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When the Lords began to crumble Our meddling peers have nothing on those of the past

Winston Churchill with Arthur Balfour, who schemed too much. Credit: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

Winston Churchill with Arthur Balfour, who schemed too much. Credit: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images


August 18, 2021   6 mins

The Tories were split about the Irish Union and Free Trade. The Liberals were stalking constitutional reform. The Left was increasingly bickering among itself. Party alignments were shifting. Our recent democratic upheavals would have been familiar during the constitutional crisis which came to a head 110 years ago today. On August 18th, the Parliament Act 1911 removed the House of Lords’ power to veto legislation passed in the House of Commons.

If you think we live in dramatic political times, this Act was the product of a much more febrile and rambunctious period. There was no single cause of the Lords crisis; it was a combination of inevitable changes in democratic politics, high cunning, and silly plots. If there was a single event that set things in motion, it was this: in December 1905, Arthur Balfour became the last Prime Minister to cede power to the leader of the opposition without having first been defeated in a general election. He thought the Liberals would disagree about Ireland and be unable to form a cabinet. Instead, they did the obvious thing: got themselves in order and called an election against a long-serving, increasingly out-of-touch government.

In early 1906, the Liberal Party won a whopping victory, increasing their seat count by 214. Balfour became another last: the last Prime Minister to lose his seat in an election. Defeat didn’t dent his belief that his party ought to be the ultimate arbiters, though. Balfour announced: “The great Unionist Party should still control, whether in power or in opposition, the destinies of this great Empire.” These Liberals weren’t the sort of chaps you want handling questions of empire and social reform. The Tories must remain in charge, one way or another.

Balfour’s statement might seem like the usual press release bluster. But the leader had a scheme. The Tories had a stonking majority of hereditary peers in the House of Lords. And so, having lost an election in the lower house, Balfour started running the country from the upper. He and Lord Lansdowne, Conservative leader in the Lords, thought they could take an approach of “caution and tact” to voting down government legislation in the Lords. It didn’t work. In 1907, the Liberal government passed nine measures in the Commons. The Lords rejected five of them. Lloyd George jibed that the peerage was Mr Balfour’s poodle.

Tory brass knew Lords reform was necessary. Balfour agreed in principle. But he ended up rejecting the idea, claiming that Lords reforming would weaken the Commons (this from the man using Earls and Marquesses to vote down government legislation!) Not that Balfour felt the need to demean himself with explanations; he was still Tory leader largely because no-one else could take over. He was too posh to push: “I am certainly not going to condescend to go about the country explaining that I am ‘honest and industrious’ like a second coachman out of place!”

Meanwhile Balfour saw opportunity in the threat of the growing German navy. He pushed the Liberals to accept that British ships had to be built. This neat distraction unified his grouchy party. New ships meant new taxes. The Tories preferred the indirect taxation of putting tariffs on imports — making food more expensive. The justification was that age-old Tory favourite: the alternative was the confiscation of private property, the thin end of the socialistic wedge. The Liberals, led by H. H. Asquith, stood for Free Trade and Cheap Bread — and had to accommodate themselves to the new class of Labour voters who had made themselves known in the 1906 election. In the 1909 budget, the Chancellor David Lloyd George proposed raising money via a “super-tax” on the wealthy, as well as other taxes designed to hit landowners.

Balfour and Lansdowne wanted to let the budget pass the Lords, although some peers threatened to sack their staff in protest at the new taxes. Then Lloyd George gave his Limehouse speech, throwing shade on the recalcitrant toffs: “What is the labour they are going to choose for dismissal? Are they going to threaten to devastate rural England by feeding and dressing themselves?” Tory peers frothed. Balfour schemed again. If the Lords voted down the budget, there would be a general election, and the Tories could promise tariffs that would protect British jobs. The peers rejected the budget. The first election of 1910 was held (with 92% turnout). The Liberals lost 123 seats.

The brouhaha really got going at this point. The Liberals stayed in government with the support of Irish Nationalists and Labour, giving them a majority of over a hundred. The alliance complicated the game. Passing the budget was no longer sufficient. The Irish Nationalists insisted that the Lords must lose their veto, something Liberals had been talking about since the 1880s, so that a bill could be passed giving Home Rule to Ireland. To the Tory party, this was intensely unacceptable.

