditional doesn't mean it's good. Rotten boroughs also existed for hundreds of years. Parliament got rid of them in 1832, and good fucking riddance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs > For centuries, parliamentary representation and the right to vote in elections to the House of Commons remained largely unchanged from medieval times, even as population and economic activity shifted, contributing to an unequal distribution of seats by the early 19th century. In some constituencies the electorate was so small that seats could be controlled through patronage, bribery, or coercion, and many seats were treated almost as "property" under longstanding family influence. Early 19th-century reformers used the term rotten borough for depopulated constituencies that retained representation, and pocket borough for constituencies effectively "in the pocket" of a patron who could dominate the outcome.
Animats 7mo ago
Next, the monarchy?[1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/30/charles-cancer-royal-family-finances-monarchy-transparency https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/30/charle...
aurelien 7mo ago
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w0de0 7mo ago
Genuinely regrettable. The appointed life peers system is worse than the traditional ‘hereditary sortition’ (if you will). The former creates a class of semi-sinecures of equally questionable quality yet beholden to the political system of the moment. Life peerages become awards for donors and loyalists, a legitimized corruption. The house’s composition becomes an ever-growing competition based on unlimited partisan appointment. The house becomes less thoughtful, more unwieldy, more pointless, more expensive. It will inevitably be abolished on this path. In contrast aristocrats are at least less likely to owe anything to a special interest, and more likely to hold firm to unpopular but perhaps higher ideals: they owe their position to no other power center, neither voters nor parties. They are also inherently invested in the nation’s long term success. It’s hardly democratic but at least it’s not a wasteful partisan circus. My pitch would be to keep a small number of intra-peerage elected hereditary peers, keep the bishops, add various ex officio academics - but fill the majority of seats by true sortition. Every British subject is liable to be drafted, and paid, into a year or two of part-time lordship. (Though I’d grant the whole house a right to easily expel such members, should they fail to meet basic expectations.)
- njrc9 7mo ago
  I wonder if you might find the book “Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case” by Tongdong Bai to be interesting. It delves into exactly these issues: how to ensure that long-term interests, or the interests of future generations, are also taken into account, and not just the interests of the current electorate.
- roryirvine 7mo ago
  Did you ever actually read the candidate statements written for the hereditary by-elections whenever a new spot opened up in the Lords? Seriously, they're worth a read. A collection of posh nobodies all with a 'long career in business/finance' but rarely any particular concrete achievements to talk about. My favourite is Earl Dudley, who stands at every single opportunity seemingly only in a desperate attempt to promote his semi-pornographic youtube channel. Sortition sounds great in theory, but I don't think it's well-suited to a permanent chamber. Use it for citizens juries, or appoint a time-limited jury to scrutinise a single reading of each bill, similar to the work of a select ctte today.
nephihaha 7mo ago
There are so many errors in this headline: * Britain has not had a parliament for seven hundred years. The current parliament dates back to 1707 or 1801 depending on your POV. This is the usual conflation of England with Britain. * If you want to take a more Anglocentric viewpoint then Oliver Cromwell ejected hereditary nobles back in the 18th century. So not the first time. On a different note, it is worth saying that hereditary peers are often more independent. They are born into the role so hold their own viewpoints. Some of them were and are to the left of recent British governments, even though that may be hard to believe. The current Labour government wishes to replace them with appointees so that the entire House of Lords will become another party political machine.
- Lio 7mo ago
  > There are so many errors in this headline: > If you want to take a more Anglocentric viewpoint then Oliver Cromwell ejected hereditary nobles back in the 18th century. So not the first time. Which was a neat trick considering he died in 1658... :P
  - nephihaha 7mo ago
    Correct and my typo. But the point stands. The House of Lords has not been running for as long as the article claims. A substantial break during the Commonwealth.
perilunar 7mo ago
> Government minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said the change put an end to “an archaic and undemocratic principle.” > “Our parliament should always be a place where talents are recognized and merit counts,” he said. “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.” Really? About time they got rid of the monarchy then also.
bofadeez 7mo ago
They still wear crowns?
b3nji 7mo ago
Out with the old, in with the Goverment appointed Stooges. That will fix it! Notice there is no mechanism for the citezens to vote on who goes in. This won't go well.

