Powell's speeches and TV interviews throughout his political life displayed a suspicion towards "the Establishment" in general, and by the 1980s there was a regular expectation that he would make some sort of speech or act in a way designed to upset the government and ensure he would not be offered a life peerage (and thus be transferred to the House of Lords), which, some believe, he had no intention of accepting so long as Edward Heath sat in the Commons. (Heath remained in the Commons until after Powell's death.) He had opposed the Life Peerages Act and felt it would be hypocritical to accept a life peerage himself since no Prime Minister ever offered him a hereditary peerage.