WHEN there’s such an awful lot to be agitated about, it’s hard to get your hackles up about yet another thing.

Here comes Boris Johnson, though, and his latest round of peerages.

On taking power in 2019, Johnson promised to hold a review of the UK constitution with reforms to the Lords included. Always a man to shy from keeping a pledge, he instead turned the Lords into his own palocracy. If his resignation list is given the green light he’ll have created more than 100 new peers in total.

In summer 2020, in a highlight of the showreel of his premiership, Johnson handed out peerages to his brother; to Brexit provocateurs including cricketer Ian Botham; his mate Charles Moore; and Russian lad about town Evgeny Lebedev.

His new list is as illustrious: a Tory mayoral candidate forced to resign as chairman of the London Assembly’s police and crime committee after being caught throwing a lockdown party; a Tory donor who may or may not have funded the Johnsons’ holiday to Mustique; the journalist-turned-advisor who played that clever trick with the distracting “painting buses” interview; Nadine Dorries and Alistair Jack.

Words are sometimes used so often that their meaning becomes diluted. Honour is one such. New Year Honours, Birthday Honours, resignation honours - there needs to be a reminder that “honour” is specific: knowing or doing what is morally right.

Johnson’s indulgence in handing out these high tariff party favours again shows his utter lack of probity.

In a further bite of the thumb at democracy, the nominated MPs are holding off taking their ermine until after the next election so as not to trigger byelections the Tories are unlikely to win.

As Robin Cook, the late foreign secretary pointed out, Britain and Lesotho are the only two countries with parliamentary seats reserved for hereditary chieftains.

The last time a Lib Dem hereditary peer was elected, following the death of Lord Avebury in 2016, it came down to a ballot cast by three other life peers voting on those who’d put their top hats in the ring. Sadly, the Earl of Carlisle failed to make the cut. We’re not privy to the nuances of the campaigning but I do wonder if the Earl’s lack of success in the vote might be attributed to his family motto, which is bafflingly, delightfully insipid. It would be hard to be inspired by a man whose inherited maxim is Volo non valeo.

Forgotten your Latin? “I am willing, but not able”.

If he wasn’t so adept at getting off Scot-free, Boris Johnson might have shot himself in the foot somewhat: these appointments do better at making a case for abolishing the Lords than anything the opposition might rustle up.

It’s uninspiring, one and all, but allow me to turn to look straight at the camera here to say, let’s quit the ageism and sexism levelled at the nomination of No 10 aide Charlotte Owen. Every mention of her name is accompanied by the fact she’s in her late 20s, said always in an accusatory way.

One anonymous Tory MP is said to have described Johnson’s proposed new peers as “bootlickers, bimbos and tropical-island holiday facilitators”.

Being female does not a bimbo make. And is it any worse to be, say, 28 and body blocking democracy than to be 78 and doing the same thing? Nope.

Speaking of which, feminists are chided all the day long for not being intersectional enough or inclusive enough or kind enough. The chiding tends to cease when it comes to including very privileged women in campaigning for equality. And yet we miss a trick here.

It is the case that there are seats in parliament reserved purely for men, which is an outrage. Of the 92 hereditary peers left by Blair in the Lords (49 Tory, four Lib Dem, 4 Labour, the rest unaffiliated) all are men.

As women are still not able to inherit titles under the laws of primogeniture, women cannot take up these hereditary seats. Gives us something else in common with Lesotho.

These lads retain a vote because their far ancestors buttered up ancient monarchs and pleased long dead prime ministers and we can’t get rid of them. One of these, the Lord Baron Palmer, is recorded in Hansard as having spoken only 14 times since 1990 and one of those times was to suggest recolonising Zimbabwe. In a debate last year on food waste he detailed his memory of once consuming a “perfectly edible” biscuit that was 20 years old. To be fair, I would like to know more about this.

Others do pull their weight and yes, some good work is done in scrutiny and debate but it is a stopped clock of a system.

Tony Blair’s New Labour government took a broom to the hereditary peers in 1999 and cleaned out the aristocrats to be replaced by life peers nominated by political parties.

Sweeping democratic reform of the House of Lords was promised but this has never materialised. Worse, the upper chamber has swollen to a bloated mass of around 800 peers, some of whom meddle in the legislative process and others who collect their fees yet do little. It’s a close competition as to which breed is worse.

Last year a Sunday Times and Open Democracy report highlighted that 15 of the last 16 Tory treasurers have been appointed to the Lords. Each has donated at least £3 million to the party. Appointments are supposed to be overseen by an appointments commission but when one of Johnson’s nominations - Peter Cruddas - was rejected in 2019 he defied the watchdog and created the peerage regardless.

With the House of Lords we end up in the bizarre situation of having 11 unelected millionaires - experts such as bra boss Michelle Mone and Andrew Lloyd Webber - vote for cuts to tax credits while earning more than £300 merely to turn up and cast a ballot.

You could go on and on. The House of Lords: sexist, elitist, corrupt, anachronistic.

Keir Starmer has floated the idea of House of Lords reform, making a neat line from Keir Hardie who pledged the same in the early 1900s. It has been a pledge of multiple Labour election manifestos and yet the party seems unsure how to do it, despite there being so many reports suggesting easy reforms and robust fixes.

Uncertainty from the left and staunch support from the right makes impetus for reform a responsibility of the electorate yet while we are able, we seem unwilling. Honour is doing the moral thing, and the moral thing is to push for reform.

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