310 points by divbzero 7mo ago

[flagged]

“…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?

pjc50 7mo ago
Doesn't need to be in the text of the law. The Crown can appoint an arbitrary list of life peers - possibly at any time (see Chiltern Hundreds). As the article points out, the life peers are arguably worse. People like Mandelson.
graypegg 7mo ago
Odd! I think this is the bill? https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3755/publications https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3755/publications It's rather hard to read because the amendments are written as a diff, but it seems to imply the undisclosed number is 87 peers. I guess they need to decide amongst themselves who the lucky 87 are? https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0295/240295.pdf https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0295... Bill 295 2024-25 (Lords Amendments) “1. (2) (2) No more than 87 people at any one time shall be excepted from section 1.” --- Edit: Wow, is this ever hard to pin down. I think section 1 of the lord's amendments were dropped here: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3755/stages/20179/motionsandamendments/746 https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3755/stages/20179/motionsa... which I guess means that the text remains the same as the original text in HL-49 (https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/56858/documents/5337 https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/56858/documents/533...): # Exclusion of remaining hereditary peers Omit section 2 of the House of Lords Act 1999 (exception to exclusion of hereditary peers from membership of House of Lords). which is a patch onto another law, that is linked to in the PDF but for whatever reason does not resolve for me: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1999/34/contents https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1999/34/contents.
- KK7NIL 7mo ago
  > It's rather hard to read because the amendments are written as a diff That's a feature, not a bug ;).[0] 0: Any episode of "Yes, Minister!"
tialaramex 7mo ago
All primary legislation is published. But this needn't be in the primary legislation since there is no need to legislate to make it happen. It's a side deal, the government agrees to do this, the Lords agree not to get in their way. Much, but not all secondary legislation is also published. A typical means by which Secondary Legislation is brought into existence is that a Law says there shall be some list or reference established by some particular minister, and that document is Secondary Legislation. For example maybe a Law concerning Clown Licensing says there shall be a list of Clown License Offices, and the Secretary of State for Hilarity shall write this list, that list isn't voted on by Parliament, the list gets written by some bureaucrats working for the current Secretary of State for Hilarity. This "undisclosed" list needn't be in secondary legislation either.
tomatocracy 7mo ago
The idea is that some of the current hereditary peers will be given new life peerages under existing rules which would enable them to stay in the chamber. Granting new life peerages is mostly within the gift of the Prime Minister (although there are committees which vet appointments and conventions about allowing opposition parties to nominate some), so this is not part of the legislation but a back-room deal by which the votes were secured by the government.

alopha 7mo ago

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.

fmajid 7mo ago
Including rapists like the Bishop of Lincoln.

iberator 7mo ago

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:)

dude250711 7mo ago
Yep, getting rid of nobility is how USSR lived happily ever after.
- coldtea 7mo ago
  Well, for all USSRs issues, getting rid of their nobility was one of the best things they did.
  - dylan604 7mo ago
    It's what fills the vacuum that matters, just as POTUS is finding out in Iran. If you don't have a plan for after creating the vacuum, you're probably not going to be happy with how it is filled
- stvltvs 7mo ago
  Getting rid of hereditary nobility has worked out pretty well for the USA.
  - dylan604 7mo ago
    Has it? By what metric are you using for that? Two Bush presidencies off the power of the senior patriarch. Current president comes from family wealth. Most of the oligarchs come from family wealth. It's not until the recent tech billionaires that became first generation oligarchs.
    - stvltvs 7mo ago

throw_rust 7mo ago

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

nephihaha 7mo ago
The hereditary buffoons were more independent-minded, and sometimes progressive, than the appointees. Not a fan of the old system but this is not an improvement.

meitham 7mo ago

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

theodric 7mo ago

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.

Chinjut 7mo ago
The Senate is, while not the whole story, a significant part of the reason the government constantly fails to do what is either the desire of the people or what's in their interests. I wouldn't lament losing the Senate.
- jfengel 7mo ago
  The US Senate is designed to check and balance the House of Representatives. But that often puts the Congress as a whole in deadlock, meaning it can no longer balance the other two branches. When they could get anything done they delegated a lot of power to the Executive. Which worked ok, but eventually a "unitary executive" appropriated even more power, and the Legislature is powerless to prevent it.
  - pjc50 7mo ago
    Unpopular opinion: deadlock is fine. Most legislation is bad. What really matters is the budget. And the rule that failing to pass a budget can automatically force an election avoids the absurd US "shutdown" that isn't a shutdown.
    - fc417fc802 7mo ago
      This is now my second favorite idea, after a nationwide ban of first past the post voting schemes. My third (previously second) is outlawing political parties. The problem with that one is it would be really difficult to implement in a way that doesn't run afoul of freedom of association and freedom of speech. Probably worth figuring out though.

