I was very pleased to receive the following from my old friend Mee Ling Ng, one of the founders of Chinese for Labour.
Mee Ling has written this to Chinese for Labour members:
“The Government intends to reduce the number of MPs by 10% and yet create 100 new peers. Where is the democracy in this? The Main House [House of Commons] is the legislature and the second House [Lords] is the reforming chamber. Surely, the Main House should have the primacy in keeping its numbers even though the Second House may move to a wholly elected one.
“This is another way the Tories are gerrymandering (i) the reduction of MPs plus redrawing constituency boundaries to even benefit them more and (ii) packing the second house with their own; thereby creating Tory domination in BOTH houses.”
Mee Ling goes on to say that we need to expose this with massive blogging. It is a blatant undermining of democracy via our parliamentary institutions!
All this talk of BIG Society – it is more like BIG TORY Government!
Mee Ling Ng makes a good point. One wonders how many as yet unexposed Lord Archers there will be in the new 100 Tory Peers. The credibility of the institution was of course greatly reduced by the ennoblement of Lord Neil (I would like to tear the place down brick by brick) Kinnock and now we have Lord John (I will never want a peerage) Prescott.
Except in numbers the House of Peers is looking more and more like that other comfortable dumping ground for discredited public figures, the EU Commission.