Red princes, hereditary politics and real life

A social media dig at "hereditary ministers" in the new government revealed unease among some left-wingers; it's amusing but for conservatives it's just part of life

There has been some harmless, lighthearted ribaldry at the expense of Labour at the appointment of the Honourable Hamish Falconer, newly elected MP for Lincoln, as a junior minister at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Hamish, you see, is the eldest son of Lord Falconer of Thoroton, Lord Chancellor from 2003 to 2007 and a flatmate of fellow young barrister Tony Blair in Wandsworth in the 1970s, and Blair, on becoming prime minister in 1997, appointed his friend Solicitor General for England and Wales, with a life peerage as part of the bargain.

No-one is suggesting that Hamish Falconer is a pure “nepo baby”. When I highlighted some prospective Labour high fliers back in April, Falconer was on my list, and there were straightforward reasons for that. He worked at the Department for International Development as a civil servant from 2009 to 2013, then at the Foreign Office until 2022, dealing with national security, humanitarian relief and hostage recovery and at one point heading the department’s Terrorism Response Team. He also has a decent brain, and spent a year at Yale’s European Studies Council before becoming a parliamentary candidate. There is no suggestion that his selection was improper or subject to influence, and on 4 July he displaced incumbent Conservative Karl McCartney by 8,793 votes.

Falconer is not an isolated case. Another newly elected MP who has been appointed directly into government is the Honourable Georgia Gould, Member for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale. Leader of Camden Council since 2017, Gould is a “double Hon”: her father, the late Lord Gould of Brookwood, was a close ally of Tony Blair and advised the Labour Party on polling at every election from 1987 to 2005, while her mother, Baroness Rebuck, is chair of Penguin Random House UK and has worked in publishing for the best part of 50 years. Gould is now a parliamentary secretary at the Cabinet Office, the junction box of Whitehall’s hidden wiring, where she is responsible for public sector reform, oversight of government functions and policy on public bodies.

We should also nod to the Honourable Stephen Kinnock, Minister of State for Care at the Department of Health and Social Care. Another “double Hon”, his father, Lord Kinnock, was leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992 and his late mother, Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead, was a Labour MEP from 1994 to 2009 then a Foreign Office minister 2009-10. Stephen, whose wife, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, was Prime Minister of Denmark 2011-15, was elected to the House of Commons in 2015 and was a consistently effective opposition spokesman on foreign affairs, the armed forces then immigration.

It would be unfair not to mention Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whose maternal grandfather, Lord Byers, was a Liberal MP from 1945 to 1950, the party’s chief whip 1946-50 and made a life peer in 1964 and leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords 1967-84. There are also two pairs of siblings in the new government: Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Ellie Reeves, Minister without Portfolio; and Dame Angela Eagle, Minister of State for Immigration at the Home Office, and Maria Eagle, Minister of State for Defence Procurement and Industry. The Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary, Ed Miliband, is of course younger brother of former Foreign Secretary David Miliband, while the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, is married to Ed Balls, shadow chancellor 2011-15.

(Ellie Reeves’s husband, John Cryer, was a Labour MP from 1997 to 2005 and 2010-24. His father, Bob Cryer, was a Labour MP 1974-83 and 1987-94 and an MEP 1984-89, while his mother, Ann Cryer, was a Labour MP 1997-2010.)

If we are really exacting, Douglas Alexander, Minister of State for Business and Trade, is the younger brother of Wendy Alexander, leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2008 to 2009, while their father, the Reverend Douglas Alexander, was a lifelong friend of Donald Dewar and conducted the first First Minister of Scotland’s funeral service in 2000. Do we note that Lord Livermore, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, is married to Seb Dance, Labour MEP from 2014-20 and now Deputy Mayor of London for Transport, and was an adviser to Shaun Woodward as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland 2007-09? Tulip Siddiq, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, is the maternal niece of the current Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasena, and thereby connected to one of that country’s most influential political families. Baroness Chapman of Darlington, Labour MP 2010-19 and newly appointed as a junior minister at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, is married to Labour MP Nick Smith. Baroness Blake of Leeds, a government whip in the House of Lords, is mother of the Honourable Olivia Blake, Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam.

Lord Timpson, the retail boss appointed Minister of State for Prisons, Parole and Probation, probably merits an ironic bow for being the elder brother of Edward Timpson, Conservative MP 2008-17 and 2019-24, Minister for Children and Families 2012-17 and briefly Solicitor General in 2022.