amadeuspagel 7mo ago

> 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.

throwaway7783 7mo ago
Does House of Lords have any real power today?
- pjc50 7mo ago
  Sort of. They can and do amend bills, but they can't overrule the Commons on anything the latter regards as important.
  - rgblambda 7mo ago
    With a very small number of exceptions, including changing the maximum duration of Parliament from 5 years.
  - tomatocracy 7mo ago
    "Important" is quite a high bar in this case though if the House of Lords is insistent enough to actually vote something down. The cost in terms of parliamentary time for the government these days of using the Parliament Acts is very high (especially for things which government would normally do via secondary legislation), and it also requires at least a one year delay; by extension the potential political cost to the government of using the Parliament Acts to pass something unpopular or controversial is set at a high enough bar that it's an effective veto. This feels like quite a sensible safety valve to me.

mindwok 7mo ago

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.

rvz 7mo ago
> British democracy and government is cool. Oh sweet summer child. The government there does not care about you and will promise anything to get another 5 years in power despite causing the issues they promised to solve in the first place. You are essentially voting in the same party to be in government and progress there moves in the hundreds of years; hence the riddance of the scam that is unelected hereditary nobles which it took more than 700 years to remove them.
- tjpnz 7mo ago
  What on earth are you talking about? They were elected in 2024. If anything its the issues caused over the previous 14 years which must be fixed.
- pjc50 7mo ago
  In fairness, this is not unique to Britain. For America read "4" instead of "5".
  - rvz 7mo ago
    Are there unelected hereditary nobles somewhere in the US that is entitled to having a seat in congress and can vote against laws being passed? Nope. I don't think so, not even the length of the term is the same.
    - fc417fc802 7mo ago
      And yet all of your objections apply to us in equal measure. Almost as though hereditary nobles don't have much to do with them.

aaronrobinson 7mo ago

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 7mo ago

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

infotainment 7mo ago
> The proposals, which return to Parliament on Tuesday, would replace juries in England and Wales with a single judge in cases where a convicted defendant would be jailed for up to three years. Wow, this is literally the plot of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney video games. I'm sure it will go great with no downsides.
- YawningAngel 7mo ago
  I'm a little torn on this one. On the one hand, people are bad epistemologists and lots of countries manage with similarly limited jury trials. On the other, we're doing it for cost reasons, which I think is the worst basis imaginable for such a move
derriz 7mo ago
It's simply a fact that common law jury trials are time-consuming and expensive and cause long delays and bottlenecks in the justice system. Different common-law countries have addressed this issue in various ways. Restricting jury trials for more serious offenses (in this case for more serious charges - ones that could potentially result in a sentence of more than 3 years) is one way than many common law jurisdictions have taken. It's not ideal but it's infinitely better in my mind than the practice used in the US to reduce jury trials. To avoid the cost/expense of a jury trial, public prosecutors threatens to press for a large number of charges or some very serious charges - carrying the potential of very long sentences - a sort of Gish-gallop approach. Even if the chances of successful prosecution is relatively small for any one of the charges, the defendant is forced to take a plea-deal to avoid the risk of spending years or decades behind bars. Thus the defendant ends up with a guilty record and often a custodial sentence without any access to a trial or the chance to present their case at all.
- 7mo ago

electedmafia 7mo ago

[flagged]

jongjong 7mo ago

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.

hdgvhicv 7mo ago
Unlike many progressives I actually think the lords works well as a location for people who are expert in fields other than getting reelected. But heredity lords, no I don’t get that at all
Nursie 7mo ago
Oh piss off. It's removing the nobs from the system, people who are there by right of birth alone. There is no reason a modern democracy shoud cow-tow to such people or allow them any power over the rest of us.
- nephihaha 7mo ago
  Appointees are even worse. We already have MPs who are supposed to be elected but enact the same UN NGO and WEF programmes as other countries without democratic assent.
  - Nursie 7mo ago
    They really aren't. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather some real democratic reform of the Lords, but there's no chance of that any time soon. In the mean time getting rid of as many people as possible who have no democratic legitimacy whatsoever is a good thing. And at least appointees were in general appointed by someone who had the democratic mandate. People who were born into it are so far from accountable it's not funny. When the brexit referendum was going on, I lose count of the number of times I was told that having appointees in the EU Commission didn't undermine the democratic nature of the union... >> We already have MPs who are supposed to be elected but enact the same UN NGO and WEF programmes as other countries without democratic assent. MPs ... who are elected? Seems like they do have democracy behind them, no?

