British Politics know for its absudity. There is a particular kind of absurdity required to conduct British politics in a way that suggests everything is perfectly normal. We have rules about hats in the House of Commons, a Downing Street cat that has somehow outlasted seven Prime Ministers and, of course, Matt Hancock and his “helping hands”. Need I say more? But nothing quite comes close to the red benches of the other House. There is something wonderfully peculiar about the House of Lords. It is a place where centuries of ceremony and very good tea coexist with an almost effortless disregard for the ordinary conventions of modern life. The result is occasionally political theatre; more often, it is something approaching a farce. Take, for instance, a small incident from May this year. Baroness Crawley found herself seated at the Long Table for afternoon tea, with Earl Grey on one side and Lord Palmer of the Huntley & Palmers biscuit empire on the other. It took her a moment to appreciate the arrangement. “I realised I was having tea and biscuits with ‘tea’ and ‘biscuits’ - how mad is that.” Quite mad indeed.
It is difficult to imagine a more perfectly British coincidence. Somewhere in Westminster, the seating plan had accidentally arranged the components of an afternoon tea as actual members of the legislature. One can only hope the biscuits were up to standard. The Commons may have its shouting, its jeering and the occasional incident involving a ceremonial mace, but the Lords has something rather more difficult to manufacture: eccentricity. Speeches, for one thing, have historically been allowed to run rather longer than one might expect. In 1831, Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, addressed their Lordships for six hours during the second reading of the Reform Bill. Six hours. A modern parliamentary speech can feel long at twenty minutes; Brougham evidently considered this merely an introduction.
The Lords eventually became conscious that perhaps not everyone wished to spend quite so much of their afternoon listening to one another. In 1965, during a debate on the length of speeches, Lord Conesford recalled the method employed by Lord Exeter when a fellow Peer had gone on for rather too long. Lord Exeter sat with his stick between his knees and, after sufficient endurance, apparently remarked: “Thundering ass this fellow: always was - and no improvement, damn it, no improvement!”. The offending Peer sat down and, we are told, never again made a speech while Lord Exeter was present. There is something wonderfully efficient about this. No point of order. Merely one elderly gentleman deciding that another had talked quite enough.
Some Lords, however, have not been afraid to be slightly more direct. The Earl of Longford was not particularly renowned for hiding his feelings. In 1974, after hearing another Peer make an argument with which he profoundly disagreed, he observed: “That, I thought, was one of the silliest remarks that I have heard for a long time.” And then, apparently wondering whether he had actually heard correctly, he proceeded to ask whether the noble Lord had really suggested that certain people had tails.
It is the sort of exchange which would be difficult to improve upon. The modern political insult tends towards the carefully rehearsed, the focus-grouped and the instantly quotable. The Lords of old required none of this. A Peer could simply decide that something was silly and say so.
And talking of tails, there is something rather charming about the Lords' ability to turn the most serious constitutional questions into discussions which sound as though they might have taken place over lunch at a country house. During the debates on Lords reform in 1927, the Duke of Marlborough advocated, in essence, doing nothing. His position was described as:
“the policy of letting sleeping dogs lie”, which, it was added, was: “often a very tempting policy and sometimes a wise one.”
It is difficult to imagine a more British constitutional philosophy. Why reform an institution when one might simply leave it alone and hope nothing wakes up? Perhaps that is why the House of Lords has survived so much reform, criticism and prediction of its imminent demise. It has been attacked as undemocratic, archaic, extravagant and unnecessary. It has been threatened with abolition, reconstruction and almost everything in between. And yet, somehow, it remains. Clement Attlee is credited with having described it rather beautifully as being: “like a glass of champagne that has stood for five days.” It is difficult to decide whether that is an insult or an appreciation of its character. Perhaps, in the Lords, the distinction has never been particularly important.
For all its absurdity, there is something rather endearing about the place. The titles, the robes, the red benches, the ancient customs and the occasional argument about whether a snail, a pigeon or a rabbit warren deserves parliamentary attention all belong to a peculiarly British tradition in which seriousness and silliness have never been entirely separate. And perhaps that is why the image of Baroness Crawley sitting between Earl Grey and Lord Palmer is so perfect. In almost any other legislature, it would be an amusing coincidence. In Westminster, it feels less like coincidence and more like the House of Lords quietly arranging its own punchline.
Tea and biscuits, indeed.
Quite mad.