Gordon Brown isn’t the first or the last to try to reform the House of Lords

Editorial: No one has yet come up with a plan that doesn’t create more problems than it resolves

Former PM Gordon Brown led the Labour commission on Lords reform (Getty)

Gordon Brown isn’t the first politician, and nor will he be the last, to try to reform the House of Lords. Indeed, he was a prominent member of the last Labour government that achieved some significant reform of the hereditary element of the membership of the Lords.

The Blair and Brown governments carried on appointing a mix of experts and superannuated politicians to the upper house – and redressed its traditional Tory predominance, albeit entrenching cronyism along the way.

Today, it is a more politically balanced chamber, with plenty of wisdom and expertise at its disposal – and with tightly drawn conventions and laws about it keeping to its role as a revising chamber that stays out of financial matters. It doesn’t try to defy the Commons on matters the people voted for in a manifesto.