It can be really fun to hate the Lords. I mean as a concept they’re easy to get riled up over. Over-privileged, out of touch, and most of all unelected. A crumbling relic in the age of the mature democracy.

Yet with a growing taste for the idea of an elected second house, isn’t it worth stopping to think about what we’re really in danger of losing? In his Republic, Plato put forward a bold and pretty radical idea, Philosopher Kings. Aside from a cheeky piece of self-promotion what he was getting at was the simple truth that those who might be best equipped to rule aren’t necessarily the ones who want power or the ones we want to be in power. They’re the people who actually know what to do with it.

Plato’s Philosopher Kings wouldn’t be politicians with a thirst for control or popularity; they’d be qualified purely because they are the ones who are able to know what’s truly good. If you think that sounds like a vague and mystical concept it’s because it is. For all his talk about the ‘good’, he never quite got around to defining it. But we can still imagine what kind of people he was talking about. People who deal with ideas and concepts rather than style and spin. For Plato our everyday concerns and problems are like shadows on a cave wall. Our leaders have to be the people who can see the reality behind those problems, people who could escape the cave and govern by the light of day.

They’d be immune to the treacherous and unfathomable sway of public opinion and more often than not public hysteria. They could resist the temptation to dispense with our fundamental liberties as soon as the nation comes under threat. They could avoid having to use political catchphrases like the ‘squeezed middle’ and ‘alarm clock Britain’ and actually focus on debating what is right and what is wrong. By avoiding the dirty business of actual politics they would be getting on with the higher and altogether more meaningful pursuit of deciding what’s best for the country.

So where do the Lords come in? Call me naïve, but maybe that’s what they have the potential to be. Yes the idea of giving power to the unelected should make us feel uncomfortable. And as romantic as Plato’s vision of a country ruled by noble experts is, it veers dangerously close to being a totalitarian one. But what we’re talking about is hardly dictatorship; it’s creating a body of people at the top of their respective fields. Academics, leaders of business, writers, doctors, scientists and lawyers, all free from political games, all free to stand for what they stand for and all free to be a check on the power of the all too often self-serving politicians we know and love in the house of commons.

If you’re still sceptical then I hardly blame you. But at the same time, this isn’t just idealistic speculation. Searching through the House of Lords debates you can find scientists passionately defending the value of stem cell research, bishops challenging the view of education as an investment commodity and philosophers arguing over how the law should be applied. It’s a level of debate you’d be hard pressed to find in the Commons, where earnest voices are drowned out by the sea of squalid political point scoring that’s come to dominate.

Aren’t we at some level a little bit glad that people like Robert Winston or Mary Warnock have a say in what goes on in the country? Isn’t it a good thing that the guy who helped set up Teach First or the former chair of Oxfam have a voice and a vote in what’s really important?

It’s a powerful idea when you think about it. For Plato the only way a country could be ruled justly is if ‘those now called kings genuinely and adequately philosophise’. Looking at the people in power today, I get the feeling he might be onto something.