Wanted: One aristocrat who would like to sit in the House of Lords for the rest of their life, vote on legislation that affects the public, and be paid £305 a day for turning up to parliament. The catch? The successful applicant is expected to be a Labour supporter. Keir Starmer’s party appears to have finally found an individual who fits the bill after a recruitment search for someone with a hereditary peerage who is willing to take up one of the seats allocated to Labour in the House of Lords. The favoured candidate is David Hacking, 3rd Baron Hacking, an 83-year-old barrister who spent decades sitting in parliament as a Conservative peer. He defected to Tony Blair’s New Labour in 1998 in protest at the growth of Tory Euroscepticism and then-leader William Hague’s tough talk on prison policy. In a brief manifesto for what he would do with the job, Hacking took aim at the former party leader Jeremy Corbyn: “The Labour party, in its own interests and in the interests of the nation, should be a government-in-waiting adopting social democratic policies which have general public support. The 2019 general election was a disaster. If [I] come back again to parliament I will do all I can to focus the party on this essential need.” The unusual recruitment process has arisen due to the half-reformed nature of the House of Lords. In 1999, Tony Blair’s Labour government removed the right of hundreds of the hereditary peers to take up their ancestral right to sit in parliament’s upper house. As a compromise, it allowed 92 hereditary peers to remain, on what was supposed to be a temporary basis. These seats were mainly allocated by party allegiance, with the majority of slots going to the Conservatives and four taken by Labour hereditary peers. Because the planned reforms to the House of Lords have never been enacted, every time one of these 92 individuals dies or retires, a byelection for the vacant seat in parliament is held. Anyone who has inherited a hereditary peerage can stand as a candidate, with other peers voting on whether to co-opt them into parliament. While the byelections for the Conservative and crossbench seats are hard-fought and competitive, the pool of potential Labour-supporting aristocrats is desperately small. Lord Hacking, who lost his seat in 1999, has repeatedly attempted to return to the House of Lords as a crossbencher over the past two decades. However, the forthcoming byelection caused by the death this summer of Labour-supporting Viscount Simon – and the absence of other Labour-supporting hereditary peers to take his seat – appears to have convinced him to adopt the banner of Starmer’s party. Hacking’s right to sit in the House of Lords descends from his grandfather, who was made a peer in 1945 in recognition of his time as a longserving Conservative MP. Last year he spoke in a debate at the Cambridge Union defending Tony Blair: “I walked across the house to join New Labour. I was the first person in living memory to walk across the floor of the house in the House of Lords. That’s hardly surprising because many members of the House of Lords have some difficulty walking.” The election, in which every member of the Lords has the right to vote, is not a totally foregone conclusion, as Hacking first has to see off two challengers. One is Thoby Kennet, 3rd Baron Kennet, who runs a PR agency promoting industrial hemp and has repeatedly tried to be elected as a Liberal Democrat. The other is Anthony Biddulph, 5th Baron Biddulph, a former interior designer and perennial candidate who is running for the Labour-allocated seat as a Conservative. Although there is some embarrassment in Labour circles about the continued existence of hereditary peers, and while the party is not commenting on the process, the view is that it would be failing in its duty if it did not take the chance to secure another Labour-supporting vote that could prove key if it comes to crunch votes on legislation. It can also highlight quirks of the party’s history. The last time a byelection for a Labour hereditary peer arose was earlier this summer, when the successful – and only – candidate was the 3rd Viscount Stansgate, better known as Stephen Benn. He is the son of the former cabinet minister Tony Benn, whose protests against hereditary titles in the 1960s helped hasten their replacement with life peerages.