Influencers...

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... gotta love 'em, don't ya? And I'm not talking about fake-tanned, dentally invested hyperactive Instagrammers and the like. Nope, I, of course, refer to The House of Lords, currently crammed with, and likely soon to be even more over-stuffed with newly-created 'Peers of the Realm', a phrase in itself that reeks of unearned privilege and rank: except that most life peers have 'earned' their 'right' to their title through patronage of one kind or another.

I'm not talking about the large number who are there for the genuinely good reason of actually having been of some genuine service to society, and who feel that the Lords is a good platform from which to continue their life's work. I'm talking about the wealthy, overwhelmingly Tory, benefactors, whose ennoblement is due solely to their contribution of enormous wads of cash to the Tory Party coffers, and access to that very exclusive club of plutocrats that they can give to their patrons in return for their 'bunce'.

As I wrote the other day, one of the absolute planks that our next [Labour] government needs to nail down, is the complete replacement of the second house with a much more democratically defined and limited chamber. The concept of peerages has reached its natural end, much less, the concept of cash for honours: just needs to be stopped, end of. The other bête noir that finally, finally needs to be wrangled to the ground and dealt with, is the nationalization of land: my Dad's favourite political hobby-horse, and the one, that as he did, I will continue to bang on about till the day I die.

Only radical, strategic reforms such as these, coupled with a refined and reformed - limited by common agreement - mixed capitalist and social state, will address the runaway gravy train of neoliberalism we are currently witnessing, mutely, disappear down the tracks of an unfinished railway line heading for an unbuilt bridge and into a chasm of unfulfilled promises and stupid economic concepts that has thus far forced this country to its knees. The last twelve years of Tory government deserves to be written into the annals of British political history as 'The Great Folly'. A period when the lunatics truly did take control of the asylum. This should be the lesson to us all.

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