Keir Starmer entered Downing Street promising integrity, accountability and a new era of responsible government. Instead, he is now engaged in the oldest and most transparently self serving Westminster manoeuvre imaginable, the steady expansion of Labour friendly peerages designed to ensure that no one can ever tell him no.
Starmer’s latest plan, another large batch of peerages before Christmas, does not even pretend to be about improving scrutiny or expertise or public service. It is a conveyor belt that moves party advisers, insiders and retired union figures straight into the red benches for one purpose only, securing Starmer the legislative steamroller he has always wanted.
This is not constitutional reform. This is not democratic renewal. This is political engineering carried out quietly and relentlessly.
The Disappearing Brake on Government Power
For now, the House of Lords is often the last meaningful check on a government that has already shown remarkable discomfort with scrutiny. The chamber has repeatedly forced ministers to rethink poorly drafted or excessively ideological legislation. But Labour’s response is not to improve the quality of its bills. Labour seems instead to have decided that the real problem is the existence of dissent.
Ex Director of Legislative Affairs in No10, Nikki De Costa’s analysis lays out the numbers with devastating clarity.
There have been fifty five government defeats since the election, proof that the Lords is actually doing its job.
Those defeats are projected to shrink sharply from 2026, not because bills are improving but because Labour is altering the arithmetic.
The Hereditary Peers Bill will remove eighty eight members by the end of the current session, only four of them Labour, conveniently reducing opposition vote totals.
There has already been a net increase of thirty six Labour peers since the election.
If the pace continues through 2025 and 2026, defeats could collapse by half. By 2027 they may disappear entirely.
This is not normal. It is not healthy. It is a deliberate strategy to extinguish resistance.
Starmerism, Authority Without Accountability
Labour tried to pretend it was about restoring stability. In reality it is concentrating power at a speed that should alarm anyone who values checks and balances.
Labour already controls the Commons with ease because the “right” vote at the 2024 general election was split between Conservatives and Reform. With enough appointments Labour will soon control the Lords as well. Once it controls both Houses, Starmer will control the entire legislative environment.
That is not stability. That is unmoderated executive dominance dressed up as competence.
Meanwhile the country is moving in a very different direction. Economic frustration is rising. Public services continue to deteriorate. Confidence in politics is collapsing. Labour’s response is not to govern better. Its response is to make sure fewer people can question how it governs at all.
A Government That Believes It Deserves a Free Pass
Labour once railed against patronage and the undemocratic character of the Lords. Now it is embracing those same tools with an enthusiasm that would have shocked its former self. Faced with a chamber that occasionally pushes back, Labour’s solution is simply to add enough loyalists until the resistance melts away.
This is not principle. This is not reform. This is not democracy. It is the pursuit of power for its own sake.
The irony is extraordinary. A party elected on the promise of higher standards now treats the upper chamber as a mechanism for permanent dominance.
A Country Pulling One Way, a Government Pulling Another
Britain is grappling with stagnation, rising discontent and a need for honest argument about the future. Labour’s priority is removing any venue where that argument might slow its agenda.
If current trends continue, by 2027 this government will face almost no institutional challenge. It will be able to pass virtually anything, however sweeping or controversial, without the inconvenience of a meaningful second thought.
When a government tries to eliminate the possibility of being defeated, it reveals something dangerous and simple. It does not believe it should ever have to think again.
