it not an extraordinary thing that upon the Budget we should be discussing at all the action of the House of Lords?’ enquired Churchill on a platform in July. It was, he maintained, ‘an institution absolutely foreign to the spirit of the age and to the whole movement of society’. Likening the Lords to Punch and Judy shows and other picturesque anachronisms, he claimed it had been roused from its pleasant slumber under Salisbury and Balfour to obstruct the work of democratically elected government. He clearly articulated the outcome if the peers, in a reckless act of class warfare, chose to
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