The biggest beast among Labour’s red princes is, of course, Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. His father, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, was a Labour MP for most of the period from 1950 to 2001, a minister under Harold Wilson (1964-70, 1974-76) and Jim Callaghan (1976-79) and is still an icon to many—but by no means all—on the Left. Tony’s father, William Wedgwood Benn, 1st Viscount Stansgate, was a Liberal MP 1906-27 then a Labour Member 1928-31 and 1937-42 before being elevated to the peerage, and served as a minister under H.H. Asquith (1910-15), Ramsay MacDonald (1929-31) and Clement Attlee (1945-46). The first seat he represented in Parliament, the St George’s Division of Tower Hamlets, had been held between 1892 and 1895 by his father, Sir John Benn, who was later MP for Plymouth Devonport 1904-10. Tony Benn’s other grandfather, Daniel Holmes, was Liberal MP for Glasgow Govan 1911-18, his granddaughter, the Honourable Emily Benn, stood for election to the House of Commons in 2010 and 2015, and is now a member of the Court of Common Council of the City of London Corporation, while her father, Stephen, 3rd Viscount Stansgate, was elected to the House of Lords as a Labour hereditary peer in 2021.

All of this is good sporting fun for Conservatives at a time when we have little else to celebrate. Speaking for myself, I do not mind at all, because I am a realist, and I understand, especially having spent so long immersed in it, that the Westminster jungle is small, clannish and incestuously intertwined. This can happen for a number of reasons. Couples sometimes strike up relationships after their arrival in Parliament, others are the inevitable pairings of politically aware and ambitious people who, if they are both sufficiently successful, will both end up in the same workplace. Some are drawn to politics in part because they come from families for which it is an inescapable element of the atmosphere. Tony Benn would often recall when he was a boy meeting Ramsay MacDonald, in whose cabinet his father had sat, and it was hardly surprising that the young Anthony aspired to a political career himself.

There are two serious questions. The first is to what extent these politicians have benefited from their familial ties in achieving political success? It seems to me that you would have to be naïve in the extreme to argue that their backgrounds and parentage had played absolutely no part in the careers of, say, Hilary Benn or Hamish Falconer. Connected to that, however, is the second question: whether or not we accept that they have benefited from some degree of privilege or advantage, are these politicians inadequate to carry out the roles they have been given? If, as I suspect is generally the case, the truth is that they have benefited but are still able candidates, then my conclusion would be that life inevitably contains a degree of unfairness, of privilege which stems from background and networks, and while we should strive to make opportunities as open as possible, we will never eradicate that “unfair advantage”.

When lawyer and academic Yuan Yi Zhu tweeted on Friday, in response to Falconer’s ministerial appointment, “Hereditary peers out, hereditary ministers in”, he was clearly making a very mildly barbed joke. It was not difficult to understand: the King’s Speech two days before, the new government’s mission statement and legislative manifesto, had included plans to “modernise the constitution” by abolishing “the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the Lords”. Those with long memories will recall that Tony Blair’s “stage one” reform of the upper chamber, the House of Lords Act 1999, expelled most of the hereditary peers but retained 92¹, whose numbers are maintained through by-elections. A few months ago Baroness Smith of Basildon, now Leader of the House of Lords, told a select committee that it was “hard to justify taking a place in the legislature on the basis of who your parents, grandparents etc were”.

It is obvious how this attitude can be contrasted jokingly with the number of members of the new government with political backgrounds and ancestries. I don’t for a moment think that Yuan was arguing in earnest that these appointments were therefore invalid, but the vehement and humourless reaction on social media was instructive.

“he was elected by a landslide by the people of lincoln, but that doesn’t suit your narrative”

“Explain please? So his dad is a life peer (look up the difference), and Hamish has been elected. So what’s your point?”

“It's good that he's committed to peace in Gaza so I'll give him a pass on this one”

“The obvious and essential difference here is that Hamish actually ran and was elected for a seat.”

“He was elected by the good people of Lincoln with a large majority. He has experience of working in diplomacy, leading a terrorism response team. What is your problem? Envy?”

“Oh come on! Did you check his work experience? Also he was elected.”

“He was democratically elected with a healthy majority! MP for Lincoln!”

