Vandals on the prowl

The government has announced gleefully that the remaining 92 hereditary peers will be kicked out of the Lords within 18 months.

The reasons cited for this act of constitutional vandalism fall into two categories: real, which are vicious; and those offered to the public, which are illiterate. The real reasons all have to do with the hatred Labour feel for every last vestige of our civilisation, emphatically including its constitutional arrangement.

In his article, Charles Moore appealed to tradition: the institution of hereditary peers in the House of Lords goes back 700 years. Of course, he wrote, if we were to start the upper chamber from scratch, we wouldn’t even consider such an anachronism. But since we aren’t starting from scratch, do let’s have some respect for the patina of venerable age.

Now Lord Moore knows perfectly well, but is reluctant to say, that the tradition attached to the House of Lords is precisely the reason Labour vandals hate it. Another argument put forth by Lord Moore, that hereditary peers aren’t susceptible to party-political pressures, cuts even less ice.

The whole idea is for (ideally dictatorial) power to be concentrated in the hands of the central (ideally socialist) government. Any institution capable of applying clamps to such tyranny is ipso facto anathema.

Members of the Commons are all professional politicians, which these days more or less means spivs. As such, they can be bribed, bought, coerced or pressured into toeing the line – after all, they depend on the government for their careers, indeed livelihood.

A hereditary peer neither owes nor needs any political favours, and he depends on nothing but his birth for his post. Hence he may vote strictly on the basis of his reason and conscience, which may make him a menace to spivocracy.

The upshot of it is that a hereditary Lords adds an essential check to the balance of power, and that’s precisely why socialists detest it. They don’t want any checks and balances. They want dictatorship, or any possible approximation to it.

Then again, 45 of the 92 remaining hereditary peers are Conservatives, and practically none are Labour. That goes to prove Labour’s point: those walking cadavers are guaranteed to stick spokes into the wheels of progress, as it’s understood by socialist spivs. Out with them.

And it’s not just that: all those despicable 92 are white men. Where’s diversity there? Where’s inclusivity? Where’s equity? That’s what happens when you let nature take its course. Why, the very presence of those pale-faced crypto-misogynists is a slap in the face of progress.

So much for the real reasons behind one of the worst acts of constitutional vandalism in British history. Now let’s mention the arguments in favour of it offered for public consumption.

One such argument was put forth by Nick Thomas-Symonds, minister for the constitution, whose post would be more properly described as minister for constitutional sabotage.

“The hereditary principle in law-making has lasted for too long and is out of step with modern Britain,” he said. “The second chamber plays a vital role in our constitution and people should not be voting on our laws in parliament by an ­accident of birth.”

An alien could be forgiven for believing that ‘accident of birth’ has been expunged from British politics altogether – or at least will be, once the proposed legislation has gone into effect. Well, not quite. There’s that other burr under Labour’s blanket: the monarchy.

That’s your accident of birth at its most outlandish: people get to head our state simply because they are born in the purple. Don’t they know that red or at a pinch brown are the only acceptable colours of modern politics?

If you think for a second that our governing vandals wouldn’t get rid of the monarchy in a second if they thought they could get away with it, you are mistaken. It’s the next item on their agenda, and they are just waiting for the propitious moment to strike.

That, to me, is self-evident. But another example of accident of birth at work in politics is even more self-evident, and I don’t think that even our socialist spivs see it in their crosshairs. Not yet, anyway.

Britain is supposed to be a democracy, meaning that those entitled to vote elect their government. But where does this entitlement come from if not from an accident of birth? Upon reaching majority, anyone born in Britain is allowed to take an active part in politics by voting for Labour or – if they wish to be sticks-in-the-mud – some other parties.

According to that despicable colonialist Cecil Rhodes, “To be born English is to win first prize in the lottery of life”. But winning anything in any lottery is random luck or, in this particular lottery, an accident of birth, isn’t it?

I don’t know if this iniquity bothers our rulers as much as hereditary peers do but, if it does, I can propose an effective solution: disfranchising all native-born Britons. That will hammer the last nail into the coffin of power based on an accident of birth. Moreover, it’ll satisfy another argument, that from meritocracy.

When some 25 years ago Tony Blair, arguably the most subversive PM in British history and definitely the most disgusting one, delivered the first blow to our constitution, he explained that any right to affect legislation should be based on achievement, not birth.

There we go then. A Briton born and bred votes from an accident of birth and no required achievement. A chap who braves the storms to paddle across the Channel, on the other hand, has definitely achieved something.

Tony’s own achievement qualified him in spades. After all, he was a fire-eating activist in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a transparent Soviet front. What he was out to achieve was Britain losing her nuclear deterrent and also her energy independence, in which nuclear power played a vital role.

Though young Tony didn’t quite achieve the entirety of his goals, he came close enough by weakening the country as much as was feasible at the time. Is that the kind of achievement he had in mind?

Perhaps Angie Rayner, our deputy prime minister, is an even higher achiever. Not every girl manages to get pregnant before her 16^th birthday, leave school never to resume any appreciable education, and then embark on a steeply ascending political path by activism in trade unions and other such setups.

I’d suggest that centuries of good breeding, sound education and gradual training in exercising political power responsibly constitute better preparation for government than such ‘achievements’. That’s what hereditary peers used to have, and some still do.

One wonders how Britain managed to become the greatest empire in history when it was governed almost exclusively by white men of such objectionable backgrounds. I detect a causal relationship there, but that’s only me.