If only to dodge that special place in hell often said to be reserved for women who don’t help other women, it would be nice to come up with something positive about Charlotte Owen, the world’s luckiest millennial, who so impressed Boris Johnson that he made her, at 29, the youngest life peer in history.
Since investigation has yet to uncover credentials beyond her 2:1 in politics and international relations, a few internships, then stints as a political assistant in one of the most squalid administrations on record, speculation about Owen’s qualifications has naturally turned to other attributes that could have impressed her sponsors. Was the novice legislator ever a member of junior Mensa? Can she touch the tip of her nose with her tongue, or waggle her ears? Was she, it’s been asked, of a physical type discovered by Johnson administrations to be especially capable? As much as that could have made her invaluable as Carrie’s body double in any security incident, it did not prevent a different young woman with long blond hair, Cleo Watson, from being let go because she reminded Johnson of Dominic Cummings. He told her: “I can’t look at you any more.”
Supposing Owen has in fact done no more than 90% of the adult population, or indeed many of that adult population’s preschoolers, to warrant the status, influence and income of a peerage, the fury it has generated could still go some way to justifying benefits including – not an insignificant perk – access to the only building in the country guaranteed free of her patron. The anger could even be enough to rouse Labour from its torpor where Lords reform is concerned; and if it isn’t, you wonder, what would it take? A horse? Maybe.
From Michael Foot via David Miliband to now, disappointingly, Keir Starmer, it has become traditional among Labour politicians, to (1) make democratic noises about Lords abolition, then (2) decide that priorities and other complications alas make it too hasty to attempt changing an institution that is less than 30% female and includes 92 hereditary peers. In 2012, Miliband actually opposed a timetable for reform, thus ensuring, along with an unlimited reserve of duds and chancers, the legislature would set aside, thanks to male primogeniture and religious whatnot, around 100 places for men. In what sounds like more of the same, it seems that Starmer’s scandalised comments on Johnson’s list have already reverted to the customary disinclination to act. His excuse, that of needing to expedite Labour’s programme through the Tory-heavy Lords, leaves the party looking less exercised by its debased condition than is the public administration and constitutional affairs committee, which has just launched an inquiry.
In contrast, it’s reported, Starmer would, to even things up, add yet more peers to what is already, with around 800 members, the world’s second most distended legislative chamber. Those promoted would, as always, be advertised as fully committed to abolition, before it sapped them of all energy, of their agreeable new club. After which the reason for inaction will presumably revert to the one that reliably causes progressive zeal to time out: how do you stop a reformed upper chamber jeopardising the balance of power?
If it’s over-optimistic to see Lady Charlotte as a significant threat to the lords, its critics can still celebrate a surge in distaste rivalling, at least, that which followed Johnson’s elevation of Peter Cruddas, in defiance of official advice. Supporters of Owen’s preferment, assuming there are any, could further point out that disapproval about her qualifications is likewise disproportionate when you remember the peerages for, to name only two Johnsonian ornaments, his brother and Evgeny Lebedev, son of a former KGB agent. Lebedev, though he seems to like using his title, is still keeping fans waiting for a second speech.
Owen’s acceptance of the honour, since it was open to other unimpressive young Tories to ingratiate themselves, is again less abject than the pursuit of peerages, purely on the basis of their birth, by older hereditaries. Recent arrival, the 5th Baron Ashcombe, aged 59, told the house how DNA finally brought him and it together: “I inherited not from my father but from his first cousin.”
Owen, however, wasn’t put there by a subgroup of millennials, but after being nominated by Johnson or one of his creatures, vetted by the evidently inadequate House of Lords Appointments Commission, then approved, you gather, by ineluctable precedent: Sunak’s fear of Johnson.
Given the depths plumbed by Johnson’s latest list (also featuring the bully, Priti Patel) and the improbability of another leader similarly perverting the system, there is hardly a more perfect time for Labour to resume the incremental improvements which, as Meg Russell argued for the Institute for Government, may be the most effective way to reforming second chambers. “In practice,” she says, “small reforms occasionally succeed, but large reforms invariably fail, in significant part due to disagreements on the government benches.”
Now, thanks to Johnson, not forgetting the donors, grafters and aristocrats likewise tireless in proving their unworthiness, Starmer could surely expect widespread support for a commitment to promptly purge hereditaries (thereby immediately losing scores of Tories), along with a pledge to reduce the house’s size using, as Russell suggests, “a proportionality formula”.
This, she says, would mean “party groups themselves could evict their least effective members, which might well include some of those who are most controversial – such as party donors who make little practical contribution to the work of the chamber.” Such a reduction might also, from the peers’ point of view, postpone scrutiny of what is defined by “attendance” for an attendance allowance of £342 a day.
If current outrage leads to Starmer becoming even fractionally as reforming as he ought to be, then Lady Charlotte, no less than Michelle Mone, Jeffrey Archer, Tom Watson and James “VIP lane” Bethell, will have earned her place in the history books.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
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