As Labour looks to stop all dukes sitting in second chamber, Charles Courtenay defends the ‘long view’ they represent
Charles Courtenay, the Earl of Devon. ‘We have a longer horizon, probably, than other people within the house,’ he says.Charles Courtenay, the Earl of Devon. ‘We have a longer horizon, probably, than other people within the house,’ he says.
He thinks it offers just “short-term political gain”, in changing the political balance of the House of Lords. Of the 805 sitting peers, 276 are Tories compared with Labour’s 185. He cites the environment, a pet subject as a farmer of his 3,500-acre estate. “The problem with the modern environment is everybody’s looking at financial returns, political cycles. Everything’s five, 10 years. Well, what about future generations? How do you get that vision into our policy? And one way you do that is have some people, a small group, who have been doing it for centuries.”
Courtenay, who wears a badge bearing an LGBT rainbow over Powderham, thinks the first-born child should prevail – “regardless of gender, which obviously, you know, in the modern day and age, it’s not a binary issue.”
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