fmajid 7mo ago

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

kgwxd 7mo ago

To make room for something worse no doubt.

endoblast 7mo ago

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.

alexpotato 7mo ago
To play devil's advocate: Some people argue that the difficulty of passing laws in the United States is "a feature not a bug" b/c it prevents the US from creating laws too quickly. You could argue the House of Lords did the same: by vetoing bills, it acted as a "speed bump" to laws that might cause too much change too quickly.
- post-it 7mo ago
  The House of Lords isn't going anywhere. The majority of the chamber are life peers, functionally identical to Canadian senators.
  - tialaramex 7mo ago
    And for many years now, even the remaining minority of hereditary peers in the chamber are elected to that job, albeit not by the general public. My guess is that all those who are actually useful will get "grandfathered in" by this legislation making them life peers so that they can keep doing the exact same job. Many life peers (who are all entitled to be there) rarely attend, so it would be kinda silly if Lord Snootington, the fifteenth Earl of Whatever is kicked out for being a hereditary peer despite also being the linchpin of an important committee and one of the top 100 attendees in the Lords, while they keep Bill Smith, a business tycoon who got his peerage for giving a politician a sack of cash and hasn't been in London, never mind the House of Lords, since 2014...

scrlk 7mo ago

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_peers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_excepted_hereditary_pe...

cm2187 7mo ago
Yeah, the assumption is that the non hereditary peers are somehow more representative, but all they represent is being friends of the PM of the time. It's a historical oddity of questionable usefulness. Meanwhile the house of commons can wipe out any civil liberty with a majority of 50% plus one vote. It is remarkable how a system that seems so unstable and prone to abuses of power has served the longest continuously running democracy for so long.
- scrlk 7mo ago
  As Walter Bagehot wrote in The English Constitution: "An ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered." Absent ideological capture, it is perhaps one of the best forms of government ever created due to its pragmatic nature and its Lindyness is proof.
- tehjoker 7mo ago
  50% + 1 is called democracy. Civil liberties are more liable to be swept away by minorities that come to power. In the US, the republicans often do this because they have minority popular support but a disproportionate representation in government. So the key is to make sure that it's 50% + 1 but also representative of the real population. The nobility is another example of a minority with disproportionate power. It's important that they are reduced to ensure civil liberties.

cuuupid 7mo ago

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.

fc417fc802 7mo ago
Did they _need_ you or were they seeking the perspective of someone they considered well informed or valued for some other reason? What's the context here?
- cuuupid 7mo ago
  They wanted someone knowledgeable about GDPR to explain it to them as they didn't understand it. I was a freshman in undergrad who had no knowledge of it other than some stuff I saw on LinkedIn, just had a bunch of LinkedIn connections I guess, so I turned it down.
klelatti 7mo ago
You don’t think it’s a strength that they have the courage to seek views from as wide a range of perspectives as possible, including from outside the UK?
- cuuupid 7mo ago
  That's not what this was about at all, literally just needed GDPR explained to them

xp84 7mo ago

“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!

jazzpush2 7mo ago
Kennedy, Bush, Clinton, Newsom related to Pelosi, etc... This guy might be onto something!
tym0 7mo ago
“It should never be a gallery of old boys" How else would you describe all the life peers who's sole qualification was to be mate with the prime minister at the time?

cbeach 7mo ago

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.

Latty 7mo ago
They gave 16 year olds the vote, and 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote? They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless. They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so they will keep their seats. Your framing of all three of these is obviously intended to mislead.
- cbeach 7mo ago
  > 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote? That's a separate argument. My point is Labour's change to the rules is very politically convenient for themselves. In the most recent polling, 32% of 16-17-year-olds would vote Labour, while only 17% of the overall electorate would vote Labour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_U... > They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless. They allowed individual incumbent councillors to choose whether elections were cancelled. This was politically convenient for the Labour and Tory parties because the Reform Party is new, and while it's polling well ahead of Labour, it doesn't have many incumbent council seats. When a court challenge loomed, Labour quickly u-turned on the latest round of cancellations. Funny how something can seem sensible one day, and can then be u-turned at the slightest whiff of legal scrutiny. > They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so they will keep their seats. Can you name a single Conservative hereditary peer that will be given a lifetime peerage in Starmer's reform plan?

ineedaj0b 7mo ago

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.

