cross-bencher

plural cross-benchers · alternative crossbencher

1. governmentA member of the British House of Lords or the Senate of Canada or Australia who sits on a cross-bench, or who proclaims independence or political neutrality.

   Putting the hereditary nobility to one side, the life peers, and especially the cross-benchers, carry on an older, less narrowly professional tradition of distinguished service: rule by the ‘great and the good’, if not necessarily the best and brightest.

   2007, Bruce Ackerman, “Meritocracy v. Democracy”, in London Review of Books, volume 29, number 5, page 9