NOTHING puts the ridiculousness of our broken political system into perspective like the absurd spectacle of the House of Lords.

With seats for life, they’re unelected, unaccountable and unrepresentative of ordinary working people. Its 800 members are able to claim £305 a day for just turning up and able to spend the day enjoying the perks of Parliament’s subsidised dining rooms. It often seems like more of a private members’ club than a legislative chamber — and that’s before we even get onto the robes.

At Politics for the Many we’ve been campaigning hard to sort out this outdated institution. We’ve been pressing the Labour Party to be unequivocal in its commitment to reform at the next election: scrap and replace the second chamber with one that truly represents the nations and regions of Britain — and represents people’s votes fairly too. A proportionally elected Senate that can speak up for the whole country.

It’s a common-sense call — and a popular one, too. Polling for the Electoral Reform Society showed a clear majority support reform of the House of Lords — across parties. It is one of the few issues that unites Brexit Party supporters and Greens, Liberals and ’Kippers: the private members’ club that is the Lords is not fit for purpose, and real reform is long overdue. And heaven knows we need policies that can bring us together around progressive change.

Jeremy Corbyn has previously spoken out for a fairly elected revising chamber, as has John McDonnell. Unfortunately Labour’s 2017 manifesto policy was pretty vague, saying: “Our fundamental belief is that the Second Chamber should be democratically elected. In the interim period, we will seek to end the hereditary principle and reduce the size of the current House of Lords.”

It lacked the firm commitment to building a democracy for the many — not just in the economy, but in the institutions that affect all of our lives every day.

Now that message is finally being heard: the movement for real democracy is reaching the top of the party.

In a much-overlooked speech earlier this month, Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard made clear that Labour backs abolishing and replacing the House of Lords.

In the speech, the Scottish Labour leader said: “The next Labour government’s success will depend critically on its determination to rebalance power in our constitution and in our institutions in order to deepen and extend democracy… That’s why we are proposing the abolition of the House of Lords and its replacement with an elected second chamber: a Senate of the Nations and Regions that could begin the process of reshaping our political system.”

This is a major development — and one that couldn’t be more timely. Leonard’s pledge — covered only in the Morning Star — came just days after Theresa May’s resignation honours were revealed. That’s 19 new Lords as part of her raft of retirement giveaways.

May, who had previously said David Cameron granting honours to his former aides made her retch, was quickly accused of gross hypocrisy as 12 of her own list were former advisers, politicians and business backers.

There’s no other way to say it: the House of Lords set-up is a corruption at the heart of our system. When overpowerful PMs can dangle a seat in Parliament for life to potential opponents or supporters, that’s bad for all of us. One of May’s former aides will become the youngest member of the Lords (at 36). With a lifetime appointment, he could potentially remain an unelected lawmaker for the next half century.

The lack of democratic accountability leaves more than half of our Parliament a plaything for lobbyists. As Jon Trickett said at our This is What Democracy Looks Like conference in August, we need nothing short of a “democratic revolution” to take on our archaic and elitist political system.

And that revolution begins with abolishing the unaccountable, unelected Lords. Because socialism without democracy will simply decay into corporatism.

Any positive change we seek to the economy, public services and workers rights will be swiftly undone by the next reactionary prime minister if the Lords remains an unaccountable plaything of the ruling Establishment, waiting to be packed with their political allies.

Throughout history, the labour and trade union movements have been on the front line of campaigns to demand progressive change to tackle the big issues of the day — and today’s demand for radical reform is no different.

But now Labour is — slowly — setting out a vision for a real democracy, where power lies in the hands of the many, not the few. And in this time of constitutional crisis, it could not come soon enough.

Politics for the Many is campaigning for Labour and the unions to back political equality, including a fairly elected second chamber and fair votes (proportional representation) for the Commons. Come to our event at The World Transformed in Brighton — at The Old Market 11am on Sunday September 22.

Sign up to PoliticsfortheMany.co.uk and see our events at Labour conference.

Shavanah Taj is a national officer of PCS (Wales & South West) and a supporter of Politics for the Many.