For the British, autumn was a period of disappointment in politics. Les Truss’ ideologically driven economic plan went against current financial realities and increased Britons’ bills. And before that, the promises of ousted Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his violations of regulations caused a scandal.
Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labor Party, believes he has found a cure for the loss of confidence, on the wave of his party’s popularity. He sharply criticized Boris Johnson’s traditional list of “first-class appointments” outgoing. In other words, he doesn’t like someone who gets a peerage and can sit in Britain’s unelected upper house, the House of Lords, which reviews bills.
The Labor leader simply referred to the Lord and Lady candidates as “footmen and benefactors”.
The fact that outgoing British prime ministers “push” their ideological cronies into the Senate – along with other highly respected public figures – is nothing new. Johnson had previously named the son of the anti-Putin Russian oligarch Yevgeny Lebeev, who owns the Independent and Evening Standard newspapers, as lord. List of Liz Truss is not known yet.
But Starmer and his party want to end it. According to the Labor plan, the House of Lords would go and be replaced by an elected upper house, a kind of Senate. Labor is already working on the idea as it has begun to define a constitutional reform bill. At the head of the process is the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who, like the Hungarian, became the head of the government after the resignation of his predecessor – without elections (by the way, like Liz Truss and Rishi Sun).
Brown’s proposal is that the new Senate should be an assembly of the constituent states and regions, and that democratic representation of the various parts of the country be achieved by weighting.
According to his promise, the draft will be ready in a few months.
Kier Starmer, who is likely to win the election in a landslide, strongly backs the idea, according to current opinion polls, and says the new council should “represent the whole country”, in line with Labor’s agenda to unite and catch up with British lands. (This would also mean that while the non-English parts of the country have been granted partial autonomy, the English regions that make up the vast majority of the population do not have provincial legislation – they only have representatives in the Parliament of the United Kingdom).
Boris Johnson’s draft list of new lords and ladies has sparked outrage, among other reasons, because it includes former adviser to the prime minister Charlotte Owen – who is only 29 years old.
In doing so, Owen becomes the youngest peer in the history of the House of Lords.
Ross Kempsell, who only became affiliated with Johnson in the summer – shortly before he had to quit – was added to the list.
He was not impressed by even the conservative newspaper The Telegraph – Johnson’s former employer, which wrote that several people on the House of Lords appointments committee had raised eyebrows at this suspicious move of protectionism, but could do nothing about it. The Lords also angered some Tories sensitive to tradition when they wanted to manage legal preparations for Brexit by the rules.
Opening image: MTI/EPA/Andy Rain
