Many, many years ago John Gilbert, then a Labour MP, gained widespread respect across the political spectrum for his penetrating questioning of the government over the Westland helicopter crisis. But that was then and now he’s a politician of a rather different type as shown by his contribution to the debate on Lords reform held earlier in the week:
We come to the question of who will be elected to come here [if a wholly or mostly elected Lords comes about]. You would get the sort of oik – for Hansard’s benefit, oik is spelt OIK – that could not get into the Commons, Europe, the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly and probably not into a half-decent county council.
Worried that elections will bring about the wrong sort of person sitting in Parliament? Worried that democracy lets in the oiks? How very nineteenth century Conservative. Save that this was a Labour peer speaking in the twenty-first century.
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He has always been a right wing Labour hack. The kind the Young Liberals detested in the 1980s.
But Gilbert has a point even though he didn’t put it very well. If an elected House of Lords has less power & status than the Commons then its members presumably will tend to be less able than MPs.
Except he ‘helpfully’ spells oik for Hansard’s sake, suggesting a mockery of those 19th Century institutions (and, maybe, that High Court Judge who asked whom Gazza was). Hardly Lord Cardigan.
Gilbert presumably considers the Lords to be a Council of Wise Elders, who’ve proved their worth in affairs of the state or social affairs… not a gaggle elected by ~*shudder*~ PR. One only has to look at the featherweights in the Scottish Parliament to get his gist.
Plus, I don’t think he’s complained about Michael Martin and John Prescott’s elevation… two real oiks if ever there were some.
@Paul – I agree Gilbert has a point. I’m not sure what his conclusion is, but this Gilbert thinks: make the Lords a proper Senate, fully elected by PR, and a proper counterbalance to the Commons.