The Sun sets on Britain’s lords

The whole world is in revolt. Soon there will be only five kings left — the King of England, the King of Spades, The King of Clubs, the King of Hearts, and the King of Diamonds,” King Farouk of Egypt said in 1948. Strengthening his argument, Farouk was overthrown in a military coup four years later. He did have a point about the British and their attachment to the monarchy, or more broadly, to the vestiges and ceremonial trappings of things past — be it guardsmen in bearskin caps or control of small islands around the globe; technically, the Sun never did set on the British Empire. When something finally does vanish, the grudges remain; there are still eccentrics cribbing about the Jacobites.

Naturally, Britain’s aristocracy did not go gentle into that good night. Its formal authority has been eroded over the decades. The Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 weakened the power of the House of Lords to veto or delay legislation, and the House of Lords Act, 1999, removed all but 92 hereditary peers from the chamber. Life peers, whose children do not inherit their titles, now make up the majority of the House. On Tuesday, the House passed a new Bill to remove all hereditary peers, fulfilling a manifesto pledge of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

This has occasioned much heartburn — over the loss of non-partisan expertise and institutional memory, and the fact that the life peers also have no democratic mandate and include political appointees. And of course, the death of a tradition. But small-c conservatives may take heart: Reform has come in fits and spurts, not as revolution, with no overarching thought or reference to first principles. Edmund Burke might have reluctantly approved.