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  • It should go without saying that unelected people heavily involved in the writing of legislation, whether that is peers in the House of Lords, or corporate lobbyists in Brussels, fatally undermines the credibility of those institutions.

    This situation is nothing new to Britain. What is maybe 'new', after nearly fifty years of neo-liberal economic and political policy, is a former working class of increasingly impoverished people primed to accept a far-right alternative that is the only option that has been presented to them: an alternative given airtime for years in spite of the fact that that party had not even one MP elected to parliament. This alternative is not going to be any better for those former working class people, which suits the wealthy and powerful who presented Nigel Farage as the alternative.

    In the case of the US in 2016, you got Trump, or a continuation of the economics/politics that made Trump inevitable. Same here in Europe, playing out in its own way.

    This appears to be the inevitable result of nearly fifty years of neo-liberal economic and political policy.

    At the top of this post I wrote 'it should go without saying' because the reality is that we are so far from anything approaching idealism that the idea that we should worry about people buying peerages and writing laws that suit their mates, seems quaint.

    • Thank you for your reply!

      Again, I am sorry if my understanding is way off base. So the house of Lords are all elected, and and peers are selected by elected members?

      How much sway do individual peers currently have?

      I'm not sure if a good U.S. comparison (if one exists) to peers needing to be vetted would be similar to U.S. lobbyists or if peers have more direct roles in law making, similar positions that individuals in the U.S. are nominated for (such as Kratsios' OSTP nomination), which then has to be approved by the Senate.

      In the case of U.S. nominees for executive positions, they are supposed to be vetted by bipartisan committees of elected senators that will not pass them on to be nominated by the entire Senate if they are not fit to serve those positions. It's supposed to act like a safeguard, because once fitness is approved by those committees, it would basically take an act of God (for some reason) to keep the main Senate vote from approving the nomination. While I think it's a good thing those committees exist, they also fail horribly to do what they're actually supposed to do.

      This U.S. election in particular has shown us what a joke that entire process is, and not only resulted in approval of Kratsios' nomination by a Senate committee which s supposed to make decisions for U.S. science (only 4 of 13 Democrats bothered to object to his fitness), it has also resulted in several other individuals being approved who are clearly unfit for their roles. Such as RFK Jr., who is famous for his anti-vax and anti-science rhetoric, being approved by another committee for our secretary of health and human services. In that case, the committee decision came down to the vote of one Republican senator who is also a physician, and has publicly stated he is very pro vaccination and hoped to never have to witness another parent lose a child to a preventable disease. Yet for some reason, he voted to approve his fitness to serve.

      I have no idea why, but we now have measles outbreaks in parts of the country which have resulted the death of at least one child. Here is an article about that same Senators displeasure with new vaccination policy in his own state. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/16/louisiana-vaccines-rfk-jr

      Either way, in those two cases, I can see how the positions are a great thing to have, but only when the people who are elected to the positions actually do their jobs. Instead what we have is basically theatre that, as you correctly put it, just further undermines credibility of the entire government.