“His father is a life peer. He is an elected MP. How thick are you?”

It is no surprise, of course, that some keyboard warriors, and this trait exists on the left and on the right but I think is marginally more prevalent on the left, could not accept that a remark was meant as a sly and amused joke, and that they then overreacted in shouting about Falconer’s status as an elected MP and a man with a creditable CV in foreign affairs. But let me pick that apart for a moment.

It is no more than a recitation of fact that Hamish Falconer was freely and fairly elected to represent Lincoln in the House of Commons. I would also readily agree, as I think would most people who are not ill-intentioned, that his career before entering Parliament is certainly enough to qualify him to be a Foreign Office minister, and gives the Prime Minister reason to think he will be competent. It is not always the case that ministers with relevant professional experience are successful ministers: John Davies, Trade and Industry Secretary 1970-72, had been Director General of the CBI after a career in the oil industry, but was largely disastrous, hesitant, indecisive and a poor communicator; Estelle Morris, herself the daughter and niece of government ministers, had been a teacher but found herself overwhelmed and ineffective as Education Secretary in 2001-02. But it is a fair working assumption.

I dispute none of that, and am not even grudging in my acceptance of it. However, I also accept, and I do so with equanimity, that Falconer has benefited from various advantages, some generalised, some specific, in reaching his current position. He was educated at Westminster School, one of the country’s most prestigious and successful public schools, whose pupils achieve excellent examination results and about half of whom go on to Oxbridge. Alumni include John Locke, Christopher Wren, Edward Gibbon, Jeremy Bentham, Nigel Lawson and, well, Nick Clegg; it has produced five prime ministers and the founder of the Bank of England.

His schooling is not irrelevant to his father’s career. Charlie Falconer applied for the Labour candidacy for Dudley North, a new constituency regarded as a strong prospect, before the 1997 general election. Then 45, he did not have a powerful track record in elected politics or party activism. He had known Tony Blair at school—he had attended Glenalmond, near Perth, while Blair was at Fettes in Edinburgh—and they renewed their friendship as young barristers in the 1970s, later sharing a flat in Wandsworth and eventually becoming neighbours and close friends in Islington. Falconer developed a successful and lucrative practice in commercial law, taking silk in 1991 and rumoured by then to be earning something like £500,000 a year. His friendship with Blair led him to seek election to Parliament, but the selection panel in Dudley asked him, with their own preference very clear, if he would take his four children out of fee-paying schools. He refused, and was told that the Labour Party did not look kindly on candidates who spent more on buying their children out of state education than most people earned in a year. A fellow barrister, Ross Cranston, was chosen instead and won the seat by 9,457 votes at the 1997 general election.

(Falconer was, as I said, given a peerage and made Solicitor General. He went on to be Cabinet Office minister 1998-2001, Minister for Housing 2001-02, Minister for Criminal Justice 2002-03 and Lord Chancellor 2003-07. Cranston succeeded him as Solicitor General in 1998 but left government in 2001 and the House of Commons in 2005. From 2007 to 2017 he was a Justice of the High Court. Maybe missing the nomination was not a disaster.)

From Westminster, he went to St John’s College, Cambridge, one of the largest and second-wealthiest colleges of the university, which has educated four prime ministers and 12 Nobel laureates, as well as William Wilberforce, Fred Hoyle, Peter Hennessy, Manmohan Singh and Gavyn Davies. He graduated in social and political science in 2008 and joined the Civil Service Fast Stream. After leaving the civil service in 2022, he worked briefly at the Institute for Public Policy Research and Labour Together, the advisory board of which contains New Labour bigwigs like Alan Milburn, Geoff Mulgan, Sarah Hunter and James Crabtree.

Hamish Falconer is clearly an intelligent, accomplished and determined man with an impressive CV. So, to take the second question I identified earlier, I do not think he has leveraged personal privilege to secure a job he is not capable of doing. However, if it is your argument that his expensive education, upbringing and familial connections to the very top of the Labour Party have not affected his career at all, I suggest you are either disingenuous or alarmingly innocent. (I have to say, if I were Falconer, I would have chosen slightly different words before describing his selection as Labour candidate in Lincoln as “the greatest privilege of my life”. It could be misconstrued for satirical effect.)

