Keir Starmer's already plotting to stuff the Lords with his lackeys
He's not even won the election yet and Keir Starmer is already plotting to stuff the House of Lords with dozens of unelected cronies as soon as he gets into power.
Back in November 2022 Keir Starmer pledged to abolish the House of Lords in order to "restore trust in politics", with his main criticism being the way the Tories hand peerages to “lackeys and donors".
Now that Starmer is on the brink of becoming Prime Minister, he’s already drawing up plans to stuff dozens of Labour lackeys into the House of Lords, presumably because Labour doing exactly what the Topries did won’t damage trust in politics.
The list of proposed names is absolutely infuriating.
Thangam Debboinaire is one of Labour’s most atrocious MPs and there’s a real chance she’ll lose her Bristol Central seat to the Green Party, so Starmer’s plan is to bounce her straight back into the House of Lords if she loses, to teach the public that democracy is a sham, and that it’s impossible to get rid of these horrible people.
Starmer’s also planning to give peerages to retiring Labour MPs Margaret Hodge and Margaret Beckett who are 79 and 81 years old, which conflicts dramatically with his prior insistence that there should be a mandatory retirement age of 80 for the upper chamber.
Apparently 80 is simultaneously too old to be a legislator, but also just the right age if you’re one of Starmer’s pals, and this nonsensical stance is supposed to restore people’s faith in politics!
It’s beyond ridiculous that it takes some 48 million registered voters to pick 650 members of parliament on 4-5 year terms, while the Prime Minister of the day can simply hand lifetime membership of the House of Lords to as many unelected cronies as they like.
Even before this plot to stuff the Lords full of Labour cronies the instant he gets his hands on power, you only had to look at Starmer’s vote-rigging, internal election interference, anti-democratic imposition of candidates, and centralisation of power within the Labour Party to see that he simply cannot be trusted to reform the House of Lords properly.
If he doesn’t just throw his House of Lords pledge in the same bin as all of his other pledges and promises, it’s obvious that if reform of the House of Lords is delivered, it’ll be done in a profoundly factional and partisan manner, so that the place is rammed full of his cronies.
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This is why I shall work harder on behalf of the Greens. Thanks for the info. I used to know Margaret Hodge when she was Watson, and pretending to be a teacher, presumably to get that on her CV. She was admittedly good at chair of the PAC, but I believe opposed Jeremy C because, if my sources are correct, she keeps some wealth offshore.
The US "left" which isn't really left, is riddled with corruption too.