IT was the constitutionalist Walter Bagehot who wrote: “The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.”
This week, punters can do more than merely gawp. They can go and try the food.
The Peers’ Dining Room is open to the great unwashed (dress code: “no sports shoes”) for the next three weeks at £45 a head, including coffee and petit fours.
Some blurb to chew over: “Exquisite fine dining coupled with the magnificent setting of the Palace of Westminster ensures an exclusive experience like no other.” Exclusive, indeed.
The “British” menu includes Yorkshire wood pigeon for starters (surely even non-vegetarians find this ghastly), Suffolk middle white pork (fair description of some members) for mains, and disappointingly non-stodgy puddings featuring such bilge as prosecco poached peaches and caramelised pate feuillete.
Pate feuillete? I looked it up: puff pastry.
As is the way in the over-democratic modern world, visiting diners have had their say online.
The first review I read praised the joint for being “customer focused” – not lordly jargon, surely – but added that “the cuisine food was not so good”.
Yes, damned cuisine food. Not as good as normal food. Another reviewer tore off his bib and ululated: “As always, the most perfect luncheon.”
Yes, as always. Alas, all such a review tells us is that the place is patronised (when allowed) by the sort of person who uses the word “luncheon”.
I’d always fondly imagined the House of Lords to have a cafeteria, patronised by puffed-up proles such as Lord Robertson of Cataclysm acting like Eddie Izzard’s Lord Vader and being told by the assistant that she didn’t care who he was, he’d still need a tray.
Continuing in Izzard vein, he is then asked of his penne al’arrabbiata: “D’you want peas with that?” It’s also pleasing to picture the furry cuff off his ermine robe getting dipped inadvertently in the custard (and him sooking the yellow stuff off). Lord Robertson is one of those peculiar peers who, from time to time, speaks in the Lords, more’s the pity.
But a report this week by the Electoral Reform Society revealed that more than 100 peers claimed a total of nearly £1.3 million in expenses last year while never uttering one word of oratory.
This was greeted with outrage as it was widely felt it would be better if they all just claimed their money and said nothing.
But that would negate the purpose of a bicameral legislature, in which the upper house is supposed to be a repository for wisdom that acts as a brake on anything mad coming out of the House of Commons.
This is a good idea in theory. Bicameral legislatures have a proud pedigree going all the way back to yon ancient world (lo, even unto Sumer, the first literate civilisation of ancient Mesopotamia, at least in the sense of a council of elders advising a theocracy).
But the question remains: is it wise to have a house of the wise?
And who are the wise anyway? Are they hereditary peers? Nope. Many of these are dense and unworldly. Is it the bishops of England? Nope. No wisdom resides in the cranium of anyone who wears a large, peculiar hat.
Is it the party placemen, cronies and Labour chancers who’ve worked the system, played clever, betrayed their beliefs and taken hypocrisy to new levels (lo, even nearing the Liberal Democrat benchmark of demanding a second referendum on Europe and opposing the same on Scottish independence)?
I cannot think that much wisdom lies there. According to that undisputed repository of wisdom, Wikipedia, nearly half of the world’s national legislatures are bicameral. Britain’s second house is characterised as “post-aristocratic”, with the number of hereditary peers cut from 700 to 92 in 1999. But there are now more than 800 peers, making the Lords the second largest legislative body in the world after the National People’s Congress of China.
The latter has 2,924 members, who have to raise their hands and shout “Me, me, me!” if they want a chance of saying anything (though this is restricted to matters such as: “Please may we have a window open?”).
Clearly, we need fewer wise men and women (surely 250 would do it?). But how to choose them?
Academics wouldn’t do because, in my experience, they tend to be myopic and lack common sense. Writers are flighty and irresponsible.
Religious people believe fairy stories, businessmen are thick, sportsmen and women have never grown up, farmers are sinister, and television celebrities have syphilis of the personality.
Perhaps there should be an annual examination. But what do exams prove? Only that one can pass exams.
Nope, for the House of Lords, the proof of the pate feuillete is in the eating. And, if you don’t like that, your tea’s oot.
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