Britain’s Conservative Party is moving to restrict the ability of the unelected aristocratic House of Lords to block the will of the British people as expressed through their elected representatives in the House of Commons. What an interesting idea, that every citizen’s vote should have the same weight, and one man should not have, in essence, more votes and greater say because some ancient king put a gold coronet on his ancestor’s head to reward him for his military service in a battle centuries before.

It is thus ironic that while the Tories are going in one direction in Britain, certain self-proclaimed leaders of the Republican establishment in the United States are moving in the exact opposite one and are seeking to use arcane convention rules and the funds of shadowy billionaires, promised in smoke-filled backrooms, to deny the 2016 Republican presidential nomination to Donald Trump, who, after the dust has settled from Super Tuesday, has almost certainly earned it.

The depth and breadth of Trump’s successes in the first 15 states to vote have been, well, to quote Trump himself, huge. Nine of his 10 victories were by wide margins. And where he has not won, he has generally been close behind the winner. He has shown dominance in states in the South, in New England, in the Mid-Atlantic and in the West, making him the only candidate to show strength outside his home turf and with a national campaign. He has won with evangelical Christian voters in the South and Hispanic voters in the West. And perhaps most important, he is bringing out hundreds of thousands of new voters, nearly quadrupling the Republican primary turnout in Virginia from just four years ago.