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UK Opposition Leader Pledges to ‘Abolish’ House of Lords if Elected

Members of the House of Lords talk prior to the State Opening of ParliamentJames TweedieReforms to the House of Lords have seen hereditary aristocrats replaced as legislators by life peers honoured for their contributions to society. But the ancient assembly is still considered to be a product of patronage and cronyism.The UK’s opposition leader has pledged to replace the House of Lords with an elected chamber if his party takes power at the next election.Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer announced his latest manifesto pledge with the release of a party policy review, entitled “A New Britain”, led by former leader Gordon Brown.The official opposition “want to abolish the House of Lords,” Starmer insisted, calling the system of royal appointment to upper house “indefensible”.Labour would now “consult on those recommendations, test them, and in particular, look at how can they be implemented,” the former director of public prosecutions said, implying that they were not set in stone.But he said he hoped the Lords would be abolished during the first term of a Labour government. “When I asked Gordon Brown to set up the commission to do this, I said what I want is recommendations that are capable of being implemented in the first term,” Starmer insisted.Brown claimed the document proposed “the biggest transfer of power out of Westminster and Whitehall” that “our country has seen.”The most recent opinion poll gives Labour a 14-point lead over new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s conservatives. But some projections indicate that would not be enough to win Starmer’s party a Parliamentary majority — largely thanks to the dominance of the Scottish National Party (SNP) north of the border.© Stats for Lefties/TwitterProjected results at the next UK general election based on an Opinium poll published on December 3 2022Projected results at the next UK general election based on an Opinium poll published on December 3 2022WorldUK’s Truss May Face Revolt in House of Lords Over Northern Ireland Arrangements, Reports Say21 September, 13:27 GMTAs its name suggests, the Lords was originally the gathering of the hereditary landed aristocracy — along with senior Church of England clergy, dubbed the “Lords Spiritual”.Reforms over the last 150 years added senior judges to the chamber from 1887 and later established the modern practice of ennobling ‘life peers’ as an honour for service in politics, public life, the arts and sciences.Nominations to the peerage are made by the government and opposition parties, prompting criticism of the system as a form of patronage and cronyism.While the Lords can both amend legislation originating from the directly-elected House of Commons and table bills itself, the lower house can over-ride ‘the other place’ if it votes three consecutive times to do so.

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