Charlotte Leslie becomes the latest 2010 MP to oppose Lords reform

Charlotte Leslie becomes the latest star of the 2010 intake to come out against the coalition’s version of Lords reforms. Explaining her decision, she emphasised to The Spectator her concerns that while the new Lords would be elected ‘they would not carry the great benefit of democracy, accountability’. As Leslie points out, this means that a Lord ‘could get elected on a myriad of populist promises, then fail to honour any of them’. She also has worries about the loss of expert knowledge from the chamber when it is elected.

But her objections are, perhaps, best summed up by her attack on the argument that Tories should vote Lords reform through for the sake of the coalition:

‘This is not about our inter-relationship in the next 800 or so days to come. This is a question about what politics is, and its ability to lead and serve the Great British people for the next 100 years and beyond.

‘And if we have become so short-termist and self-interested in our thinking that we fail to see this, and fail to see that we must give this nation-changing debate the proper scrutiny it needs, that is the most powerful argument I can think of for protecting the last bastion of impartial, unselfinterested long-term thinking we have, and voting against an elected House of Lords.’