Every new peer piles only insult on injury. Surely, enough is enough

It was one of our favourite things during the dark days of lockdown.

We would while away the endless hours discussing what our lives would be like when the clouds parted to reveal the sun-dappled uplands of the New Normal. While our lives might have been flung into a pit of uncertainty and turmoil, when we clambered out, we all agreed, things would never be the same again.

Our lives would be transformed utterly and, along with everything else, politics was going to change too as we demanded serious leaders for serious times, refused to tolerate mediocrities and called for public institutions to be razed and rebuilt to reflect our modern nation. So how’s that all going?

When it comes to institutions most in need of urgent attention, the House of Lords remains, as ever, near the top of the list and, as ever, nothing is done apart from adding more peers and piling more ermine and velvet on the creaking benches.

Now we can look forward to Boris Johnson, who created a mere 86 peers while in office, adding another tranche although some informed sources suggest his last list has actually been curtailed because, despite it all, he still believes his resignation is only an interim measure. Meanwhile, his successor, Liz Truss, stays silent on whether she really has the brass neck to honour some of the enablers who foisted her on a disbelieving nation.

To be honest, it no longer matters. The Lords is so obscenely stuffed that a few dozen more is neither here nor there.

It is hard to believe – although easily predictable – that reducing those peers there because of a fluke of birth would only open the doors to many with an equally negligible right to play a part in the governance of this nation, in a shamefully unelected second chamber.

It was so easily predictable, in fact, that the late Duke of Devonshire did so in 1992 when most hereditary peers were politely asked to vacate the premises: “We must have a fully elected second chamber. Before it was quirky, now it will just be those who pay money, has-beens, sycophants and slimeballs who get in.”

Well, quite.

It should now go without saying because it is said every time, that some peers do a good job, diligently scrutinising proposed legislation, asking important questions and holding the government’s plans up to the light. The problem is that it should not be their job. It should be the job of someone we actually voted for.

Gordon Brown – who commendably refused to add to the disgrace with an honours list when he left Downing Street

– is understood to be calling for rootand-branch reform in his far-reaching, potentially nation-changing blueprint for constitutional reform.

That report now appears to be stuck fast in Keir Starmer’s in-tray as his aides and advisers fret about what to do with it; worry what the focus groups will say; and gnaw their nails about adding constitutional reform to Labour’s election manifesto in case it puts off a voter or two.

They really should stop fretting, worrying and gnawing. They should do the right thing, reform the Lords and steel our New Normal with some old-fashioned principle.