Lord Bonkers on the by-election for a Lib Dem hereditary peer

The sad death of Eric Avebury means there has to be a by-election to choose a new Liberal Democrat hereditary peer.

A BBC News report suggests there will be two candidates: John Russell (the current Earl Russell and the son of the much-missed Conrad Russell) and John Thurso (former member of the Lords and former MP for Caithness and Sutherland).

But then the electorate is barely larger than the number of candidates:

Three current Lib Dem hereditaries are entitled to vote: Lord Addington, the descendent of a Conservative MP from the 1880s; the Earl of Glasgow, the descendent of one of the Scottish Commissioners who negotiated the 1703 Union of the kingdoms of Scotland and England; and the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, who is directly descended from the Liberal Prime Minister H H Asquith.

Or should that be four current Lib Dem hereditaries?

Lord Bonkers holds a Rutland peerage, which means he is sometimes overlooked by the pundits, but he is determined to vote in this election.

I don't know which way he will vote, but he did remark at dinner the other night that "the Russells always come good in the end" and that "this Thurso fella needs to make up his mind which House he wants to sit in".

He also said that a donation to the Bonkers' Home for Well-Behaved Orphans before the votes are cast on 19 April would be "a Terribly Nice Gesture".

Thanks to Mark Pack.