As the year-end approaches, the main parties have sent to us 12 new Lords and Ladies a-leaping with joy at their elevation to ermine in 2025.
Theoretically, Keir Starmer is in favour of abolishing the House of Lords. During his leadership campaign he pledged to abolish the Lords, and in 2022 he promised “to restore trust in politics” by creating an alternative elected second chamber. This has aged about as well as last year’s forgotten panettone.
The abolition plan has been quietly dropped for the usual reasons: it would be a time-consuming transition and, as Starmer is discovering, it is hard enough trying to swing one elected chamber to amplify your best plans and go easy on the less successful one, without creating another set of people who think they can call the shots by virtue of being voted for.
Instead, Labour has taken the easier route of pushing through Commons legislation to end the voting rights of the remaining 92 hereditary peers in the last month. He has not, however, been shy about appointing Labour placemen and women to “balance” the heavy number of Tory appointments over 14 years. How quickly rival parties start to look similar in these matters.
The “Keir list” is telling, because it reflects where he believes favours are owed, and there are revealing omissions too. The stand-out elevation is Sue Gray, the former civil servant intended to become chief manager of Starmer’s time and setter of priorities as Chief of Staff. When that fell apart in distemper (on her part and many others opposed to her modus operandi in Number 10), Gray failed to take up a hastily convened role as “envoy” to the large mayoralties and regions.
Instead, and safely outside the Number 10 turf wars at last, she will be “insulated by ermine,” as one staffer succinctly put it.
In fairness, Gray has policy and organisational knowledge from a long civil service career to bring to the upper house and strong views on systemic change. The irony is she would not have been so elevated (upper mid-rank civil servants very rarely enter the Lords) were it not for the industrial accident of her luckless transition to Labour’s upper management.
Overall the “Keir list” has strong elements of apology, and making good about it. One beneficiary, Luciana Berger, was a forthright Jewish MP, targeted in the Corbyn era for her support for Israel, who became a lightning rod for a broader antisemitism.
That rapprochement continues in the appointment Mike Katz, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement.
The biggest gratitude debt by far, however, is to the trade unions, who nab a host of places on the red benches, from Sir Brendan Barber and Kay Carberry of the Trades Union Congress and Mary Bousted, the teachers’ union veteran – who also supported more strikes than would be convenient to Labour in power. Another regionally important ex-MP with GMB roots, Julie Elliott from Sunderland, makes the cut. Starmer has always had an affinity with trade unionism and relied heavily on that link to propel his way leadership.
Two key Blairites make the cut for bringing the old religion back to the Keir Project – a lot fewer than the union folk though.
For Kemi Badenoch, with just six nominations, the aim has been to make a splash, given that the numbers are not much going to help her case in grand debates on policy. Her notable choices are Nigel Biggar, the Oxford theologian whose criticism of sweeping anti-colonialist narratives in academia allies him to Badenoch’s own dislike of a politically lop-sided higher education establishment.
He joins Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union – a cause that Badenoch believes is potentially fruitful the fight with Labour.
Badenoch’s selection box is light on former MPs, a sign that she has not yet come to very much enjoy the company of her fellow parliamentarians, albeit with dutiful nods to a handful of old timers, including Therese Coffey, the former deputy PM to Liz Truss. In the chamber next door, Badenoch needs staunch voices who can cut through the debate and make impact on legislative debates, and Coffey is a well-liked and heeded figure across the benches.
The Lib Dems, back to rude health in the Commons, receive a measly two peer nominations, with dutiful namings of “town hall” Lib Dems of Shaffaq Mohammed leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Sheffield Council since 2011 and Dr Mark Pack, President of the party since 2020.
Nice for them, but there is a touch of Ed Davey’s lack of imagination at work here – it would have been a chance to honour Edward Lucas, a defeated candidate in the election, but who has been a thought leader in his party on support for Ukraine and the Baltic States. In a party that can end up in some pretty daffy foreign policy positions, he has encouraged fellow Liberals to be more serious about security and grand strategy.
But it’s a reminder that as well as the favourites rewarded and favours re-paid, the year-end Lords list is an insight into what leaders think is worth honouring or apologising for – and what they tend to forget.
Anne McElvoy is host of the Power Play podcast for POLITICO on the year ahead in transatlantic politics
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