Keir Starmer has been urged not to abandon a key leadership promise to abolish the House of Lords, with Gordon Brown warning that plans to “gerrymander” the upper house of parliament by flooding it with dozens of Tory backbenchers showed the need for drastic reform.
The former Labor prime minister raised the alarm over a proposal drawn up by a political lobby for Boris Johnson to appoint up to 50 new Tories to push through controversial legislation in the face of a string of embarrassing defeats by his mates.
Brown said the leaked document he had seen from CT Group, led by Lynton Crosby, a key Johnson adviser, “legitimates direct bribery” by recommending that those who vote loyally be rewarded with special envoy posts, honors and lunches in Chequers.
Dubbed ‘Operation Homer’, the plan also said the new peers would have to commit in writing to support the government in key votes on controversial legislation, likely to include the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill that would overturn unilaterally the Brexit agreement.
Under the guise of leveling the Lords by choosing peers from underrepresented parts of the UK, the newspaper admitted it was the “perfect excuse” to ensure a fringe of loyalist lawmakers were ennobled.
Writing in The Guardian, Brown said the proposal “makes no bones about the defenestrated Prime Minister’s aim to pack the House of Lords” which would see him “step over all the conventions and standards of propriety in an effort to ensure political candidates who will vote”. by the Tory government”.
He added that the paper’s claim that the media could easily be blinded by the nomination of a few controversial figures or celebrities to avoid criticism of the large number of “friends” nominated would amount to “gerrymandering”.
“The solution is to reform the Lords, not reinforce their unrepresentativeness,” Brown said, calling on Starmer to take charge of trying to abolish the unelected upper house in parliament.
Although Starmer made it one of his 10 promises during the 2020 leadership campaign, it is one of several he is accused of backtracking on. Asked about his pledge to “abolish the House of Lords” and “replace it with an elected chamber of regions and nations” last November, Starmer did not repeat it but pledged to “change”.
Brown said the current appointment system “calls into question the unfettered patronage of the Prime Minister who can only recommend appointments to the Queen”.
Both he and Tony Blair rejected a resignation honor roll, which Brown said had “undermined the reputation of some previous prime ministers”.
“Johnson’s latest attempt to rig the Lords system is the culmination of years of constitutional vandalism,” said Brown, who pointed to the “shameless” appointment of Tory donors and eight former party treasurers.
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Although he was defeated in 2008 when he tried to push through Lords reform, Brown said it was “time to weed out who really wants change and who doesn’t”.
“Abolishing the current House of Lords was one of 10 commitments Keir Starmer made when he took over as leader of the Labor party,” he wrote. “Now Boris Johnson and Lynton Crosby have handed him the strongest possible case for long overdue reform.”
Starmer has faced similar pressure from Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labor leader who has said the Lords in its current form “have no place in 21st century politics”.
A Labor spokesman said: “Lynton Crosby’s plan to pack the House of Lords shows that fundamental reform is needed. Keir Starmer has asked Gordon Brown to lead a review of the UK constitution. He will report at the end of year and will set out the options for change”.
A spokesman for the CT Group said: “The document referred to was simply an initial working copy of a discussion paper prepared for a think tank. It was not circulated outside a small group of individuals and it was not ready for any audience beyond this small group of people, to facilitate discussion.
“Although this is simply a working draft of a discussion paper, it seems incongruous that you are against making the House of Lords more representative of the people of the UK with little representation from North and Wales , as he says, or that those who accept the nobility do so with the full knowledge and acceptance that they will be fully and actively committed to their democratic role, and that they have no conflicts that would prevent them from doing so.”
A government spokesman said: “Given retirements and other departures, some new members are essential to keep the experience and perspective of the Lords fresh.
“This will ensure that the Lords continue to fulfill their role in examining and reviewing legislation, while respecting the primacy of the Commons and the associated conventions between the two houses.
“It has also been the case under successive governments across the political spectrum that prime ministers can draw up a ‘dissolution’ or ‘resignation’ list.”