THE LORDS WHO LOATHE DEMOCRACY

From a crowded field, QUENTIN LETTS names the most shameless Brexit saboteurs ...

The problem with the arrogant, democracy hating house of Lords is that its members are there for life and no one elected them. In other words they are utterly unaccountable.

But who are the most self-regardingly shameless of the Upper house’s would-be Brexit blockers? From a crowded field, we name the most antidemocratic lords of all. LORD ADONIS

BLaIrIte, poetry-reading former journalist (he worked for the proBrussels Financial times) who has been a Lords ringleader for the remoaners. has been sent into a peculiar orbit by Brexit.

Once a subscriber to calm Centrism, egghead andrew adonis is now a europhile ultra, plotting to overturn the 2016 referendum.

In a rant at theresa May when he quit a quango in protest at Brexit, he claimed the notoriously hesitant May had become a voice of ‘extreme rightwing nationalism’.

he has also railed against the BBC for being pro- Brexit, a claim so laughable that former friends worry he has lost his marbles.

he has demanded that andrew Neil, widely regarded as the BBC’s best politics presenter, should be sacked.

adonis travelled to Brussels with Sir Nick Clegg and Ken Clarke to have matey talks with the european Commission’s Michel Barnier (Britain’s opponent in the negotiations).

Whose side is he on?

LORD MANDELSON

the purring poohbahs’ poohbah, this sleek cheetah of the pro-eU menagerie and former Labour Party spin doctor seldom mentions his Brussels pension entitlements as a former eU Commissioner.

throughout his career Peter Mandelson has luxuriated in administrative elitism, treading carpeted corridors as a privileged insider who regarded the electorate with barely concealed disdain. had to resign twice from tony Blair’s Cabinet following scandals but kept returning to the Labour front bench, oozing superiority and making clever- clever jokes to signal that the vulgar masses were below his serious consideration.

In opposing Brexit this week, he claimed to have the backing of ‘half the Cabinet’ and even, ‘in her dreams’ of Mrs May herself.

this viper in Versace, an inveterate networker and careerist since his student days with the British Youth Council, is the ultimate establishment fixer and is conspiring with tony Blair on his project to stymie Brexit.

LORD AND LADY KINNOCK

WIth Neil and Glenys Kinnock you get two Brussels gravyboaters for the price of . . . two!

Both being Life Peers, they can both claim the £ 300 daily allowance, giving the Kinnock household all the more incentive to vote for pro-Brussels motions.

Former Labour leader Kinnock, rejected twice by British voters as a potential prime minister, spent the autumn of his career as an eU Commissioner, complete with one of those juicy pensions — worth, in his case, almost £90,000 a year.

Lady Kinnock was entitled to two eU pensions for her time as an MeP, worth in total £67,000 a year.

When in Brussels, Neil Kinnock signally failed to tackle rampant corruption in eU officialdom.

In the Lords he has claimed that he supports europhile motions merely ‘to ensure we leave the eU in good order’, but he admitted to the Observer newspaper that he wanted to stop us leaving altogether.

‘ We should stop Brexit to save the NhS,’ he said with his trademark swagger.

Stopping Brexit would, of course, mean we had to go on sending billions of pounds annually to the eU instead of spending that money instead on our hospitals and other services.

DUKE OF WELLINGTON

DraWLING hereditary tory peer who has been in the house since 2015. a failed former parliamentary candidate, he was a (dull) MeP for Surrey West. Not universally liked by his fellow peers. ‘remote’ and ‘amazingly conceited — even for a Duke’ are two verdicts.

this week he led a revolt against the Government which saw peers voting against the setting of March 29, 2019, as our eU departure date.

Married to a Prussian princess and a great schmoozer of european society, Wellington is a businessman.

his ancestor, the 1st Duke, may have been a great soldier but he, too, held the British public in a certain contempt and did his utmost to defeat the great reform Bill of 1832 which cleared away so many of the ‘rotten boroughs’ — constituencies which had so few voters corrupt candidates could buy their way to victory — and made Parliament more democratic.

Maybe we need another such reform Bill to cleanse Westminster of its referendum-resistant peers.

LORD HANNAY

FOrMer diplomat and long-standing adorer of the eU superstate, hannay sits on the Crossbenches and can fire criticisms at Government ministers from behind their right shoulders. a sniper’s preferred position!

educated at Winchester and Oxford, he may be intellectual but he is not quite clever enough to conceal the impression that he considers other mortals way below his scholastic level.

his long and apparently effortless Foreign Office career saw him embedded for long spells with the european Commission. he was also on the negotiating team that (so ineptly) took us into the eeC.

Possessed of that most paradoxical of speaking manners, an oily hauteur, he’ll make a smooth intervention in the house that seems convincing but his factual point can later shrivel under close analysis. Loves to lecture

ministers on their need to make ‘political judgments’ but it seems pretty clear his own devotion to Brussels is dogmatic and absolute, not practical.

LORD KERR OF KINLOCHARD

Another former diplomat and Crossbench life peer who deploys lots of intricate technical diplomatic bluster to dress up a dogged determination to accept Brussels’ word over that of British ministers.

Gravel- voiced Kerr, a heavy smoker, has been a persistent organiser of rebellions against Brexit. If anyone throws a spanner in the Brexit works, Kerr probably helped to design it.

