The Spectator’s Notes | 24 January 2013

In which forthcoming by-election does one candidate’s election address boast that he was the ‘last Captain of Boats [at Eton] to win the Ladies Plate at Henley in 1960’, while one of his rivals says that, at Harrow, ‘unfortunately I did not cover myself with academic glory’? The answer is a by-election among the Conservative hereditary peers. Under the Blair reforms of the Lords, the hereditaries elected their own 92 representatives, and the then Lord Cranborne (now Lord Salisbury) persuaded Labour (who saw the whole thing as an interim measure before abolition) to permit by-elections — which was foolish from their point of view, because, without replacements, the hereditaries would quickly have dwindled away. Voting takes place within parties. In this case, a Tory, Lord Ferrers, died. The electorate consists of 48 men, and no women, voting on 5 February, by Single Transferable Vote. There are no fewer than 27 candidates for the single vacancy.

It is turning into a spirited contest, because one candidate is splitting the voters. Viscount Hailsham, better known as Douglas Hogg, is the most obviously qualified hopeful, being a former Cabinet minister, MP, and a QC. He has some strong supporters. But his record is also his problem. The life peerage is full of former Cabinet ministers, and some hereditaries do not want to use their vote to compensate for the fact that David Cameron failed to ennoble Hogg because of the famous incident over claiming Commons expenses to clean his moat. One subset of the Upper House, a place unusually expert on moats, feels that Hogg’s moat was not a ‘proper’ one, and he should not have so described it. Another thinks he has been terribly traduced. Yet another subset points out that Hogg’s wife, Sarah, is already in the House of Lords, and ‘That’s enough Hoggs.’