There followed months of protracted and frankly useless negotiations. As always with Lords reform, a slew of clever but unpopular proposals came and went like the tide. There were Tories who would have accepted a form of federal Home Rule, but Lansdowne was stubborn. This, you see, was the thin end of the imperial wedge. There was even a plan to mix life peerages and a select number of hereditaries. Ultimately, there was no compromise. The crisis was crystallising dividing lines in British politics that would continue for years.

A second 1910 election was held. Only this time, Asquith had a scheme worthy of Balfour. There was a new king, George V, and the Prime Minister had secretly got him to agree to create a mass of new peers that would vote for the legislation, if necessary. Edward VII had refused him this promise without a second election, but George, having been on the throne for less than seven months, was bounced into rather flustered agreement by the duplicitous Asquith. The game was up. Balfour had schemed his way into a ridiculous position. The King had been duped. The Tory peers had gained nothing by holding out for everything.

The Parliament Act 1911 passed the Commons five months after the second 1910 election. While Asquith drew up his list of potential new peers to swamp the Lords, Balfour was labouring under the strange idea that the king might take the Tory side. It was quite a shock when Asquith present the list in July. He spent half an hour at the dispatch box, his voice hardly audible as Tory MPs howled “Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!” Balfour caved and announced his shadow cabinet’s policy: to pass the bill. By November, he had resigned. Many Tory peers became “last ditchers,” opposing Asquith to the bitter end. Most, of course, flaked out.

The peers’ great fear, besides Irish Home Rule, was that the hereditary principle would be toppled. Life peerages, which would allow commoners to sit in the Lords, were mooted in this crisis. They weren’t introduced until the 1950s, though. And the hereditary peers weren’t removed from the House of Lords until 1999. Those negotiations ran much more smoothly thanks to the under rated Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 7th Marquess of Salisbury. A master of High Politics who makes Peter Mandelson look like a playground gossip, Salisbury negotiated for 92 hereditary peers to retain their place in the Lords. Unlike Balfour, Salisbury knew the value of compromise. Those hereditary peers don’t seem to be going anywhere, anytime soon.

Still, every time a government is elected, more life peers are added to make sure the numbers even out. There are now nearly 800 members. Charles Moore described it as “an ermine slum.” It is the only upper chamber in the world that is bigger than the lower chamber. Many peers are useless. The Lords lingers on, but calls for reform and complaints of its wastefulness are frequent. As with the negotiations of 1910, there is a plethora of proposals about what to do with them. Most are convoluted, impractical, or simply haphazard (remember Nick Clegg’s Senate?). Robert Salisbury has proposed the simplest answer of anyone: “a directly elected federal parliament. It would sit in the chamber of the House of Lords. The House of Lords would be abolished… The chamber of the Commons would become the seat of the English parliament.”

It is hard to imagine an idea less favourable to the “last ditchers” who so passionately objected to the Parliament Act 1911 — which can only be another reason to implement it. If only someone with sufficient vision could persuade him back into politics: Lord Salisbury retired from the House of Lords in 2017, on the day of Theresa May’s snap general election. Her Brexit nightmare and Boris’s ineptitude have revived many of the conditions of the 1910 crisis. And the House of Lords is the unsolved problem of British democracy we always return to at such times. Many of the semi-redundant life peers are now just as keen to keep their place as the hereditaries used to be. They should worry about a new Balfour coming to defend them. Then their time really would be up.


