It is starting to dawn on me that I will soon be the only commoner I know. I am racking my brains trying to think of anyone I have even met in recent years who has not been ennobled, and at present I am drawing a blank. Each time I am out of the UK I return to find another honours list and another batch of peers. By the time the magazine has gone to press this column’s sub-editor will probably have been called to the Upper House.

Should the Upper House really be a chamber filled with failed MPs, council leaders and spads?

This is not – I would like to stress – sour grapes. I have no personal desire to be in the House of Lords. Indeed it always surprises me that anyone would. They can’t have ever been there. I also vaguely share Kingsley Amis’s views about accepting titles. Before he did accept one, Amis expressed doubts – the main one being a fear of embarrassment. Amis feared the idea of entering the writers’ room in heaven and the names of people being announced as they came in. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Vladimir Nabokov. Marcel Proust. Sir Kingsley Amis.’

In any case, the list of peers grows and as it does so it becomes ever less distinguished. Last year there was some kerfuffle when Charlotte Owen was put into the House of Lords by Boris Johnson. People complained that the then 29-year-old former adviser at No. 10 might not be the most qualified candidate. What is more, if she lives a long life we can expect to see her in unelected office for a good six decades to come.

Last week’s list included somebody younger and even less distinguished. Carmen Smith is 27. She has been nominated to enter the Lords by Plaid Cymru. The Welsh nutters’ party appointed her because she was a political staffer for the party. Not an MP, or even a member of the Welsh Eisteddfod or whatever it is called. Just a staffer for the party – also now looking forward to a good six decades on the public purse.

You may say that the Upper House always had some low-grade people sent there, and that is true. But not to this monumental extent. At least the hereditaries didn’t need to pretend to be in touch with public opinion and so could pursue whatever causes diverted them. Former MPs have some reason for being there, so long as they had careers of some distinction. It seems obvious to me that people with real expertise in areas outside of politics (military leaders, successful business leaders, historians) can add something meaningful to debates. But if the House is simply a place for failed politicians and pundits then it is very hard indeed to see what value it adds.

Evgeny Lebedev was famously nominated for a peerage by Boris Johnson, despite some people thinking that being the son of a KGB agent and oligarch should disqualify him from the role. Personally I think that Lebedev always deserved some form of honour for buying up and then destroying the Independent newspaper, but this is a niche view. What is clear is that he was put into the Lords because he is a friend of Johnson’s and invites him to nice parties in Umbria. I have nothing against Umbria, but hosting the odd holiday there should not grant you the right to have a vote on all UK legislation for the next half-century.

But this latest list. Good God. One of those put into the Upper House is a former Conservative MP of no distinction who has spent the past decade editing a website. I suppose that if the House requires advice on how to write an unreadable blogpost about who might be in the running in a safe seat then the UK is in safe hands. As it perhaps is with John Fuller, the former leader of Norfolk council – also sent into the Lords by the Conservatives. Sorry, scrap that. Fuller was only leader of South Norfolk council. North Norfolk was apparently never part of his fiefdom. In any case, what if we need more than this in our legislative chambers?

Ayesha Hazarika is a couple of years older than me, a perfectly nice person and a somewhat uninspired newspaper columnist. She once co-authored a book on PMQs. In 2017 Iain Dale named her the 75th in his list of ‘most influential people on the left’ – a title she has touted proudly – the result of her groundbreaking work as an adviser to both Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman. Thanks to the Labour party she too is off to the Lords.

Apart from a lack of distinction, the one thing all these people have in common is that they have spent their lives in politics – usually in Westminster – without ever making it to an even remotely high level. Should Ed Miliband one day be in the Lords? Possibly. Should a former adviser to him? I would say not.

If there are any justifications for the Upper House they are firstly that it is a chamber where unpopular causes can be pursued because its members are fearless and impossible to chuck out. Secondly, it should be a place where experience and knowledge not available to your average MP can be put to some use. Can that really be said of a chamber filled with failed MPs, council leaders and spads? It makes the Upper House a low-resolution copy of the House of Commons. The chamber for those who couldn’t make it to the other one.

In any case, I am aware that whatever I say – and however true it is – some people will insist that I am simply bitter that everybody except me has now been made a life peer. But I insist once again, I am innocent of envy or corruptibility. Whenever people have tried to purchase my support and dangled baubles in front of me I have always been severe. For me it’s a hereditary earldom or nothing. As P.G. Wodehouse’s Uncle Fred once said: ‘Earls are hot stuff. When you get an Earl, you’ve got something.’ A man ahead of his time.