Should you seek examples of poor old Oscar’s dictum that each man kills the thing he loves, look no further than the Conservative Party. Their leaders, as we have seen twice this year, kill themselves: the unlamented Boris Johnson by his inability to tell the truth, behave properly and take his job seriously; and the hapless Liz Truss by, well, being hapless. At least Truss, unlike her predecessor, took defenestration with good grace, without a cabal of the fanatical, fanatically stupid and amoral around her, encouraging her comeback. Johnson killed the Conservative party’s professed standing as the natural party of government, which upholds the constitution and champions the small state. The blink-and-you’d-miss-it Truss administration didn’t just kill the Conservatives’ reputation for sound money, it put a stake through its heart and buried it in a lead-lined coffin under two yards of concrete. And now, as a result, Rishi Sunak and his glove puppet Jeremy Hunt are killing their party’s reputation for low taxation. Tories are at one of those never-glad-confident-morning-again moments: no wonder supposedly talented young MPs, worrying about paying the mortgage, are announcing they will not contest the next election, which may be two years away. The game is up, and the wound is almost entirely self-inflicted.

And the pain just keeps on coming, imposed in its latest incarnation by Johnson from beyond the political grave. As the ultimate cronyist, he often gave breathtakingly unsuitable people peerages. Each of his lists included people utterly unfit to legislate for the rest of us. At the time of writing another list – his resignation honours – is awaited, with well-founded stories that the House of Lords Appointments Commission (which Johnson also attempted to stuff with cronies who would obediently do his bidding), has queried some of the names on his list. By the time you read this it might be out, and you can make your own minds up. But if earlier lists are a guide, the roll-call will include people you wouldn’t want to marry your offspring, people you might expect to meet only if you found yourself in a holding cell, and others whose public contribution is less than the average lavatory cleaner. The well-oiled phrase “brought into disrepute” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

All that is required now to be a Lord is to be a prime minister’s teenage research assistant

For several reasons this is regrettable. Even Johnson’s lists have included the odd person who deserves to be in the Lords, because of a valuable contribution to public life and an ethic of service. Sadly their names and reputations are tainted by association with the mediocrities and sleazeballs with whom they are now condemned to spend their working lives – if they can be bothered to attend the Lords, that is, which quite a few of them can’t. Indeed, invited to lunch in the Lords last month by an old and dear friend, on my way in I spied piles of long red boxes in the coat room. These contain the original writ of summons to the peerage, which some peers are apparently yet to collect. A random name I saw sticking out on a white slip of paper read “Lord Lebedev”, a name cited by some when wishing to illustrate what Johnson has done to the peerage.

But the real shame concerns what Hugh Gaitskell might have referred to as “a thousand years of history”: because for most of that period those with the power of patronage to put people in the House of Lords exercised it sensibly, rewarding great public service, or recognising those with a serious stake in the country. All it requires now is to be a prime minister’s teenage research assistant: no disposition towards being able to govern is considered necessary.

Everyone with a politics A level – and quite a few without – knows that the House of Lords, while it has the power to initiate legislation, is mainly a revising chamber. When the denizens of the House of Commons have finished considering a Bill, it goes upstairs where people who supposedly really know what they’re doing get a chance to look at it. There are former ministers with decades of experience in the ways of Whitehall; endless lawyers; quite a few teachers; doctors and scientists; captains of industry whose knowledge of business exceeds having the wit to give money to the Conservative party in order to get into the Lords in the first place; agriculturalists; former senior military commanders; the occasional ex-diplomat and civil servant and, by right, 26 bishops and 92 hereditary peers, the last group elected by their peers. The experience such people have gives them much to contribute. A peer recently told me of how short of veterinary expertise the House was when it came to scrutinising measures to do with animal welfare and disease. If that is so, then the government merely needs to identify the head of the veterinary profession in this country and offer him or her (I have no idea who it might be) a place on the red benches. With patronage rather than election the route in, such expertise as is deemed wanting need never be absent for long.

Yet – and here is the tragedy of the present situation – another peer told me that despite stuffing the Lords with all sorts of people, the government cannot find enough to act as ministers there. This turns out not to be because of the dismal calibre of Johnson’s appointees, but because there are too many ministers on the payroll in the Commons – meaning ministers in the Lords are mostly expected to serve without being paid. One would have thought that among those plutocratic industrialists at least, there’d be some potential ministers willing to do public service. Perhaps they’ve given so much money to the Tory party that they can’t afford it. Perhaps they just wanted power without responsibility: surely not. Can’t a place be found for the well-heeled Lord Lebedev in the Foreign Office (he is, after all, foreign), or the Trade department (he is, it appears, in trade)? The possibilities are endless, if he can only find his way to the Lords to collect his writ.

With the odds shortening by the day on Labour forming the next government, the Tory party and the peerage should note seriously Keir Starmer’s pledge to reform the House. Such plans will, as always, be held up by the difficulty of what that reform should consist of. An elected chamber would have a right to claim democratic legitimacy, and where would that leave the House of Commons? There is talk of a regional system, but England hasn’t had regional government since the Heptarchy a thousand years ago. Constitutionally bombing the country back to the Saxon age is not entirely appealing and besides, when the Blair government – pursuing an obsession of John Prescott – tried to encourage an interest in regional politics, the people told it to get lost.

Some interim reform – which like all the Lords’ interim reforms could pertain for decades – might, though, be quite easy. It would be to set the numbers upstairs at 400 by asking each grouping there to cut its numbers proportionately by whatever means they chose – election, compulsory retirement, straightforward sacking. The House, thus halved in size and far more efficient and productive, would then proceed on the basis of one out, one in. Prime ministers who whined about the limitation of their patronage could be allowed to create non-legislative peerages, as the Irish ones used to be and the Scottish ones were until 1958. They could give a peerage to some utterly useless crony, who would have the handle but couldn’t legislate. Given such people would be powerless, they could even have a hereditary title if that made them feel better: we haven’t had a new marquess for 86 years, for heaven’s sake. I know it sounds brutal, but a clever Tory party would do it now. It wouldn’t be half as nasty as what Sir Keir might do when he gets the chance. But this is not a clever Conservative party, but one intent on proving Oscar’s dictum. So what is coming will serve them bloody well right.

Simon Heffer is a historian, columnist for the Telegraph and Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Buckingham