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Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
3 years ago

Whilst it is difficult to make a convincing intellectual case for an unelected 2nd chamber, it is nigh-on impossible to make the case for a hereditary one.
HOWEVER, human nature being what it is, with politicians being (for the most part) susceptible to all the basest human foibles, if the job of a peer is to scrutinise legislation and to hold the executive to account then being removed from the need for political patronage and electioneering is surely a benefit?
Whilst I’m not seriously advocating for a return of the Hereditaries, the reason that it worked for so long was precisely because peers had no real need for advancement, nor for monetary gain – They and their families were (by and large) already secure. Added to that was the sense of “Noblesse Oblige” – which still had some validity in earlier ages. Sadly gone now, it would seem. Compare that to today where many of our appointed life peers conjure for themselves far too much “Noblesse” and not half enough “Oblige”.
For all the meddling Lords you reference, our current system – during the whole Brexit debate – allowed a significant proportion of our Parliament (both houses) to be infested with active anti-democrats – using their position of privilege to actively undermine a legitimate, democratic mandate. How that is not the biggest political scandal of the last 100 years just shows what a supine media we have (and how sympathetic they were to the campaign to thwart the largest single-issue mandate in the history of these isles)
There’s little doubt that the make-up of the 2nd Chamber needs some sort of reform – the current incarnation is demonstrably not working as intended – but I, for one, would rather not see another elected house to replace the House of Lords, with all the attendant partisan politicking that would go along with that. Nor would I wish to see the institution of the Lords abolished altogether. But the HofL could and should be slimmed down to whatever number of peers is deemed sufficient to carry out the necessary work it does. Each member should be expected to perform their parliamentary duties – if they are unable they should then retire. They can keep the titles, but they no longer receive money from the public purse and have no part in legislation.
We certainly can’t justify the current size of the Lords, – and the eye-watering sums of tax-payers’ money it takes to prop up what is only an amending chamber.
Interestingly, when bien pensant commentators talk of abolishing the HofL altogether they never seem to take their argument to its logical conclusion. The Guardian talks of the Lords being a “broken, morally corrupt, anti-democratic institution” – yet the hilarious double-standard of saying that about the Lords, whilst imagining the European Parliament is democratic, seems to escape them.
The ludicrous short-trousered-Marxist, Owen Jones, writes that we can simply dispose of the Lords, because it is a 2nd chamber, with only the power to amend, with no power to initiate or enact legislation. He thinks it anachronistic to have such an unelected body in the UK of the C21st. All the actual power resides in the Commons – in that they alone have the power to initiate primary legislation. The Commons is directly accountable to the electorate.
In Brussels, of course, the reverse is true. Yes, we are given the opportunity to vote for MEPs – but they have vanishingly little power. (This is something most will cheerfully admit) They cannot propose or initiate legislation, merely amend (like the Lords). The power to initiate legislation – which is really the only genuine power – is held by the entirely unelected Commission. Whose positions are as untouchable by the electorate as those of the Lords.
Obviously, the situation is far worse in Brussels in that those unelected people are the Primary Chamber, those who initiate legislation – as opposed to Westminster, where the lack of democratic accountability is only with regard to the secondary chamber.
If the Guardian’s argument had any consistency, why were they not calling for the wholesale reform of the European legislative framework? Perhaps getting rid of the Commission altogether and passing its legislative function to elected representatives?
In a newly sovereign UK, rather than another elected chamber, can we not just return to a HofL of no more than 200 peers who can carry out the necessary work of a revising chamber without the current partisan politicking. And maybe weed out those members who decided that working with a foreign power to undermine their own country in negotiations was in any way acceptable.
Oh, and no matter what happens – for the sake of our democracy – no Lord Bercow, ever!

Last edited 3 years ago by Paddy Taylor
Nick Wright
Nick Wright
3 years ago

Good food for thought. Working in financial services, we’ve recently seen the remaining power of the House of Lords to full effect. Despite studying British politics at university (admittedly two decades ago) and working in regulatory compliance for a number of years, I wasn’t aware that the Lords could propose entirely new amendments. The Financial Services Act 2021, which had already been highly influenced by a report (Woolard Review) authored by a member of the Labour Party holding a senior position at the FCA, was changed to include the need to implement a “duty of care”, which had been put forward by a Labour peer. Despite many rules already being place to protect customer in financial services (yet few in key areas like housing and utilities), the industry is now expecting increased burden (and in due course, reduced competition) – all as a result of unelected representatives of the Labour Party, which sits in opposition to the government, wielding undue influence. Is this really democracy in practice?