Nursie 7mo ago
And if an American told me it was blue, I'd have no need to check, I could have confidence it is not, and that their evaluation would change to another false answer in five minutes.
- hunterpayne 7mo ago
  Since it is blue, that tells me everything I need to know about you two.
  - Nursie 7mo ago
    It's white here right now :shrug: So I guess that means you're American?
tim333 7mo ago
A lot of the arrests are for bad stuff - harassment, advocating arson etc. see https://www.reddit.com/r/IsItBullshit/comments/1q9pbh1/isitbullshit_the_uk_arrests_more_people_over/nyy23qr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IsItBullshit/comments/1q9pbh1/isitb...

krapp 7mo ago

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

taint6969 7mo ago

[dead]

Ziomislaw 7mo ago

Will they do the same for hereditary monarchy? When I was a kid I was appaled that a country in this age can have a king/queen. Then I understood that they are basically like an animal in a zoo, all for show with no actual power. It's a dreadful fate to be born as a monarch.

whattheheckheck 7mo ago
The best punishment for thinking they're that important
hunterpayne 7mo ago
Royalty are zoo animals kept by countries for tourism purposes.
tim333 7mo ago
>like an animal in a zoo, all for show with no actual power I used to think that but it's not true. The military swear allegiance to the crown, as in Royal Navy, which makes it hard for a dictator to take over. You may think that's academic but other European countries ditched the monarchy and got Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco etc.

Kim_Bruning 7mo ago

Polybius might have an interesting opinion on this. Generally mixed forms of government are supposed to be more stable. If you make everything purely democratic, the structure weakens a bit. Democracy had pretty good PR in the 20th century, but having institutional counterweights is never a bad idea.

glaucon 7mo ago

If you're not British please don't assume that "ejecting heriditary nobles" from the upper house of parliament is automatically going to increase the quality of governance. For more than a century the majority of those who sit in the House of Lords have been "Life Peers", appointed by a politician and without any heriditary aspect. They include such towers of statepersonship as : Evgeny Lebedev (Russian businessman, son of a KGB officer); Alexander Lebedev (another Russian businessman, he's actually been in the KGB); Charlotte Owen (junior aide to Boris Johnson for three years) ... the list goes on. This isn't new (although in recent time the dodginess has risen to new highs) and many of those appointed to Life Peerages meet the goal of having significant life experience they can use to illuminate aspects of legislation that might otherwise be missed. Equally heriditary peers are not all some Wodehousian stereotype of bumbling idiots.

JCattheATM 7mo ago
> many of those appointed to Life Peerages meet the goal of having significant life experience This is a poor justification for what still amounts to an unelected ruling class.
- InvertedRhodium 7mo ago
  Honestly, I look around the world and don’t see much, if any, practical difference. The US has had two presidents that were direct relatives, I can’t believe that’s by pure chance or some kind of genetic skill at being president.
  - hunterpayne 7mo ago
    If you don't see any difference between people who won US presidential elections and those appointed for political favoritism, then I don't know what to tell you. Also, if you look at the current state of the UK vs US and don't see any difference then you need to get out more.
    - InvertedRhodium 7mo ago

dcl 7mo ago

Anyone else think Britain is going to eject the Royal Family within 100 years?

azeemba 7mo ago

The author of the article is named Lawless. Is that an inverted nominative determinism? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism

bradleyjg 7mo ago

When the logic for bicameralism disappears, you should get rid of the second chamber. Not just find some other random thing to do with it. See, also, US state legislatures post Reynolds v. Sims.

burnt-resistor 7mo ago
The logic is to divide power into as many pieces as possible to prevent tyranny by structure. Unless you admire totalitarianism and unitary executive theory.
- bradleyjg 7mo ago
  The Founders were wrong about this one. We have an overly powerful executive because they split up the legislative power too much and it doesn’t act as an effective counterweight. Look around the world and find the countries where the legislature rather than the executive is the most dangerous branch as Hamilton suggested. It’s a very short list.
  - burnt-resistor 7mo ago
    Partially true. None of the mythologically-lionized founders were perfectly omnipotent and couldn't hope to have predicted changes in society, technology, economic development, or pervasive corruption. They also couldn't envision ignorant, craven, leaders of poor character being given immense power and ignoring traditions. It's bikeshedding whether a monocameral or bicameral legislature parts, executive, or judiciary is more important, because currently, all 3 are totally compromised in similar manners that cannot adequately be reformed from within in a reasonable timeframe. The problem is a small cabal of rich people and their enablers have corrupted it to the point where no lasting fairness or integrity can be restored and vigilantly assured. The token "clean money" elected officials are a drop in the bucket when 90% of their colleagues and their large benefactors are legalized and pardoned criminals whom deserve to be imprisoned.
    - bradleyjg 7mo ago

