Nigel Farage is the most influential and important politician in British politics since Margaret Thatcher, with the possible exception of Tony Blair. He has won two national elections, forced a referendum on the EU and ensured Brexit was done.
Added to that, he has humiliated the banks and put illegal migration at the heart of the political debate. He is known around the globe – not least in America, where he helped Donald Trump win in 2016 and probably again this year.
But somehow, when the stuffed suits of the establishment elite decide who should get honours or be given a lifetime job in the House of Lords, Farage’s name is never on the list.
Yet last week, we learnt that a 27-year-old from a very minor political party who has never won an election in her life is to be elevated to the upper chamber.
Somehow, the tale of the sudden rise of Plaid Cymru’s Carmen Smith from nowhere to the red benches tells us all that is wrong with the House of Lords.
The soon-to-be Baroness Smith will beat the record age of Charlotte Owen, who was 30 when she was appointed by Boris Johnson to the Lords on the back of being a political adviser.
Baroness Owen’s arrival after so little experience did not impress people in or out of the Westminster bubble in the least, and the soon to be Baroness Smith of Bangor (or wherever) has provoked a similar reaction.
In a parliamentary chamber that often looks more like a retirement home for the very elderly, the two stand out and may be refreshing in their own way, but unfortunately both are seen as part of the problem for a chamber lacking in democratic accountability.
Carmen Smith has been appointed because Plaid’s one peer, veteran Dafydd Wigley, had decided to retire.
Plaid accepted Wigley’s argument that the party should maintain a single peer in the Lords, even though it wants it to be reformed and turned into an elected chamber based on the English regions and the nations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (while those three are part of the UK with Plaid wanting to take Wales out).
But it gets worse. This is a job for life in the mother of parliaments.
So one of the political parties has worked out that under the current renumeration rates for Smith, she will receive £1.5million from the taxpayer should she decide to retire aged 64.
As the Tories do not intend to reform the Lords and Sir Keir Starmer has just U-turned on Labour’s plans to do so, that seems like a realistic possibility.
No wonder the Welsh Conservative leader saw the whole appointment as “usual Plaid hypocrisy. Jumping on any bandwagon or in this case meal ticket that suits the moment”.
But then there is the issue of democratic accountability, which makes things even murkier.
The Lords is not democratic. It is full of appointees. This explains why there are more than 80 Lib Dem peers when they struggle to get a dozen MPs elected.
There are 92 hereditary peers, who at least can claim not to be political appointments but get their places by the good fortune of birth.
Then there 26 Lords Spiritual – Church of England bishops led by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. They may be the only clerics to have a place in the legislature outside Iran’s Ayatollahs, as another happy hangover from the Middle Ages.
Everyone knows that they have been using that position to try to stop new laws protecting Britain’s borders against illegal migration or reduce the impacts of strikes or protests by Just Stop Oil extremists.
But in fairness to Plaid, it at least set out to give the new Baroness Smith some democratic accountability by having a vote on who should get the seat in the Lords.
The trouble is, according to reports, she lost. It is claimed she came second with 70 votes, behind Elfyn Llwyd on about 180 votes. But an internal row saying the nominee needed to be a woman meant her name was elevated to first when the results were emailed out.
Losing is not a new experience for Smith. She stood in the European Parliament election in 2019 and did not get a seat. She has been chief of staff of the Plaid Cymru Senedd group and was later a lobbyist for Bute Energy. So there’s that.
The whole thing, not unlike many appointments from other parties to the Lords these days, leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Long gone are the days when people could claim it was full of experts and brought a wealth of experience to issues. Instead it is packed with people past their prime, political hacks, lackies and a good number of woke individuals (including the Bishops) who would lose an election if they were forced to fight one.
There have to be serious questions whether a parliamentary chamber with no democratic accountability that can make room for a 27-year-old party worker with no experience, but ignores the likes of Nigel Farage, is really fit for purpose.