Mel Shaw
Mel Shaw
3 years ago

I am a firm believer in House of Lords reform. Unfortunately, I haven’t a clue what should replace it and no one else seems to either. I also have a great fear that we might end up with something worse. But could we not at least put a limit on its size? It would be a start. There have been proposals to that effect currently lost on a dusty shelf somewhere.

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
3 years ago
Reply to  Mel Shaw

It would be stuffed full of celebrities or failed politicians.

Peter Francis
Peter Francis
3 years ago

Good article: thanks! One tiny quibble: the article says that in “December 1905, Arthur Balfour became the last Prime Minister to resign without having lost an election.” This is a curious statement. Working backwards through time, Theresa May resigned after her Brexit withdrawal agreement was rejected, David Cameron resigned because of a referendum, i.e. not an election, Tony Bliar resigned because of Gordon Brown, Margaret Thatcher resigned because of Europe, Winston Churchill resigned because of ill-health, Chamberlain resigned because appeasement failed and Asquith resigned because of Lloyd George.

Last edited 3 years ago by Peter Francis
JR Stoker
JR Stoker
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter Francis

Perhaps I am missing something (including the author correcting an error) but the article correctly states that Balfour was the last prime minister to lose his Commons seat in an election?

Peter Francis
Peter Francis
3 years ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

The article has been updated since I posted my quibble. It now states (correctly) that “in December 1905, Arthur Balfour became the last Prime Minister to cede power to the leader of the opposition without having first been defeated in a general election.”

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter Francis

Ahha. All is now clear and both statements are indeed correct

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
3 years ago

Very good article, thank you. Whatever we might replace it with, the Lords clearly need replacement. But Lord Salisbury”s suggestion is surely the best: a federal chamber, and, by implication, federal reform asap. In the meantime, reduce the Lords to 100 members, by vote of the 800, and no more new peers created thereafter.

Except, maybe, hereditary peerages for outstanding service. Of which I can think of only a couple of cases since 1945.

William MacDougall
William MacDougall
3 years ago

There are lots of longer term solutions to the problem of the upper house, and they should be carefully considered, but the issue of the house being too large is easy and quick to solve: just draw lots to reduce from 800 to 200. The political balance would stay roughly the same, but it would instantly become a more manageable size.

David Yetter
David Yetter
3 years ago

Be careful with Lords reform. On our side of the Pond, starting with a republican Constitution, we have been chipping away at the restraints on democratic enthusiasms that were carefully built into it, starting with recognizing party politics by not having the runner-up in the election to the Presidency become Vice-President and continuing with the direct election of Senators, who under the original design were to represent the interests of their state, being elected by its legislature, rather than of the populace. Having a mechanism not beholden to the electorate for suggesting amendments and slowing down legislation restrains the tyranny of the majority at least a little, and you should probably keep it. For that matter, I think you should go back to the Monarch having complete leeway in who is invited to form a government in the event of a hung Parliament.

Nicholas Taylor
Nicholas Taylor
3 years ago

A separate federal parliament would seem a bit pointless once all that is left beside England is Wales, Scotland having become independent and Northern Ireland ceded to the Republic – or maybe even to Scotland.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
3 years ago

There are the forgotten English regions. Cornwall, Yorkshire, East Anglia, North West. If the blue wall is to stand it will need more than a few extra trains to hold it up

Stephen Rose
Stephen Rose
3 years ago

A very thorny question and one densely argued here. How about reducing the number of members and recruiting a number of former public servants, armed service, academics, NHS etc for a fixed term, to be determined much like jury service and mediated for political affiliation.People could affirm on retirement, if they want to take part. This might bring a semblance of democractic selection.

Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
3 years ago
Reply to  Stephen Rose

“and recruiting a number of former public servants, armed service, academics, NHS etc for a fixed term,”

OMG, those woke parasites? How about adding in Union leaders, BBC Chairman, Head of the Arts Council, head of Immigration Services…..(would gave agreed to Military leaders once, but they have turned into the rest – although possibly if they topped in rank as a NCO they would be OK.)

I would say the HoL members should be able to prove their ancestry back to the Norman Conquest and never have been one of the above list to qualify.