If Starmer gives Khan a peerage, it will seal the Lords as a house of inadequates
By replacing hereditary peers with Labour cronies, the Government is destroying the very heart of our upper house
Even Labour peers are shuddering at the prospect. The vision of Sadiq Khan, Lord Khan of Tooting, perhaps, clad in ermine, a veritable tumble of crimson velvet, swearing allegiance to the sovereign, his heirs and successors. And well they might, as rumours swirled this week that the London Mayor may be offered a peerage by the Prime Minister in May.
The idea is not that Khan could bring his knowledge of running London to the House of Lords, but rather that in elevating him, Sir Keir Starmer can shut him up. After expected catastrophe for Labour at the local and devolved elections in May, the new Lord Khan of Tooting or Croydon or maybe Dagenham could then be plonked into Cabinet. And as a secretary of state he would have his loyalty bound by the tradition of collective responsibility.
According to the FT this week, a person familiar with the discussions said the move would help Starmer “shore up his position with patronage”. Which is just the sort of hypocritical action one relishes from governing socialists.
You may recall from Ed Miliband’s recent interview on BBC’s Today programme that, as the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero put it, “what angers Keir most about this country [is] class. It’s the class divide.”
Then conveniently forgetting this fantasy division, the PM uses the tools of class for purely political ends. Although by ennobling Khan, Starmer puts the icing on a House of Lords cake that, under his watch, is becoming nothing but a chamber of inadequates.
Khan would set a new standard in rewarding failure: failings in building affordable homes, in keeping the capital safe, in managing transport, of the Ulez catastrophe, of community relations, of the rise in anti-Semitism and in the impending disaster of his bonkers plan to pedestrianise Oxford Street.
But Khan will be a prince among stooges as Starmer revels in his half-cocked reform of the upper house. For the great prime ministerial class warrior holds the record of having appointed more peers than any of the previous four prime ministers. And he is expected to create some 40 additional peerages, aiming for what he sees as an appropriate balance to reflect Labour’s majority in the House of Commons. Even though, in doing so, he actually destroys the very soul of the chamber – which is as a correcting body. A House of Lords that nods through legislation is a danger to democracy.
Herein lay the paradox of the place before Labour trashed it by passing the recent Hereditary Peers Act 2026 – as a Tory peer put it to me this week: “It was our illegitimacy that made us relevant.” The point being that while the hereditary principle may be undemocratic – while also being central to our constitutional monarchy – the hereditary peers, as custodians of the House of Lords for some 1,000 years, were loyal to the institution rather than a party. Being long ennobled, even with a dash of arrogance and entitlement, they would naturally put their country first.
Starmer’s placemen are entirely political, that’s the point. Their job will be to put their party first to stop the House of Lords being a tiresome irritation to the Government as it floods the statute books with legislation.
Of course it’s unfair that some toff got to sit in a legislative chamber because his great-great-great-great grandfather gave a King timber so he could build ships to defeat the Spanish, or simply allowed his wife to be cuckolded by the sovereign (although personally I’m jealous, not affronted, because my ancestor Sir Sitwell Sitwell only got a baronet not a peerage for hosting a ball for the Prince of Wales in 1808).
But for all its faults in principle, the Lords has long acted successfully as a safety valve, pricking the bubbles of the powerful and safeguarding the country against the tyranny of the majority. Its work has seen important – if dull and behind-the-scenes – revisions to recent bills on crime and policing, employer pensions contributions and renters’ rights. The needling antagonisms of the upper house have righted what some peers see as jaw-droppingly rushed and badly drafted bills, hastened out by departments because their ministers want to be seen as progressive and productive.
The Telegraph: continue reading
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Is Starmer still relevant?