Strange encounters of the EU kind

This week the House of Lords voted to stop Brexit. The House of Lords is a strange, alien creature to most British people, but in fact it is the second house of Parliament, similar to the Senate in the Czech system, but with a continuous history from 1285, existing separately from the lower house since the 1300s.

These days there are not as many aristocrats there though- 80% are so-called 'life peers', appointed by the successive Prime Ministers with the advice of an independent commission and the main party leaders of opposition parties. When we say 'successive Prime Ministers', we nowadays mean Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron- these are the Prime Minsters who decided…