Britain and Lesotho share the unenviable distinction of being the only two countries where hereditary chieftains still retain the right to pass laws for the rest of the nation. By next summer, this country will join the modern world by rescinding the right of peers to take their seats in the House of Lords by virtue of paternal lineage. This is unfinished business for Labour, which in 1999 revoked a 700-year-old right for all hereditary peers to sit on and vote from the red benches, but left a rump of 92 to be elected from the whole group of 759.
It will have taken a few hundred years for Britain to get rid of the hereditary legislative principle. A case perhaps of better late than never. Some of the 92 have resorted to hyperbole to defend the indefensible. It is absurd to claim that losing such lawmakers from the upper house would be a “complete disaster” and upend the UK’s constitution. Some hereditary peers may be admirable individuals, but the system has entrenched inherited privilege. All of the 92 are men, thanks to titles that can be passed only to male heirs, all are white and most are over 70. Such an arrangement is nothing less than a source of shame to a 21st-century legislature.
