This Tuesday from 10am to 8pm there will be the welcome opportunity to elect a member of the House of the Lords. Naturally it is completely bizarre that only candidates who would have been eligible to be hereditary peers may stand, but that was the nature of the compromise needed to remove hereditaries from the…
Electoral systems are means to an end. The ends can and do differ, so one selects an electoral system appropriate to the end. We have, as others have already mentioned, the Alternative Vote (AV) system for electing a replacement peer when an hereditary peer in the House dies. My objection is to ends rather than the…
I was sad to read that Lord Strabolgi died on Christmas Eve. He had the distinction of being one of the longest serving members of the House – he entered in 1953 – and a Labour hereditary peer. He was an active member until the very end. We variously chatted over lunch in the Bishop’s Bar. …
