Labour has ruled out immediately packing the House of Lords with dozens of peers if Keir Starmer wins the next general election.
The Labour leader has already scaled back on his previous pledges to abolish the Lords and replace it with a fully elected second chamber in his first term.
Angela Smith, Labour’s leader in the Lords, said on Monday the party would need to “refresh our numbers” since the Tories have more than 100 peers in the upper chamber than Labour. However, she dismissed the idea that Starmer would rush through the appointment of his own peers after an election win.
Smith told the House magazine: “The idea that Keir Starmer is on day one going to have a list of 100 people to put here is cloud cuckoo … If you look at the numbers at the moment, the Tories have over 100 more than us, and they still lose votes.
Good (ish):
The lords being unelected is a good thing, as they can call out braindead policies by the commons without needing to worry about losing the next election as they shot down a “but think about the children!” style law. What’s bad is that the political party in power can appoint lords - it should be impartial (ie political views and affiliations should not be considered) and ideally a full time job to allow the lords to build up knowledge on the laws they vote on, however it’s not really possible to tell a random person “this is your job now”… The closest you can get is either the current system or a jury duty style public obligation to be a lord for a day when called at random, but the only certainty is replacing it with an elected chamber is a terrible move