Shadow Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden spoke in opposition to the planned abolition of hereditary peers – pointing out Labour’s glaring hypocrisy.
Top Tory Oliver Dowden has called out the glaring hypocrisy at the heart of Labour’s plans to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords, as he blasted the party’s “nepo-babies from north London”.
Labour MPs reacted with uproar as he tore into the low quality of their MPs, but he quickly silenced them by revealing he was only quoting Labour sources who insulted their own Commons candidates in the media.
In defence of hereditary peers, the former deputy prime minister quoted Edmund Burke, who once described them as “the great oaks that shade a country”. He joked: “The same, I’m afraid, could not be said of the saplings of the new Labour intake.
“Before the election, Labour sources admitted this – ‘we’re going to need to appoint a dozen peers on day one to do big junior ministerial jobs that the MPs shadowing them aren’t up to doing’.”
He went on to point out that while Labour is opposed to hereditary members of the House of Lords, it increasingly has senior MPs whose mothers or fathers were also senior in the party.
Labour MPs were unhappy with Oliver Dowden’s attacks (Image: Parliament Live)
Mr Dowden joked: “One of the central arguments evinced by the Paymaster General should be there by ‘an accident of birth’, yet today’s Labour Party reeks of the hereditary principle!
“The elevation of the nepo-babies of north London, the coronation of the red princes, the Goulds, the Falconers, the Kinnocks, the Benns, the Eagles, the Reeves.
“Many of them distinguished members, but under Labour’s closed shop it’s hereditary peers out, hereditary MPs in!”
Ellie Reeves, a Cabinet Office minister and sister of the Chancellor, looked on bemused as Mr Dowden called the Labour Party out.
The growth of “nepo-babies” with the Labour Party has been called out before.
Hereditary peers are set to be ousted from the Lords (Image: Parliament Live)
Cabinet Office minister Georgia Gould MP is the daughter of Philip Gould, a former adviser to the Labour Party, and of Baroness Rudbuck, a Labour peer.
Hamish Falconer, a Foreign Office minister, is the son of Charlie Falconer, Tony Blair’s Lord Chancellor.
Stephen Kinnock, the social care minister, is the son of former Labour leader Neil Kinnock.
Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is the son of Tony Benn, and the father of Emily Benn, a Labour councillor in London.
MP Liam Conlon is the son of Sir Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff Sue Gray. Imogen Walker MP is the wife of Sir Keir’s new chief of staff Morgan McSweeney.
