The Labour government in the United Kingdom has introduced a bill in Parliament to abolish hereditary peerage, a move that would end a centuries-old practice that many believe is outdated in a modern world. The bill is part of a broader set of reforms that the Labour Party has promised — including doing away with the House of Lords totally — to push although it has also conceded that some of these changes could take more than one term to accomplish. The bill, if it passes, would remove the 92 current hereditary peers in the House of Lords; but two of them would continue to carry out their ceremonial duties in the upper chamber of the British Parliament. In many ways, the bill aims to complete what the government of the former prime minister, Tony Blair, had started with another bill in 1999 when it tried to abolish the hereditary peerage system but ultimately compromised with opponents to allow 92 positions to continue. However, the fact that it has taken Britain until the cusp of 2025 to seriously move towards ending a system rooted in feudalism makes the country one of the very last to continue with the practice.
Indeed, Lesotho is the only other country where some members of the elite can claim hereditary membership of the legislature. The southern African nation’s Senate has 33 members of whom 22 are hereditary tribal chiefs. Several other countries, including Zimbabwe, Samoa and Tonga, have reserved positions for traditional chiefs in Parliament but those are not hereditary in nature. Other than the UK and Lesotho, no constitutional monarchy — be it Monaco or Morocco, Belgium or Bhutan, Japan or Jordan — has a system of hereditary legislative powers for select families. And even Lesotho can claim that its structure is aimed at preserving traditions rooted in a tribal society — something Britain cannot argue.
However, the British bill is not only about domestic reform. The UK desperately needs to show the rest of the world that it is not totally out of tune with the 21st century. In 2021, Barbados became the latest former British colony to shun the monarchy and appoint its own head of State. Only 15 British realms remain — including the UK itself — and similar debates over whether to maintain fealty to the Crown have intensified in many of them. Jamaica’s prime minister has said that the country plans to hold a referendum on the matter in 2025. A poll in 2023 in the Solomon Islands showed that a majority of citizens wanted a democratically-elected head of State. When King Charles visited Australia in October, the premiers of all six states declined invitations to attend an event with the monarch amidst a strengthening republican movement. Democracy, by definition, is fluid and constantly evolving. The UK has some distance to go to catch up with other leading democracies. Ending hereditary peerages would be a step in the right direction.