If the House of Lords manages to delay decision on Brexit any longer, they’ll be next for the chop
The British people may have voted to leave the EU in greater numbers than we ever voted for anything, but the House of Lords is almost comically unrepresentative of our nation
EXPECTING the House of Lords to be happy about Brexit is like expecting turkeys to be all excited about Christmas.
The British people may have voted to leave the EU in greater numbers than we ever voted for anything, but the House of Lords is almost comically unrepresentative of our nation.
In the real world, all the Lib Dem MPs can travel together in the same minicab while in the House of Lords the Lib Dems are a political force once more, with 102 peers.
In the real world, Labour are a dying party but in the alternative universe of the House of Lords, Labour are still a mighty powerhouse with 202 peers, including some mouth-foaming, eye-swivelling Euroloons like Baron Mandelson and Baron Kinnock.
The House of Lords is as instinctively anti-Brexit as the BBC. But there is one crucial difference between the upper chamber and Broadcasting House.
Many Lordships are on EU pensions.
As my colleague David Wooding exclusively reveals today dozens of lucky Lords are in line for whopping EU annuities.
And the terms and conditions of European Commission pensions effectively demand that they support the EU. So how can their Lordships possibly be fair and rational when debating this country’s exit from the EU?
It stinks to high heaven that anyone in Parliament should have a personal financial incentive to put the interests of their EU paymasters over Britain.
Dozens of peers have exactly that incentive, although you would never know it because they have decided it would be “distasteful” to declare their EU pensions in any debate.
Why? If some of their Lordships are set to be the red-robed bitches of Brussels, they should at least have the courage, honesty and common decency to admit it. It is a national scandal that EU pensioners in the House of Lords do not have to declare their personal stake in this country staying inside the EU.
We make a fuss when some dozy MP is caught fiddling his expenses but it is a far greater outrage that some members of the Lords are debating our future without owning up to what’s in it for them.
Tomorrow the House of Lords will continue the debate on Article 50, the bill that will formally trigger the start of Brexit and allow Theresa May to begin formal divorce proceedings with the EU.
The elected members of the House of Commons have indicated — by a majority of 372 — that they intend to respect the democratic will of the British people who, lest we forget, were endlessly told that their decision in the referendum was final.
Will the House of Lords show the same respect for democracy?
Fingers crossed, eh? For us and for them.
Because if some preening, unelected nobs decide that they wish to delay, hamstring or even deny Brexit then they will be signing the death warrant of the House of Lords.
“Our role is to review and amend legislation, not to kill it,” Paul Strasburger, a Liberal Democrat peer, told the Financial Times. “There is definitely an appetite for improving this bill.” Don’t bite off more than you can chew, Your Lordship.
Nothing can stop Brexit now. But that does not mean that the House of Lords will not try. Many of us have long suspected that the greatest resistance to Brexit would come from the pound-store Caesars in the House of Lords.
Their delaying tactics will include demands for greater parliamentary scrutiny over Brexit negotiations — horribly ironic, as endless EU legislation has been waved through Parliament without proper scrutiny for more than 40 years.
The good news is that the coming days will shine an unforgiving light on the House of Lords and some haughty, unelected halfwits.
It will oblige us all to take a long, hard look at Parliament’s unelected upper chamber, which dwarfs the elected House of Commons with 805 sitting Lords, including nearly 100 hereditary peers — almost all men because most hereditary peerages can only be inherited by men.
What century are these puffed-up old fossils living in?
And while I understand how many of their Lordships benefit from British membership of the EU, how exactly does British democracy benefit from these self-important old boobies?
You can’t help noticing that the House of Lords is the absolute spitting image of the European Union — with some jumped-up, gravy train-hogging nobodies who you never voted for and who you can never kick out.
Wouldn’t it be a gloriously fine day for British democracy if we left one and then abolished the other?
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Blair completely ignored the million-plus marchers who rose up against his avoidable war, warning them of “bloody consequences” if Iraq was not confronted.
He was wrong then. He is wrong now.
Crawl into one of your mansions, Mr Blair.
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