nepotism: ghastly unless it's us doing it

Trixy is rather confused. I was too busy knitting on the train this morning to read this story in the Telegraph but via the delectable Mr Eugenides I understand that Labour are actually in fan of hereditary posts.

Senior Labour figures are now discussing plans to persuade Michael Martin to step down as Speaker by offering his Glasgow North West seat to his son. [...]
Friends of the 63-year-old Speaker believe he wants to pass on the constituency to his son, who holds the matching seat in the Scottish Parliament.

In exchange for signalling that he would step down at the next election, the Speaker would get an unspoken agreement that his son would be Labour's candidate in the Westminster seat at the next general election

Which is funny, because I thought that the Labour party were pretty anti all that sort of stuff. The 1997 Labour Party Manifesto said:

The House of Lords must be reformed - the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute

Tony Blair had wanted all the hereditary peers to be removed - but agreed a compromise with the upper house to ensure that the legislation would get through.

In the Crewe and Nantwich by election earlier this year Tamsin Dunwoody, daughter of the MP whose death caused the by election Gwyneth Dunwoody, was chosen as the Labour party candidate.

So clearly, they do like hereditary privilege but only when it keeps the power within the Labour party. I am sure that if the hereditary peers hadn't been quite so Conservative then Mr Blair would not have had such a problem with them. It was only their damned impudence which saw them rejecting his wonderful legislation which really got his goat.

The cheek of it.