What do Sayeeda Warsi, Susan Kramer and Oona King all have in common? All three are from different political parties, but yet they share these characteristics - they are all women, they are all from ethnic/religious minorities and they are all failed politicians - so naturally it makes sense that they should all three be baronesses as well.

I've never been one who gave much thought to reform of the House of Lords, which apparently could be on Nick Clegg's mind after the failure of the AV referendum, but these three have finally convinced me.

Being a bit of a traditionalist I never really had much problem with the concept of hereditary peers although one can see that such a system is not the most democratic in the world.

The Labour government of Anthony Blair took a rather different view and did what it did best, which was to hack away at an imperfect part of the constitution and make it even worse.

The idea that an upper house, which does not have much power anyway, should be chosen by the government, rather than by birth, is certainly not a step towards greater democracy but to less. Choosing by birth maybe archaic, but it's preferable to a selection system similar to that used for the North Korean parliament.

Since the House of Lords became a place for which one was selected rather than born into, it has become not only a retirement home for old politicians, but a dumping ground for failed young ones.

Which brings us back to our three baronesses, whose dazzling qualities we shall now examine.

First of all we have the current Conservative Party Chairman, Sayeeda Warsi. The least successful of the three, despite now being a cabinet member (minister without portfolio which is probably just as well). Baroness Warsi did stand for election to the House of Commons in 2005 but failed to win her seat.

Just two years later she was made a baroness for no obvious reason and in 2010 she was made Chairman of the Conservative Party. Her suitability for the role was on full display at the Conservative Party conference later that year when she was questioned on whether membership of the party had gone up or down since 2005. Despite being Chairman of the party, and therefore the most obvious person to ask, she either could not or would not answer this basic question.

Oona King is somewhat more suitable, having at least managed to get elected as Labour MP for Bethnal Green & Bow at the 1997 and 2001 general elections. Ms King (as she then was) was the only half black, half Jewish woman MP of her time and voted for the Iraq war. Alas in 2005 she was ousted by the Respect Party, many of whose core voter's one suspects took objection to at least two of those characteristics.

After her defeat came a brief period in the wilderness as it were, before jumping back into the fray by challenging Ken Livingstone for the Labour candidacy for the coming election for London mayor in 2012. Sadly, and one might add shamefully, Labour chose Mr Livingstone, the apologist for Islamic extremists, ex-employee of Iranian state TV and ex-employer of Lee Jasper.

After her loss to Mr Livingstone an indecently short period of time passed before she was selected to be a baroness for the Labour Party. As the Tories did with Sayeeda Warsi, Labour decided that if one of their favoured few could not get elected, they would keep her among the ranks of politicians by other less democratic means.

Finally we come to the Liberal Democrat Susan Kramer, who on the suitability scale falls somewhere between baronesses Warsi and King, in that she managed to get elected in 2005 but lost her seat at the very next election in 2010.

Now Susan Kramer was not quite as high profile as either Sayeeda Warsi or Oona King, but I have to say I found her dreadfully annoying, as I do most Lib Dems (and I'm glad to see the rest of the country finally catching up with me). So it was with some pleasure that I heard she lost her seat to Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith. She later attempted to gain election to the position of Lib Dem party president, an election she also lost.

Imagine my horror when just a few weeks later she was on the BBC's Daily Politics programme in her role as a baroness. "Please no!" I thought, "Didn't she just get voted out?", "Wasn't that because people didn't want to see her anymore?" It was at that moment, tormented by the knowledge that I may have to watch this horribly annoying woman on TV for a moment more that I was converted to the cause of Lords reform.

There are many politicians, from all parties, that grate against my nerves and the nerves of others. I can endure this knowing that they have been elected and must therefore be liked by at least someone. But that does mean I have to put up with any more of Susan Kramer than I have to.

When considering this issue I wondered why the three most obvious targets were all women. It was later pointed out to me that they were not just women but minorities as well, one a Muslim, one a Jew and the other mixed race.

The immediate conclusion one could draw from this (and if anyone has a better one I'd be genuinely interested to hear it) is that the main political parties want to have within their ranks ethnic minority women to show how inclusive and un-racist/sexist they are.

This seems especially true of the Tories who wish to show that they are not the "nasty party" by having as their Chairman a northern Muslim woman, rather than a Norman Tebbit 2.0, even if that Muslim woman is apparently lacking in talent and not as good at winning elections as Norman Tebbit 1.0 was.

So an elected Lords? I have my concerns about that but it would be better than a dumping ground for failed politicians.

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