Was once a principal private secretary to the late europhile Geoffrey howe when he was Chancellor — and also served his successor nigel Lawson, who has since become a leading eurosceptic. In the nineties Kerr was Britain’s permanent representative to the eU and, by merry coincidence, actually drafted the Article 50 which we have used to confirm to the eU that we’re leaving.

has whinged about the ‘total betrayal’ of eU nationals who live in the UK. rather quieter about the rights of UK citizens living in europe.

LADY WHEATCROFT

tory former newspaper editor, Patience Wheatcroft made her name in the early nineties writing

Eurosceptic articles and obliging newspaper profiles of City fat cats. She now seems more admiring of the establishment than ever.

A member of the Upper house since being sent there by David Cameron in 2010.

has claimed in the Lords that ‘it is increasingly clear that the public wants a vote on the final deal’ of our eU departure — ie, a second referendum. has also boasted that she hopes peers will delay Brexit. ‘ It is surely not unreasonable,’ she murmured. has also encouraged anti-Brexit activists by telling them ‘history is on your side’ and has said: ‘We have to stop Brexit.’

LORD BILIMORIA

MADe his fortune selling Cobra beer to British curry houses, posh Crossbencher Karan Bilimoria was educated among the brahmins in the Indian hill station of ooty and seems to adhere to distinctly old- fashioned views about the rights of the working masses to run this country.

has become a regular speaker in Lords debates on Brexit, often boasting about his business career and high-level contacts with politicians on the subcontinent.

Cobra beer is said to be less gassy than other lagers. If only the same could be said for this insufferable windbag. has claimed that his good friend the Indian prime minister would be little interested in doing a trade deal with an independent Britain, but seems unable to understand that a good trade deal with post-Brexit Britain would give India even greater leverage in securing a similar deal with the eU.

openly admits he wants to ‘stop the train wreck’ of Brexit.

LORD HESELTINE

the one-time big cat who already brought down one female prime minister for not being pro-Brussels enough now has a second female tory PM in his sights.

In his days as John Major’s deputy, Michael heseltine used to rage and claw against tory rebels. But he plainly feels little hesitation in plotting against his own party when it comes to Brexit.

In the late nineties he appeared on a stage alongside tony Blair and Ken Clarke to campaign for Britain to drop the pound and join the euro. Since being made a life peer in 2001 he hardly ever appeared in the Lords until the eU referendum vote for Brexit.

Is now a frequent sight at Westminster, moaning about Brexiteers ‘holding a knife to Mrs May’s throat’ even while he has slammed the PM for spouting ‘generalisations and platitudes’ in her public pronouncements on the eU departure talks. Much loved by the BBC.

LORD LIDDLE

SoMetIMe bag-carrier of Peter Mandelson who often seems close to tears when he speaks about Brexit. he has said that he ‘hangs his head in shame’ because the Labour leadership did not manage to secure a remain vote in the eU referendum.

once a member of the SDP, Liddle spent his life as a backroom Bertie, doing the bidding of Gang of Four Labour defector Bill rodgers, tony Blair and later Mandelson in his Brussels days and was later principal adviser to the president of the european Commission. A total euro-fanatic, in other words.

Was known to be something of a connoisseur of Brussels and Strasbourg restaurants. Is married to former BBC supremo Caroline thomson who left the Corporation with a huge pay-off.

has hinted that he could leave Labour if it does not do more to block the result of the eU referendum.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

ALthoUGh he uses his hereditary title (made famous by his father, Quintin hogg), he was made a life peer by David Cameron in 2015 after his Commons career ended in ignominy owing to the expenses scandal.

Known in those days as Douglas hogg, hailsham is the idiotic patrician who hit the headlines for claiming the cost of moat dredging at his Lincolnshire stately home. he has since gone down in infamy as ‘Lord Moat’. Close to George osborne, whom he used to employ, he is a complete and utter lawyer and consequently was a hopeless Agriculture minister.

In recent months he has been accused of trying to ‘ delay, frustrate and ultimately block Brexit’ with his fiddlesome amendments to the eU Withdrawal Bill.

he argues that the referendum vote was ‘an interim decision’ which is subservient to the wishes of the unelected house.

LORD DAVIES OF STAMFORD

onCe a tory MP, he defected to the Labour Party in 2007 and was immediately made a Defence minister. Was his life peerage also part of the deal when this privately rich former City banker switched sides in the Commons?

Long known for his unconvincing inky hairdo, Quentin Davies has recently gone completely grey. Did he stop using the dye or was it the shock of Brexit which ran so counter to his lifelong europhilia?

An utterly unlovely figure, Davies is not so much Marmite as sheer political napalm. A repeated and verbose contributor to Brexit debates, he has a manner so sneering that you sense his fellow pro-europeans shrinking away from him as they realise what an uncongenial individual he is.

LORD PATTEN OF BARNES

the ostensibly civilised and clubbable Patten, former tory chairman and BBC boss, is in fact a flintily determined europhile — and ex eU Commissioner — who regards Brexit an outrageously vulgar act imposed on his fellow ruling- class members by an ignorant populus.

Patronising and plump, says Brexiteers are living on ‘dogma pie’. has perfected that slightly pained, throwaway world-weariness with which formerly powerful men console themselves.

Busy at Westminster behind the scenes whipping up rebellion against the referendum result and helped to propose an amendment forcing the Government to consider staying in the customs union.

Don’t be fooled by his soigne manner and urbane drolleries. this one is a vicious anti-democrat.