Social Science

Aside from racism and anti-virus restrictions being officially declared matters of individual and commercial conscience, the greatness of British democracy has been further demonstrated with an uncontested by-election for a hereditary seat in the upper house of our Mother of Parliaments. Modernised by the Reverend Blair, and hence nowadays largely the preserve of party donors, clapped-out placemen and the occasional private hairdresser, the House of Lumpenpatricians still pays expenses to ninety-two representatives of family values, one of whom died last year. The replacement is Viscount Stansgate, whose father Tony Benn renounced his own seat in the Lords; a Conservative peer was quick to welcome the family's return to the club, expressing the eminently realistic hope that Benn fils would serve the real people as well as his father served the rabble. The new arrival aims to focus on "developing the relationship between science and parliament," with the science of social advancement presumably uppermost in mind.