Lords of the Cabinet: We The People
Last week, Gordon Brown invited Peter Mandelson back from the EU and into his Cabinet. But - hang on! - don’t you have to be a member of Parliament to be a Cabinet minister? Yes, you do. So Mandy is being given a peerage.
Yet why do they need to be in parliament? So that they are answerable to parliament and us. However, when they are sitting in the Lords they’re not directly accountable. We can’t vote them out.
The tendency to appoint Lords to Cabinet positions other than the necessary ones is new. And a reversal of the previous convention that only elected parliamentary representatives - ie. MPs - should take important roles. This appeared to start in 2003 when Baroness Amos was appointed Secretary of State for International Development, followed by Lord Falconer who held the position of Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and then Justice.
And now it is to be taken even further. Both Falconer and Amos had their titles prior to being given a Cabinet position - but Peter Mandelson, just appointed Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, doesn’t. Yet he is going to get given one because he has been given ministerial role.
Of course, the government aren’t the only people to take part in this. For example in the Conservative Shadow Cabinet, Sayeeda Warsi was made Baroness so that she could become Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion and Social Action.
The only other people who have been appointed into the Cabinet without already being a member of either House of Parliament were Frank Cousins and Patrick Gordon Walker in Harold Wilson’s 1964 Cabinet - and they soon held by-elections to get them seats. But not for Mandelson, and certainly not now, when Labour can’t even hold on to a seat they had more than a 10,000 majority in.
What is happening is that our political system is turning more and more to the American model. Whilst there certainly can be benefits to bringing in people from outside parliament, it’s not exactly democratic. Our politicial system bases itself on parliament, and specifically the Commons, and this shouldn’t be thrown away for political expediency.
I object to people being given peerages for the sole reason that they can serve in the Cabinet - or indeed the Shadow version. If these people are wanted so much, an MP in a safe seat who is willing to resign in their favour should be found and a by-electon held. Otherwise, they should be no more than an advisor. It goes against our political system and, frankly, parliamentarty democracy itself.
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