European nobles have found fresh purpose in business and the arts after losing political power
What to do when the party’s over? When the function you were bred to perform is no longer there? These are questions facing the remaining hereditary members of the UK’s House of Lords as they await the (political) axe.
For 700 years, hundreds of seats in the upper chamber of the legislature were passed (largely) from father to son down aristocratic lines. Then, in 1999, Prime Minister Tony Blair started dismantling this element, leaving only 92 hereditaries among the peers appointed for life. The current Labour government has introduced a bill with a view to ending the anomaly of receiving political office via bloodline rather than ballot box; by the end of the current parliament, it aims to have completed the dismantling.
The writer, Charles Spencer, a historian and public speaker, is Lady Diana’s brother.
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