THE vote to end the 700-year-old right of hereditary peers to sit and vote at Westminster was a truly historic occasion. Britain will never be the same again - and will be manifestly better for it.

In some places a tear may be shed for the passing of a tradition on which the country's very constitution and its laws were built.

But what is, in fact, being wholesomely dispensed with is the spurious right of people with unearned rank and privilege having an automatic say in the running of the country.

And was not the offensive and undemocratic absurdity of this demonstrated to full effect by the drama staged by the outlandish Earl of Burford in the Lords as the final curtain came down on it.

He leapt on the Woolsack in protest as the government's "treasonable" action in ending his rights?

That he was there at all was purely by virtue of him being a descendant of Charles II's mistress, Nell Gwynn, affording him no virtue at all as a democrat, nor any of his ilk.

We are well rid of them - at long last.

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