None of this is Falconer’s fault, and he should not be held in contempt for it, though Yuan’s gentle mockery is more than par for the course. Human beings form networks throughout their lives, fashioned from families, social life, education and professional milieu, and they consciously, unconsciously and subconsciously leverage those networks, those connections which make you at least one rung up from “complete stranger” to another person, throughout their lives. Some people, like Falconer, combine these with ability and dedication and succeed in their field. Many of Labour’s red princes and princesses are the same: Gould is regarded by many to have been an effective leader of Camden Council, articulate and hard-working; Kinnock, as I said, was a good opposition spokesman, able to talk about policy in a way that is intelligible to voters; Benn gained praise for his time in cabinet and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and moved the House of Commons deeply with an impassioned speech advocating air strikes against Syria in December 2015.

Conservatives accept this as a profound element of human nature. That is not to say nothing is done to counter its worst excesses: all formal recruitment processes, in politics as elsewhere, should be transparent, rigorous and conducted according to clear criteria. In essence, if you apply for a position, whatever it is, and you are unsuccessful, those who made the decision should always be able to explain why they reached the decision they did, and where you fell short. Hamish Falconer was not selected as candidate for Lincoln because a member of the selection panel said “Wait, you realise his dad was Tony Blair’s friend and a cabinet minister?”

If, however you are the sort of high-minded idealist who believes we should forever be on a pathway to a society in which there is no privilege, no personal connections, no informal networks of familiarity and recognition—which I’m afraid to say I think is an impossible goal—then it ill behoves you pretend these factors do not exist when they apply to someone on “your side”.

It was interesting, and perhaps illustrative of a certain kind of Twitter user, that bitter personal insults were a very rapid part of the response to Yuan’s remarks. “His dad is a life peer (look up the difference)”, snapped one. As he has actually co-authored a book on the constitution, I think his understanding is sound in this case. “What is your problem? Envy?” asked another. A third went for the straightforward “How thick are you?” This reflects, more than anything else, a kind of defensiveness which derives from discomfort. If you trumpet stark, unbending principles, and find that your allies have in some way compromised or merely accepted the reality of the world, it must put you in an unpleasant position.

Politics easily becomes a semi-hereditary profession, for many reasons. This is true across the world, and it should not surprise us. We should beware people who try to use privilege to overcome lack of ability, and should always seek to make opportunities more open, more transparent, more rigorous. All of these things can be true at the same time.

One question, which I have often considered and which I will come back to at some point, is why we often express horror at heredity in politics, say, calling it nepotism and privilege, and yet in many other fields of endeavour we regard heritage as a mark of quality and reliability. How many companies proclaim their “family” status, or make a great show of being “and Sons”, “Brothers” or some other nod to a genetic link? Just a few firms to consider, which make a virtue of family ownership: John Lobb Limited, J. Sainsbury plc, J.C. Bamford Excavators, Arnold Clark, Laing O’Rourke, Specsavers Optical Group Ltd, and, having spoken of Lord Timpson, the Timpson Group. There is even a representative organisation for these kinds of enterprise, Family Business United.

There must be a reason that family businesses are attractive, and part of that must in some way be a feeling that if you pursue a profession which is that of your forefathers then you will have some inherent dedication, expertise or ability. Certainly that is an argument which was for many years advanced in defence of the hereditary peerage and its presence in the upper house of our legislature. It was one element of former special adviser James Price’s recent defence of hereditary peers in The Critic. As a rationale, it would have seemed almost too obvious to require articulation to Tudor or Stuart constitutionalists. Now, however, to propose it pushes you to the quirky, nostalgic, reactionary fringes of politics. It certainly deserves more systematic thought than I have been able to give it, so watch this space.

TL; DR—there are enough ministers in the new Labour government with family connections in politics to make you stop and raise an eyebrow. It is an opportunity for conservatives to rib progressives gently about their mighty principles, but largely reflects the fact that politics as a career is infectious and incestuous. That’s largely inevitable, and unproblematic so long as opportunities are not by the same token closed. But the left needs to accept it rather than snarl when it’s pointed out, and perhaps reflect on why it should be. After all, politics must start with seeing the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.

1. Ex officio, the Earl Marshal, held by hereditary right by the Duke of Norfolk, and the Lord Great Chamberlain, currently Lord Carrington but held in gross and shared between three families; and 90 peers according to the strength of the parties in the hereditary peerage at the time.