We have a new Liberal Democrat Parliamentarian tonight after a by-election win. It’s a wee while since we could say that. But it’s a very different type of by-election and one that raises more than a little disquiet. I have to say I find it pretty objectionable that you can get a seat in Parliament not through election by actual voters but because of the circumstances of your birth.
The House of Lords Act of 1999 left 92 hereditary peers in place after the Labour government backed down from full reform. That’s the Labour party, blocking reform at every turn whether in government or opposition. When one of them dies, there is a by-election held to admit a new one. The electorate is the whole House of Lords.
Liberal Democrat Lord Methuen died in July and a by-election was held to choose his replacement. The Earl of Oxford and Asquith was elected with 155 of the 283 votes cast and will take his seat on the Liberal Democrat benches.
You couldn’t have much more of a liberal background. His title was created for his great-grandfather, one Herbert Henry Asquith, the former Liberal Prime Minister. Raymond Asquith was born in 1952, almost exactly 100 years after his famous ancestor. He’s has a background in the Diplomatic Service and has particular ties with the Ukraine. The party website says:
Lord Oxford joined Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service in 1980 and remained a serving diplomat until 1997.
As well as postings in London at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Cabinet Office, he served as First Secretary at the embassy in Moscow from 1983-5, and Counsellor at the embassy in Kiev from 1992-7.
He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1992.
This is what he said in his pitch for election:
My first career was in the British foreign service, largely covering the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and, in due course, the ex-Soviet states, especially Ukraine. My main experience has therefore been in foreign and defence policy, foreign trade and commercial affairs, with strong connections in Russia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Iran and China. Currently I run an environmental company specialising in soil remediation, decontamination and water conservation.
My politics started when I was seven years old, addressing envelopes in Paddington
North. I later joined the SDP and the LibDems.
Between family, business and arts/cultural interests, I have stood in elections for the LibDems whenever and wherever appropriate, including peers’ by-elections since inheriting my title in 2009, and council elections.
If elected, I will give the best service I can as a working peer and a dutiful member of your lordships’ house.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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18 Comments
For all that is deeply wrong with the system the upper chamber, and that is a very long list, the Liberal fanboy in me can’t help but enjoy that there is both an Asquith and a Bonham Carter in Westminster.
“Let’s hope that Raymond Oxford is someone who would vote to abolish his position if he were given the chance.”
I very much share this hope, Caron. Imagine the wonderful political symmetary if two of the Last of the Roman’s great grand-children were to help complete the process his government began. Liberals secured the primacy of the Commons, it is Liberals who should continue to fight for the legitimacy of the Lords.
“That’s the Labour party, blocking reform at every turn whether in government or opposition.”
Let’s charitably put that down to a lack of historical awareness. As one old enough to remember political events of 1999, I can tell you that it’s a completely unfair representation of the facts. The survival of the 92 hereditaries was in fact a concession by the Labour government to the ferocious last-ditchery of Conservative peers opposing any change to their hereditary rights, in order to get through what remains the most substantial movement by any government of the last 100 years towards cashing the cheque of the 1911 Liberal-sponsored Parliament Act’s declared intention of removing the hereditary principle from parliament.
Of course the continued existence of those 92 hereditary positions, by-elections and frozen party proportions and all, is a monstrosity. If only, one day, there could be a Liberal Democrat Minister responsible for constitutional reform, we might get something better … :-/
Lord Kennet (whose grandma was Scott of the Antarctic’s widow)’s antecedents are incredibly interesting from a political standpoint. I am no sure that makes him a ‘traditional’ Liberal Democrat. Can there be such a thing as a ‘traditional’ member of a Party which is so young?
His grandad was a Tory Minister, his dad a Labour minister who ‘re-ratted’ back to the Labour Party after the continuing SDP, which he had joined, folded. His genes, at least, are ‘centrist’. 🙂
I see that Lord Oxford and Asquith stood as a Conservative candidate in a House of Lords by-election as recently as February 2013 (if I have read the recent Lords by-election results correctly) – but, hey, Luke 15.7 !
Caron,
Totally wrong when you say–“..You couldn’t have much more of a liberal background..”
You most definitely could.
You could have been one of those anonymous families who generation after generation have had members of the Liberal Party , who did all that work at constituency level, all those campaigns that ordinary working people took part in from the middle of the 19th century until today, all those Liberal Women who campaigned for the vote. Unsung champions of Liberalism who did it because they believed in it, not for any reward or recognition but because they knew it was the thing to do.
They were not Earls, or Lords, they did not receive OBEs, in fact most will have received nothing at all other than perhaps the satisfaction of knowing they did what they could.
It is those ordinary working Liberals who “have much more of a liberal background”, and that should of course be Liberal with a capital L.
Mythologising about the Asquiths or any other “famous” families is the Downton Abbey school of politics.
That’s me told, John. I guess what I was really meaning was the mentioning of stuffing of envelopes at the age of 7.
You have a point, to be fair.
Now go and pull my next post to bits:-).
Sorry, Lib Dem participation in this undemocratic chamber is appalling. Hypocritical. Do what democrats in other countries do when faced with undemocratic institutions. Boycott. Refusal to participate would send a principled message. Hereditary legislators make me ashamed of our system. Only slightly more ashamed than the practice, embraced by Lib Dems, of appointing failed politicians, voter rejects, and party apparatchiks to the same gravy train. We should have the courage to say no, we will not give it any legitimacy.
