Gordon Brown isn’t the first politician, and nor will he be the last, to try to reform the House of Lords. Indeed, he was a prominent member of the last Labour government that achieved some significant reform of the hereditary element of the membership of the Lords.
The Blair and Brown governments carried on appointing a mix of experts and superannuated politicians to the upper house – and redressed its traditional Tory predominance, albeit entrenching cronyism along the way.
Today, it is a more politically balanced chamber, with plenty of wisdom and expertise at its disposal – and with tightly drawn conventions and laws about it keeping to its role as a revising chamber that stays out of financial matters. It doesn’t try to defy the Commons on matters the people voted for in a manifesto.
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