In most other circumstances, the elevation of a 29-year-old woman to the House of Lords would be applauded. Or at the least it wouldn’t attract the sort of sexist, condescending and prejudiced coverage that has attended the granting of a life peerage to Charlotte Owen, a former special adviser to Boris Johnson.
For almost a century, efforts have been made to reform Parliament’s Upper House, and, notwithstanding Tony Blair’s culling of hereditary peers in 1999 (although 92 remain), it has remained largely unchanged. In Jeremy Paxman’s words, it is like “a bad smell that has been left by history”.
Enter the fragrant Baroness Owen. On the cusp of the millennial and generation Z demographic, she is thrust into a legislative chamber where the average age is 71. It is not unreasonable to suggest that this elderly, predominantly white, overwhelmingly male, gathering may benefit from the opinions of someone who has a rather more innate understanding of, and a fresher perspective on, some of the touchstone issues that dominate discourse today, like the delicacies around the transgender debate, or the threats presented by artificial intelligence, or the hegemony of the social media giants.
That’s not to say people older than 29 are incapable of grappling with the nuances of societal trends, but I often find myself deferring to much younger people on how I should feel about certain aspects of their world, and the newly ennobled Ms Owen might well possess the qualities to make a legitimate contribution to debate in the Lords. The trouble, for her, for Mr Johnson, and indeed for the rest of us, is that we just don’t know.
She has been thrust into the media maelstrom without anyone explaining her bona fides, her particular competencies, her intellectual fitness to take the ermine, or even her life experience. And in no time this vacuum is filled by the cacophony of voices, on social media and in the mainstream media, from colleagues, to political opponents of Mr Johnson, to her former university mates, to professional trolls.
From these sources, we are told only that, in her six years serving the Conservative Party and the country, hers was “not an illustrious political career by any stretch”, the appointment is “completely staggering”, and that, at York University, where she got a 2:1 in politics and international relations, that they cannot remember her showing “any great prowess for legislative scrutiny”. There are all manner of sly insinuations about the closeness of her relationship with the former prime minister, but this says much more about him and his priapic tendencies than it does about her.
It’s been a right old pile-on. And the case for the defence? Only Sir James Duddridge, who also worked in Mr Johnson’s service, was prepared to go public. “She was in the shadows,” he said, “but was a serious player but never wanted to be in the limelight like so many inferior people.” She certainly could have found a better way of eschewing the limelight than accepting a life peerage, but let’s let that pass.
I don’t know whether this is the apotheosis of Boris Johnson’s contemptuous relationship with the body politic and our constitution, but we are still owed a proper explanation for the spectacular ascent of Ms Owen, six years from intern to Baroness.
There are few less edifying spectacles in modern society than the patronisation of a young woman who has done nothing wrong other than possibly allowing herself to be the vessel by which an unscrupulous, unworthy and unfit prime minister employed a discredited and iniquitous honours system to get his final revenge on the British people.
Whatever his motivation, Charlotte Owen now enters biggest parliamentary chamber in any democracy. She is one of more than 800 members of the House of Lords, and is the only one under the age of 37. Like most people of her age, she will have a singular view of the world that is informed by her experience, however limited. I really hope she proves everyone wrong by getting her voice heard.
