Big Issue founder Lord Bird has called for a radical shakeup in the way parties govern, saying it is “time to rethink the world of politics”.
The 76-year-old poverty campaigner said he would “relish a new attempt” at government, in an exclusive interview with HuffPost UK.
He offered to sit down with the Labour Party and warned them not to make the same mistakes as previous governments.
However, Bird disagreed with Keir Starmer’s plan to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with an elected chamber.
He described the Commons as a “bunch of amateurs” and said the second chamber was needed to stop government “getting away with blue murder”.
Bird also warned Rishi Sunak against austerity cuts, saying it would leave a “terrible legacy” for the next generation.
The peer has a private members’ bill aimed at enshrining long-term planning in UK politics. The Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill aims to combat the issues caused by the five-year election cycle.
Bird said: “I’ve spoken to Conservatives who said to me ‘look the party needs to be in the wilderness for a while, it needs to get back to its roots’.
“What those roots are is entirely for them. All those MPs who are jumping ship and saying ‘I’m not going to stand’. They are all signs that there is a shift and I think there’s a public shift.
“I would go with the flow. I’ve always kept myself above party politics, largely because when you’re working for the benefit of the poorest amongst us, you can’t be partisan.
“I would relish a new attempt at government, but I would only relish it on the basis that they didn’t try and reproduce what we’ve had already.”
He said the country needed a “revolution’ in what we mean by governments because they are “often creators of problems that get passed around”.
“We can’t just rely on the fact that something we did worked 50 years ago, or 20 years ago or 10 years ago is going to work now. This is the time to rethink the world of politics,” he said.
“I would say to the Labour government - expecting to get into power - they’ve seriously got to look at the problems of the Conservative and even Labour governments of the past - as it’s never been able to make many dents, except temporary, into poverty.”
Abolition Of The House Of Lords
Keir Starmer has promised to eradicate the unelected House of Lords and replace it with another second chamber.
Asked if he agreed with the plan, Bird said: “No, I mean, I’m a part of the reform of the House of Lords which was brought in in 2001 which was the bringing in people’s peers.
“I think there’s been about 200 crossbenchers who came out of that process. I think it’s a great idea. I don’t know that it worked completely.”
However, Bird said it was “absolutely bad news” that some prime ministers used the Lords as a “dumping ground” for favours, adding: “I mean what are they doing there? So I can see why a reform or a transformation would be necessary there.”
He took aim at the “enormous amount” of Lords who are “not active” but said he was not bothered about hereditary peers because he knows a number of them who work harder than any life peer.
“So I’m more interested, not in that kind of attitude as to how you got to here as to what you’re going to do while you’re here,” he added.
“I would love to see some radicalisation of shaking out the House of Lords and making it much more useful and actually bringing in people who are kind of ordinary.”
He also warned against the Lords being turned into an elected senate, adding: “That means you’d have two houses that have power and, if that was the case, they would be fighting each other like they do in America, between the Congress and the Senate.”
Bird said they should have an audit of what works and what does not work, adding: “I would say to the Labour Party ‘you really do need to look at the mechanism of government and if you want any help I’ll give it to you’.
“I will seriously sit down with them and say ‘let’s just look at how we can take the predictability of failure taking place where people are failing at school because the parents had problems and social problems and they’ve been born into poverty’.
“Let’s look at the laws of unintended consequences where you make a savings here and you cause a crisis over there.”
He also has some radical ideas to help ameliorate the housing crisis including short-term builds such as in Switzerland, using derelict Ministry of Defence properties and even innovation around geodesic domes.
The crossbench peer was appointed by an independent commission in 2015 as one of the “people’s peers”.
When Bird gave his maiden speech to the House of Lords, he said he got there by “lying, stealing and cheating”.
The magazine founder grew up in poverty, was taken into care at a young age, spent time in prison and slept rough on the streets of London.
He founded the Big Issue in 1991 which continues to provide a lifeline for thousands of homeless people.
However, the Big Issue Foundation has seen a whopping seven times more vendors needing critical fuel and food support this winter cost of living crisis.
Food prices are the highest they have been in 45 years, 9.7 million adults have experienced food insecurity this year and a further 1.7 million people are facing financial destitution or homelessness, according to the foundation.
“The crisis has spread way beyond the people that we started working with,” Bird said.
He is calling on the public to subscribe or contribute to Big Issue vendors during the sub-zero Christmas temperatures and the cost of living crisis.
“My pitch is completely empty in the mornings so I’m doing late morning and into the afternoon. Those online subscriptions are bringing me back up to somewhere where I was before the pandemic.”
- Vendor Jim Hannah, 63, sells the magazine in Norwich
“This winter is the worst in 45 years, with nearly seven million in fuel poverty, soaring rents and rapidly rising food prices and now our vendors have biting cold and snow to contend with,” he said.
It means that having a stable income from selling the magazine is more important than ever for Big Issue vendors.