@ Stevan Rose,
Having spent a very pleasant evening in the company of our Parliamentary Party in the Lords, I am confident not only that they probably speak highly of you too but that, truly, the age of courtesy is dead, even as the age of deference should be.
They are there because, without them, vast amounts of inept, inappropriate and sometimes downright foolish legislation would pass straight into law.
Oh yes, boycott it if you will, but don’t then tell me how terrible it is that Labour and the Conservatives are doing horrid things and that there’s nobody there to stop them. And I speak as someone who believes in an elected second chamber.
@Stevan Rose
That would achieve nothing, it would keep on as it ever has as neither Labour or the Tories would seek to change it in the way we would hope, it would suit their purposes. What we would be left with is no Liberal input whatsoever. As Ted Kennedy, don’t let good be the enemy of the perfect. As per Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD’s joining of the Pyithu Hluttaw, it does not mean you agree with it just that you can more to change it from within.
The undemocratic nature of the Lords, of course, stinks. So does the current voting system, but do we ignore that as well? Neither system is what I personally would call democratic. It is also policy that Church and State should be seperate, do we refuse to take part in any form of Parliament till that is achieved?
The qualification for legislator should be election not how pleasant their company is. Nor should our elected representatives be undermined by an unelected, often deliberately unelected as in voted out or never voted in, who think they know better (even if they do). Democracy often means accepting some laws will be inept or foolish. It is the price we pay. Sometimes when gentle prodding for reform gets nowhere you have to make a principled stand, even if that temporarily reduces your influence in Parliament it gives you something to shout about outside Parliament. Being part of the problem does not help.
Church and state separation is not quite in the same category when it comes to democratic principles. You live with the voting system because however imperfect, we lost the referendum, the people decided.
Perhaps unelected peers are no more scandalous than shoeing candidates into safe seats in the Commons — the fact that (for example) Boris Johnson is almost certain to become an MP says only that he was chosen by a small selection group.
The thing about the hereditary peers that is unusual is the sense of duty not the national interest, precisely because they don’t have to worry about getting (re-)elected. Of the handful I have met, this has been the striking feature. It is the polar opposite of the rabble-rousing of UKIP, and it would be a pity if it were lost in reform of the upper chamber.
We should eliminate hereditary peers at the first instance. Overall, the number of lords needs to be reduced … what about one for each badger culled? Then let’s change the name, Upper House, Senate or Second Chamber should suffice!
@Stevan Rose 22nd Oct ’14 – 10:45pm
‘Sorry, Lib Dem participation in this undemocratic chamber is appalling. Hypocritical. Do what democrats in other countries do when faced with undemocratic institutions. Boycott. ‘
No! As someone born in Northern Ireland, I have seen the enormous damage that abstentionism can do to political life and society, so my default position is reject it whenever it occurs. Withdrawal from an elective process should only be resorted to in the most desparate cases.
We have to work within the constitution we have, else how can we push it in the way we want it to be?
At the present time having someone who has lived in the Ukraine would seem to be a gain to the Lords.
Much as I disagree with the principle of the unelected Lords, I don’t think we should be boycotting because we don’t like the system. However we do need to be doing what we can to change the system.
I also add that, much as those who do excellent work in the Lords disagree with the system too, we have some first class parliamentarians in there, who do Lib Dems proud. they don’t get the support that MPs get, but don’t have the constituency casework the same, and in many issues are there standing up for what is right.
maybe not all of them, but enough to keep me in the party.
Ironically, this rather undemocratic system has got us a parliamentarian who is unusually well-qualified. A proper democratic system is unlikely to have produced such a potentially useful member of the legislature. I was just thinking that this so-called internationalist party does not ‘do’ foreign affairs or defence at all well. Hardly gets a mention in conference debates (except emergency motions).
House of Lords is, in the final analysis, a consultative body. The Commons (quasi-democratically-elected) always has the final say.
This county will never be a true democracy until it’s rid of this superannuated absurdity.
“Withdrawal from an elective process should only be resorted to in the most desparate cases.”
But the point is this is not an elective process. It is the appointment of someone, in this case, whose primary qualification is birth. Other than hereditaries it is often the appointment of people who the electors and elective process rejected, or who have not even stood for election. To participate is to legitimise. To defend it as an institution means we have no moral high ground over Putin’s Russia or Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Worse in fact because we don’t even pretend to elect the House of Lords and once there they are legislators for life even if they commit crimes and go to jail.
As to a proper democratic system being unlikely to have produced such a potentially useful legislator, such an argument would sit well with tyrants and dictators throughout history. The only useful legislator is the one the electorate has decided is useful. I’m really quite shocked to see Lib Dems defending the corruption of everything democratic that is the House of Lords.
As an outsider from a country with an all-elected legislature this may be a matter of the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence,but I regret the “reform” that has gutted the Lords in the furtherance of the uncritical worship of democracy.It should be rolled back,not taken even further.
The hereditary peers are neither politicians nor the favorites of politicians,yet politicians are forced to listen to them,at least temporarily.This is a priceless treasure to be preserved at all costs,not a vestige of barbarism to be tossed on the ash heap so that politicians and their favorites may secure an absolute monopoly.