In Competition No. 3283, you were invited to submit ‘A Peer’s Lament’.

There was a smattering of references to Baroness Mone, whose travails prompted this challenge. But of course members of the Upper House have plenty to worry about besides, as winningly detailed in a lively and varied entry that contained echoes ranging from Poe, Belloc, Thomas Hood and W.S. Gilbert to Boney M. The winners earn £25.

By these drivellers of babble-on who wouldn’t weep?

No wonder so many just drift off to sleep

When others talk nonsense that leaves us agog

With claptrap as clear as a thick London fog.

There are those like the ‘Churchill dog’ stuck in a car

Who nod as if listening then rush to the bar.

My mum was a housewife; my dad was out working;

I wasn’t brung up to be waffling and shirking

While claiming expenses like this pompous lot

For just turning up or, in some cases, not!

I’m a grafter, not born with a posh silver spoon

Stuck in my gob and I’m no bloody goon.

If some of these idlers was working for me

They’d be off to some down and out café for tea.

No wonder I weep, they should all have retired,

If I had my way then I’d tell ’em, ‘You’re fired!’

Alan Millard

My blood is of the bluest blue.

My pedigree records

A family commitment to

The sacred House of Lords.

By what mad stroke was it possessed

To lose its moral compass

And make itself a rancid nest

Of spivs and counter-jumpers?

We farmed the pasture seasonly

While mining coal beneath it,

To build a noble legacy

Then to our heirs bequeath it.

But now alas we face the threat

Of closure by Keir Starmer,

A sad humiliation, yet

Perhaps that is our Karma.

Basil Ransome-Davies

Boris told me: On you go,

Park your bumsters on the plush –

Natter like a seasoned pro,

Or have a snooze, enjoy the hush:

No one cares, my dear old chum,

If you are one to rage and splutter,

Or one who never joins the scrum,

As silent as a pat of butter.

But now it’s under threat, my nap,

The blasted prey of K.R. Starmer,

I’m caught in Gordon’s gin, his trap:

So much for Johnson’s promised karma.

The flat rate for my House attendance

At risk? Disaster looms! Perpend:

I’ll have to sponge on my dependants,

Or even cash a dividend.

Bill Greenwell

Life’s no longer bright and cheery, I’m lamenting, weak and weary,

Grieving for a life that’s ending, fearing what it holds in store.

I weep to see the House of Lords, the peers with richly earned rewards,

Invaded by the unwashed hordes elected by the voting poor.

It’s politics the Starmer way: the trust he says he will restore,

           Alas, it cuts me to the core.

On days I wasn’t shooting grouse, I’d pop into the Upper House,

Chatting up the Baronesses – they won’t be   there anymore –

I had no thought for a tomorrow; now my life is filled with sorrow,

I’ll be forced to beg and borrow while I hide my wealth offshore.

Where is all the pomp and glory? What’s my life worth living for,

           Deck’d in ermine nevermore?

Sylvia Fairley

Do you remember the Lords, Lord Lucan?

Do you remember the Lords?

Squirmin’ in ermine as we saw each term in;

The claims of Dames who went down in flames;

no clause of the laws would escape our jaws,

out on a limb of the constitution.

Do you remember the Lords, Lord Lucan?

Do you remember the Lords?

Never more, dear Lucky, never more.

No Black Rod at the door.

Blench at the stench from an old cross bench.

Entomb

the cheers and jeers of half-cut peers in the gloom

to the boom of Big Ben’s belling,

knelling, swelling, telling, spelling

doom.

Nick MacKinnon

Oh weep ye for Democracy – she’s dead!

The Mother of all Parliaments no more,

This Other Place to be abolishèd,

And aged gentlefolk all shown the door!

Old Gordon’s Constitutional Review’s

A sham, a scam, a calumny, a fraud –

These sacred scarlet benches where we snooze

Removèd, as is every noble Lord!

For shame! A plague on every Starmerista:

The scheme is Gordon’s, execution’s Keir’s.

The sorry consequence? Hasta la vista

To all the noble, honourable peers.

The nub of my complaint? Not being funny:

Give me my peerage back – I paid good money.

David Silverman

No. 3286: That’s amore

Harry’s memoir tells of a love poem that Meghan wrote him (described by Rachel Cooke in the Guardian as ‘pure vomit emoji’). You are invited to submit a suitably toe-curling Valentine poem to Harry, or to the love object of your choice. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 8 February.