Democrats view the House of Lords’ slow demise with the detached satisfaction of children watching ants carry off the corpse of a fly. The hereditary principle is as doomed as a swatted bluebottle. There is talk of meritocracy, of an end to the gilded privilege of aristocratic England. In future people will need to earn their esteem.
But hang on, what is that fizzing across the firmament? It is a newspaper article by a young woman about an unsuccessful pregnancy. Her name? Annabel Heseltine, daughter of Michael. Hold the front page. And what is that down in Tatton, Cheshire? It’s a former army officer and would-be Labour MP called Peter Bracken, in whom we would be not the slightest bit interested were he not Martin Bell’s son-in-law.
Just as saplings prosper among the detritus of a storm-felled forest, so hereditary influence is showing secondary growth. This time it is not among bulbous-eyed Berties who were heirs to an earldom or a baronetcy. This time it is the sons and daughters of the late nineties nobility: MPs, lawyers and journalists. These are the new Butes and Douros, the Massereene and Ferrards.
I had first-hand experience of it a few years ago when I was bullied in to extending a job offer to the child of a public figure. A senior editor drew me to one side: “I don’t believe in nepotism, but I do believe that talent breeds talent.” The individual in question was in fact useless, but the job was duly given.
Whoosh! Another child of modern privilege zips across the night sky. This time it is Matthew Freud, son of the ex-Liberal MP Clement and brother of the dark- eyebrowed broadcaster Emma. Freud Junior is the most hyped public relations man in London, and no doubt ace at his job. And who was that on his arm? Elisabeth Murdoch, daughter of Rupert, sister of Lachlan, and head of Sky TV. For years the Murdoch papers have lambasted Britain’s toffs for their inherited arrogance and unearned power. Damn right too! Disgraceful!
Sons of former prime ministers would once have settled for a viscountcy, but while Mark Thatcher waits for his father’s baronetcy he makes a grand or two with the aid of his celebrated surname. His sister Carol has also done well for herself and is now an acknowledged expert in the travel freebie world. James Major, son of John, has taken lustier advantage of his circumstances and finds himself betrothed to Emma Noble, a tabloid pin-up girl. The Sun keeps a close watch on this modern power couple, and when James and Emma moved house the other day the paparazzi were out in force.
Poor William Straw and the Aitken girls will tell you it is not always an advantage to have a parent in politics, and James Archer, Jeffrey’s son, must have cursed his luck recently when he lost his City job and found the news plastered all over the press. Sometimes, perhaps, Tony Blair’s children also wish that Dad had a more mundane job. While other children can miss the start of school term, the young Blairs know that the Daily Mail might run a moralising leader.
But others have flourished – James Palumbo, owner of Cool Britannia’s number one club, the Ministry of Sound, the portrait painter Jonathan Yeo (Tim’s boy) and Woodrow Wyatt’s daughter Petsy (deputy editor of what I’m required to call “Another Magazine”).
Sometimes the offspring overtake their parents. Dominic and Nigella Lawson are now (deservedly) more prominent than their father Nigel, and Channel 4’s new political reporter, Sarah Smith, is fast becoming recognised in her own right rather than as the daughter of the late leader of the Labour Party.
Sometimes we are intrigued simply on grounds of surprise or different political allegiance, as when Sir Nicholas Scott’s daughter campaigned against him on an issue of disability rights, or when Clare Short found that she had a yuppie Tory for a son. (He has since taken the line of least resistance and turned Labour.)
In parliament itself there are members who surely owe their interest in politics, if not their first political career breaks, to their parentage. Francis Maude, Gwyneth Dunwoody, Bernard Jenkin, Patricia Hewitt, John Cryer, David Faber, Douglas Hogg, Lindsay Hoyle, Michael Trend, Peter Brooke and Nicholas Soames all had parents who were public figures. Tony Benn would surely always have entered politics, but he would have been far less prominent had his father not been a Labour politician turned hereditary peer.
The best little princess of the lot is Margaret Jay, leader of the Lords and daughter of Jim Callaghan, who is now plotting to put the old blue-bloods out of business. She can be sensitive to cries of nepotism, but would she really have made it into ermine without that background?
Is there a fascination with bloodlines, or is it simply a dumbed-down media looking for personalities? It’s fun to see if a youngster proves to be a “chip off the old block”, and if that youngster is a nubile 21 year old, or a gawky kid whose adolescent mistakes might embarrass the political parent, so much the better.
Our modern version of the hereditary game is not only all-party but is also a good deal more ephemeral than the inherited peerages that stretch back to medieval days. But when London’s Evening Standard runs a double-page spread on the commercial property dynasty being moulded by John Ritblat for his children, and you realise that it is not just wealth cascading down the generations but also power and land clout, it indicates that, even with the House of Lords being dragged off to the anthill’s demolition yard, meritocracy may have some way to go.
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