Over the last few days the 26 bishops who sit in the House of Lords must have been astounded to receive over 50,000 letters telling them their time as legislators is up. Today an ICM poll for Power2010, who organised the write-in, shows that 74% of voters think unelected bishops should have no place in the legislature, and only 21% believe that they should. Even more persuasive is that 70% of Christians want the bishops gone, and only 26% are in favour of keeping them. We are the only western country with theocracy in its law-making.

Failure to reform the Lords, despite the Commons voting for a 100% elected upper house, is just one of Labour’s long list of missed opportunities. But a revised plan will emerge shortly to join Labour’s manifesto of regrets. Why didn’t Labour do Lords reform? It would have taken a year of guerrilla warfare with the ermine, obliterating all other business. What a mistake: all that fidgety “other business” is long forgotten but this would have stood as a monument, fulfilling at last what the Commons has tried to do since 1911.

Maybe 2011 will be the year to do it. This is a trap for the Tories, by no means united on Lords reform. If Cameron votes down the constitutional reform bill in the “wash-up” of unfinished bills when the election is called, he will be voting to prevent a referendum to let people choose electoral reform for the Commons. He will also be voting to keep the present preposterous 92 hereditary peers, with their bizarre blue-blood byelections to replace their dead.

Labour regarded Lords reform as abstruse, nerdy stuff, alienating voters. But Power2010 is proving them wrong, campaigning for wide public involvement in how democracy works. With more than 100,000 votes cast in the campaign’s open poll on ideas to change the system, it is pursuing the people’s top constitutional reforms. The voters’ first priority was proportional representation; then came scrapping ID cards and “the database state”; third was an all-elected second chamber. All candidates will be challenged to support the chosen reforms at the election.

Continues at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/14/lords-reform-bishops-reserved-benches

Polly Toynbee is the President of the British Humanist Association. The BHA campaigns for constitutional reform including the removal of reserved spaces for bishops in the Lords. The BHA supported the Power2010 initiative.