“In its better moments, the House of Lords is a kind of council of elders, where the polished word and cogent argument have a home in a place where politics is more than an exercise of slavish obedience in the interest of climbing the career political ladder. It is a bulwark against populism, which is also flourishing in Britain – as seen in recent days with the government essentially suspending the right to asylum.
In its worse moments, the House of Lords is derelict ruin occupied by upstarts, party donors and lobbyists for whom nothing is further from their minds than true democratic rule. And in the already divided kingdom, the worse moments of late have heavily outweighed the better ones”