Sadiq Khan, June Sarpong and Christina McAnea join House of Lords

Sadiq Khan, June Sarpong and Christina McAnea were among the figures named for the House of Lords in Keir Starmer’s dissolution honours, with GOV.UK publishing the list under the heading “Dissolution Peerages 2024.” The appointments put a Labour mayor, a broadcaster and a major trade union leader on course for life seats in the upper chamber.

Khan is the Mayor of London. Sarpong is a broadcaster and OBE. McAnea is the general secretary of UNISON, the union that represents her members across the public sector and beyond. Their inclusion makes the latest round of honours politically significant as well as personal, because each brings a profile shaped by public office, media reach or organised labour.

The new peerages carry the rights attached to life membership of the Lords. The House of Commons Library says life peers receive a seat and voting rights in the House of Lords for life, and their titles are not inherited by descendants. That distinguishes them from hereditary peers, whose places in the chamber are passed down through family lines.

The appointments also landed as Labour has pledged to remove the remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords. That commitment, set out in the party’s 2024 general election manifesto and tracked by the UCL Constitution Unit Blog, means the chamber is already moving through another constitutional reset even as new appointees are brought in.

The scale of Starmer’s selections drew immediate scrutiny. The Electoral Reform Society said the prime minister had created 96 new peers in total, a figure it used to question the pace of change in the Lords. The group criticised the government for replacing hereditary peers before they had even left the chamber, sharpening debate over whether the upper house is being trimmed or merely repopulated with new political appointees.

The honours underline the direction of travel in Labour’s approach to the Lords: fewer hereditary seats, more life appointments, and a chamber that remains central to constitutional reform.