Starmer: I will abolish House of Lords

The problem with replacing democracy with a meritocracy is who decides the criteria for merit. That is a very dangerous road to go down and one unlikely to be accepted by the masses.

And of course the advocates of a meritocracy always seem to include themselves amongst the meritorious. And thus it is about limiting the say of others and never themselves.

And I know the lords has done its job on occasion. It failed to do so over the poll tax though.

But there is little more to be gained by you and I continuing this. There is the likelihood of us both just coming up with different forms of words to say the same things. I am not it seems going to change your mind and you will not change mind, so we'll just end up going round in circles.

I think we should just agree to differ.

The last word is yours if you feel a need to respond



 

My last comment is only that its a pleasure debating with you. 
And to gently remind you that I'm not actually advocating a meritocracy, it was just a little diversion. 

Hey tit head, IT IS NOT MY PARTY. I voted for the Conservative candidate in the last general election.

Blair, New Labour, never promised to abolish the House of Lords. (It seems you have your own version of "fact and truth".)


When the Labour Party came to power in the 1997 general election, it had in its manifesto the promise to reform the House of Lords:



The House of Lords must be reformed. As an initial, self-contained reform, not dependent on further reform in the future, the right of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute.

---"it was better than the current system that tony wanted of stacking the lords with his blairite toadies." --- So you did not like Blair's attempt to make the HoL's more politically even ? You preferred it to be totally dominated by Conservatives. Hmm.
(The UK has been overwhelmingly dominated by Tory governments for the last 70years, and just look at the mess they have made of things.)

That the House of Lords contained hundreds of legislators who inherited their positions is indefensible in the eyes of democracy. That most of them were Tory supporters with a tendency to vote for self-interest - as the poll tax vote demonstrated - just added to that. 

The fact that 25 years later there are still 92 hereditaries is a shocking indictment of New Labour's half arsed reforms. Blairs problem like that of the Tories who followed him is that he liked the powers of patronage to reward his cronies too much. The Tories have taken it to another level, using appointments to the Lords to reward party donors. The relationship between prime ministers and parties on the one hand, and the Lords on the other has become brazenly corrupt.

Whether any reforms are democratic or not, something seriously has to change. I favour democratic accountability, though I also note that in European parliaments second chambers are often wholly or partly indirectly elected by elected local representatives. But even that would be a vast improvement on the corrupt set up we have now. I also acknowledge that there are ways of retaining an appointed chamber of some kind that could greatly reduce if not eliminate the scope for politically motivated corruption, and some have been suggested in this thread.

But sadly I don't believe that a power hungry politician like Starmer is serious about serious reform. He will I suspect want to retain the inherently corrupt power of patronage, just like Blair did.
I doubt the seriousness of intent here and this is probably just another false promise designed to appease more progressive elements in his own party.

But any serious proposals for reform that do emerge I will study and consider on what I regard to be their own merits. Most forms of reform one can imagine can only be an improvement on the system as it is now.