One of the hereditary peers being kicked out by Labour, in flagrant defiance of the bargain it made in 1998, is the Earl of Leicester. He just raised a question about the proposed ban on trail hunting, which will waste parliamentary time and police resources to no purpose whatever. His question was thoughtful, measured and informed, and Labour peers began to interrupt him, claiming that he was talking for too long. He politely responded that, as this was his first and last oral question in the chamber, he intended to ask it properly. He is one of the 92 diligent and service-driven peers being thanklessly and gracelessly removed to make room for more placemen. It is perhaps especially poignant in his case as an earlier Earl of Leicester was Simon de Montfort, who called the first English Parliament, and whose image adorns the US Congress; and also because he is descended from Sir Edward Coke, the Elizabethan and Jacobean jurist who, as much as anyone, encoded our modern understanding of parliamentary supremacy and freedom under the law. This is what snapping the thread of history looks like.
