A Tory MP just tried to defend the appointment of Charlotte Owen to the House of Lords by comparing it to the democratic election of Labour’s new MP in Selby – and Twitter didn’t let him off the hook.
Marco Longhi, who was elected as the MP for Dudley North in 2019, tweeted in defence of Baroness Owen who became the UK’s youngest ever life peer on Monday, at the age of 30.
She made it onto Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list, having served as his aide and later his adviser.
Johnson’s press spokesperson Ross Kempsell, 31, also secured a place in the unelected Lords on Monday, courtesy of the former PM.
Solicitor and former prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service, Nazir Afzal, was then one of many on Twitter to criticise their appointments.
He tweeted: “Baroness Owen & Lord Kempsell who have less than a decade work experience between them but who now have jobs for life making laws because Boris Johnson said so, have made the case for abolition of the House of Lords clearer than I could.”
Then Longhi piped up. He tried to compare the new appointments to last week’s Selby and Ainsty by-election, which saw Labour MP Keir Mather, 25, overturn a more than 20,000 Tory majority.
Longhi claimed: “Your party just elected a 25 year old in Selby. Even younger than Owen and Kempsell. Anything to say about that? Is he not a lawmaker too?”
It didn’t take long for Twitter to rally together and point out a pretty obvious difference: Mather was elected and can be voted out by his constituents.
Owen and Kempsell, by contrast, were appointed to the House of Lords by Boris Johnson and have got their seats for life.