This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

The appointment of Michelle Mone as a Tory peer is at least funny. The new baroness has an enjoyably complicated private life and has had what I believe is politely called a chequered business career, selling beer, bras and fake tan – a substance that might be a fitting symbol for modern Toryism.

To the extent that she has ever cared about politics at all, which I suspect isn’t much, she was until recently a Labour supporter.

Which isn’t unreasonable, given that the Tories are now interchangeable with Blairite Labour, and really ought to be asking Peter Mandelson to join them too. It would be good – and educational - to see him voting alongside Lady Mone in the division lobbies.

But the Prime Minister’s obvious contempt for the House of Lords is not funny at all. Who now, viewing this chamber crammed with Olympic expense claimers, millionaire political donors and veteran creeps, does not long for the return of the old hereditaries?

But alas, it cannot be done. Ancient marvels which took centuries to create can be undone forever in five minutes, and cannot then be restored – as we keep finding.

So it is time for all reasonable people to support the abolition of this ruined, discredited chamber, and work for a replacement that will protect the country from the immature careerists who now dominate the House of Commons.

The lower house is not a good example to follow. It is bought and paid for. Most of its members owe their seats to the endorsement of centralised party machines and their rich backers. MPs do not work for you. They work for the lobbyists who have bought their parties.

So the new Senate, which I now propose, should ban anyone who is a current member of a political party, or has been a member for the last five years. It should also ban anyone who has ever given more than £100 in any year to any party.

Nobody under the age of 55 should be able to stand for election, and nobody under the age of 30 should be able to vote in those elections. Nobody under 55 knows anything much about life. Nobody under 30 knows anything.

There should be seats reserved for women who have chosen to bring up their own children rather than go out to work, and quite a few seats for men and women who have served in combat and seen the face of battle.

I am sure you get the picture, and can think of other groups of people who need special representation. What we need and have not got at Westminster are real experience or wisdom, possessed by people who do not view politics as a career. We have had about 50 years of the other sort and if we don’t soon do something to restrain them, England won’t survive to mark the thousandth anniversary of 1066.

********

Kremlin Privilege Comes to London

Just after 11 o’ clock on Friday in Kensington High Street, motorcycle policemen appeared, blowing whistles and blocking the traffic at a busy junction.

Soon afterwards a small convoy came barreling down the wrong side of the road, headed by a car with blacked out glass and finishing with a large van from whose rear window the words ‘POLICE –STAY BACK!’ glared in illuminated letters.

It reminded me of my days in Moscow, when similar convoys would growl and thunder along the special lane (heated in winter to stop ice forming) down the middle of my street, bearing the leaders of the Soviet Union to and from their fenced-off country estates.

Why do we have this sort of thing in Britain? Who among us is so important that he can’t wait for the lights and has to have the traffic stopped for him.?No doubt the excuse of ‘security’, that pretext for all sorts of high-handedness, will be advanced.

But I suspect the occupant of the car would have attracted less attention, and less danger, if he had taken an ordinary taxi. If he’s really so worried about being recognised (I suspect he was probably in more danger of not being recognised) he should buy a bicycle and one of those silly anti-pollution masks that cover most of your face.

*********

Christian Europe's lost its nerve and its future

So, the transformation of this country by mass migration, begun by New Labour to rub the right’s nose in diversity, has now moved up a gear. One in eight of us was born abroad and how long before that’s one in six, and then one in four?

These people are not (as I am) the children of British subjects born while overseas. They are people who have grown up in a different culture. Never before in our history have we faced the task of integrating a minority so large. Never before have we had such a feeble idea of what being British is.

And yet people ask me, as if the idea were absurd, why I think this will be a Muslim country within a couple of generations. I can think of no force or idea or movement or faith more likely to prosper in the state to come.

Like all other civilisations which lost their nerve and the will to live, European Christianity is destined to become a minority in its own territory. By the way, if you don’t like this, and voted Tory at the last election, you have no business complaining. I told you repeatedly that the Tory concern about immigration was faked. They don’t want the power to stop it.

***********

They haven't gone away, you know

Great turmoil over in Northern Ireland because the police have suddenly discovered that the IRA still exists. Of course it does, along with its power to kill and maim. It is that unspoken but real threat which prevents the prosecutions of terror suspects, which prevents the flying of the British flag on public buildings in Belfast, which has ripped the British crown off police badges in the province, and which forces the Royal Family to consort with Sinn Fein godfathers. And it will go on existing until Sinn Fein rule a united Ireland from Dublin. Then the threat will become the government. And we call this disgrace ‘peace’.

********

Another 'lone wolf' turns out to be a dope user

Forgive me for mentioning it, but the latest ‘lone-wolf terrorist’ (just like almost all the others) turns out to be a cannabis user – arrested three times on hashish charges. One of those on the Amsterdam-Paris train who bravely subdued Ayoub El Khazzani, British IT consultant Chris Norman, said afterwards he was ‘concerned that he was on drugs of some sort’. Please, please, please can we have an inquiry into the drug use of violent criminals, even if it does upset the Big Dope lobby?