amiga386 7mo ago

That something is ancient and traditional doesn't mean it's good. Rotten boroughs also existed for hundreds of years. Parliament got rid of them in 1832, and good fucking riddance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs > For centuries, parliamentary representation and the right to vote in elections to the House of Commons remained largely unchanged from medieval times, even as population and economic activity shifted, contributing to an unequal distribution of seats by the early 19th century. In some constituencies the electorate was so small that seats could be controlled through patronage, bribery, or coercion, and many seats were treated almost as "property" under longstanding family influence. Early 19th-century reformers used the term rotten borough for depopulated constituencies that retained representation, and pocket borough for constituencies effectively "in the pocket" of a patron who could dominate the outcome.

Animats 7mo ago

Next, the monarchy?[1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/30/charles-cancer-royal-family-finances-monarchy-transparency https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/30/charle...

aurelien 7mo ago

[dead]

w0de0 7mo ago

Genuinely regrettable. The appointed life peers system is worse than the traditional ‘hereditary sortition’ (if you will). The former creates a class of semi-sinecures of equally questionable quality yet beholden to the political system of the moment. Life peerages become awards for donors and loyalists, a legitimized corruption. The house’s composition becomes an ever-growing competition based on unlimited partisan appointment. The house becomes less thoughtful, more unwieldy, more pointless, more expensive. It will inevitably be abolished on this path. In contrast aristocrats are at least less likely to owe anything to a special interest, and more likely to hold firm to unpopular but perhaps higher ideals: they owe their position to no other power center, neither voters nor parties. They are also inherently invested in the nation’s long term success. It’s hardly democratic but at least it’s not a wasteful partisan circus. My pitch would be to keep a small number of intra-peerage elected hereditary peers, keep the bishops, add various ex officio academics - but fill the majority of seats by true sortition. Every British subject is liable to be drafted, and paid, into a year or two of part-time lordship. (Though I’d grant the whole house a right to easily expel such members, should they fail to meet basic expectations.)

njrc9 7mo ago
I wonder if you might find the book “Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case” by Tongdong Bai to be interesting. It delves into exactly these issues: how to ensure that long-term interests, or the interests of future generations, are also taken into account, and not just the interests of the current electorate.
roryirvine 7mo ago
Did you ever actually read the candidate statements written for the hereditary by-elections whenever a new spot opened up in the Lords? Seriously, they're worth a read. A collection of posh nobodies all with a 'long career in business/finance' but rarely any particular concrete achievements to talk about. My favourite is Earl Dudley, who stands at every single opportunity seemingly only in a desperate attempt to promote his semi-pornographic youtube channel. Sortition sounds great in theory, but I don't think it's well-suited to a permanent chamber. Use it for citizens juries, or appoint a time-limited jury to scrutinise a single reading of each bill, similar to the work of a select ctte today.

nephihaha 7mo ago

There are so many errors in this headline: * Britain has not had a parliament for seven hundred years. The current parliament dates back to 1707 or 1801 depending on your POV. This is the usual conflation of England with Britain. * If you want to take a more Anglocentric viewpoint then Oliver Cromwell ejected hereditary nobles back in the 18th century. So not the first time. On a different note, it is worth saying that hereditary peers are often more independent. They are born into the role so hold their own viewpoints. Some of them were and are to the left of recent British governments, even though that may be hard to believe. The current Labour government wishes to replace them with appointees so that the entire House of Lords will become another party political machine.

Lio 7mo ago
> There are so many errors in this headline: > If you want to take a more Anglocentric viewpoint then Oliver Cromwell ejected hereditary nobles back in the 18th century. So not the first time. Which was a neat trick considering he died in 1658... :P
- nephihaha 7mo ago
  Correct and my typo. But the point stands. The House of Lords has not been running for as long as the article claims. A substantial break during the Commonwealth.

perilunar 7mo ago

> Government minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said the change put an end to “an archaic and undemocratic principle.” > “Our parliament should always be a place where talents are recognized and merit counts,” he said. “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.” Really? About time they got rid of the monarchy then also.

bofadeez 7mo ago

They still wear crowns?

b3nji 7mo ago

Out with the old, in with the Goverment appointed Stooges. That will fix it! Notice there is no mechanism for the citezens to vote on who goes in. This won't go well.