It shouldn't be down to the wrongdoer to take action

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It’s unclear whether Mandelson has committed any crimes or not in relation to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, although – to date, at least – I’ve seen no serious suggestion that he has. Folly, yes, plenty of that. Failing to declare income to parliament, maybe: he says that he can’t remember receiving money from Epstein, and it’s just about possible that there’s some other explanation for the relevant lines on bank statements. Lobbying other ministers to reduce the tax bill for a friend, yes, that seems pretty clear cut. Leaking sensitive government documents to his friend, again, yes that also seems pretty clear cut. None of it, however, appears to be criminal. It’s enough, though, for people to be demanding that he should be stripped of his peerage as well as standing down immediately from the House of Lords.

It is a ‘feature’ of the English system of governance that people appointed to the Lords cannot easily be stripped of either their membership or their title. Apparently, it requires a specific act of parliament in each and every case, and Sir Starmer appears to have concluded that that is just too much trouble and is instead simply appealing to Mandelson to voluntarily relinquish his seat, and voluntarily stop using his title, while formally retaining it. It’s the sort of compromise and cop-out which bedevils a constitution which assumes that all parliamentarians, in whichever House, are inherently honourable people.

It’s a silly assumption to make – and it’s not as if there haven’t been previous cases to underline the point. The one which immediately leaps to mind is, of course, Jeffrey Archer. Unlike (so far) Mandelson, Archer really did commit criminal acts and was sentenced to four years as a guest of Her Majesty as a result. On his release in 2003, and although not a very active member, he remained a member of the House of Lords until he voluntarily stepped down in 2024. He remains a peer today.

It’s true that the law was subsequently changed – but it took more than ten years, until 2014 – to make it easier to sack a member of the House of Lords for serious crimes (although being sentenced to prison for less than twelve months, which one might think is still rather more serious than anything Mandelson has so far been found to have done, is still considered insufficient grounds for expulsion). The point here is not to defend Mandelson – on the contrary, he deserves to be kicked out. It is, rather, to highlight the arbitrary and inconsistent way in which things work, and the laziness and incompetence which means that successive governments would prefer to leave things alone than address an obvious failing. Demanding that the man accused of poor behaviour takes action himself rather than ensuring that he could be dealt with swiftly and effectively is a less than honest political response.

Representing who to whom?

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According to some Tories, the best way of preventing Nigel Farage from getting elected to a seat in parliament for a five year term is to give him a seat in parliament for life, by sending him to the institution for sufferers of Post Imperial Stress Disorder. The logic is curious, but then logic has long ceased to be their strong point. Others think Farage should be made the official representative of the UK in Washington. And some of the most desperate actually want to do both.

It’s true, of course, that if Trump were to be re-elected in November, he would be quite keen on the idea of having Farage as the UK ambassador. Doubtless, Farage would be well-placed to suck up to him on behalf of the UK to form a close working relationship with him, but supporters of the plan seem to be rather overlooking the fact that the main job of the ambassador is to represent the UK in Washington, not the USA in London. Assuming that Labour win the UK general election sometime between now and November, it seems highly unlikely that Farage could successfully represent the views of a Labour government, even under a not-so-lite Tory like Starmer. And even less likely that he’d try. Further, since the objective is to deter Farage from standing in the UK election, he’d have to be appointed very soon. That in turn means that, in the meantime, he’d be dealing with the Biden administration. It really is hard to conceive of a better way to p*ss off Biden, and damage UK-US relations, than to appoint a cheerleader for his opponent, an ambassador whose idea of tact and diplomacy invariably involves the use of the biggest megaphone he can lay his hands on.

On the other hand, Sunak seems to have given up trying to avoid upsetting anyone other than the extremists in his own party. Appointing Farage is a suggestion that the Tory high command have apparently rejected, but that’s only what they’re saying this week. Given the extent to which consistency has become an unfamiliar and unwanted virtue in the Tory Party, who  knows what they’ll say next week if Reform’s poll ratings continue to climb? Given the increasing likelihood of some sort of reverse takeover of the Tories by Reform after the election, keeping on the right side of the probable next, or next-but-one, leader might even appeal to the PM, at least until he can escape the nightmare and take up a new and better-paid job in sunny California.

Offering someone a direct bribe not to stand in an election is, of course, illegal under electoral law, but mere legality is, like consistency, another discarded value for what used to be known as the party of Laura Norder. It’s not an insurmountable barrier anyway. All they need to do is to present membership of the Lords as a punishment rather than a reward – and that’s not exactly an unrealistic assessment. Ennobling Farage might even help to prod Labour into reversing its previous U-turn on abolition of the Lords: Farage might yet turn out to have some useful function after all. The thing that still makes it all highly unlikely, however, is that it would require Sunak to make a decision rather than prevaricate. So probably not going to happen unless the desperate supporters of this mad proposal depose him in May.

Finding PISD sufferers an appropriate home

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Parliament suffered an outburst of outrage yesterday as the dinosaurs who still don’t recognize that the UK no longer rules the waves fulminated against the audacity of the Chinese for daring to engage in illicit hacking activities. They’ve even dared to hack their way into the publicly available electoral registers. In the olden days, the response would have been to send a gunboat or two up the Yangtze river to teach the natives a lesson, but an aircraft carrier which struggles to get out of port without breaking down somehow doesn’t really cut it. Post Imperial Stress Disorder is, apparently, a thing. And it seems to be quite widespread, even amongst those who never knew Empire. It’s easy to understand how PISD sufferers might feel frustrated when the serious and dramatic UK response is a few meaningless sanctions against two named individuals and a small and obscure company.

The demands to be told exactly what the Chinese have been up to are reasonable, up to a point – but it raises a question about reciprocity. Does anyone seriously believe, for instance, that the UK’s security services are not hacking their way into Chinese computer systems with malicious intent? (If they’re not, that is probably an even bigger scandal.) Should the demand for openness and honesty be applied to the UK’s nefarious cyber activities as well? It’s a silly question, of course. We all know that the UK is special and unique, and therefore entitled to use whatever means are appropriate to protect its interests, including breaking international law whenever the fancy takes it. And not just in a ‘specific and limited way’ either.

The demand that others be held to a higher standard than ‘us’ is one of the main visible symptoms of PISD, but the disorder itself is incurable, sadly. The best we can do is try to isolate sufferers from the rest of society, and let them see out their days in comparative solitude. Somewhere they can rant to their hearts’ content and influence very little. That may, in fact, be the best justification anyone has ever come up with for the existence of the House of Lords. Seen as part of the selection process for membership of that institution, yesterday’s performance in parliament might even start to make sense.

Giggling as a deterrent

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What’s in a word? In one of the most powerful and memorable political speeches of my lifetime – perhaps of all time – a true giant of politics told us, “I have a dream”. Today, in perhaps the most forgettable of a series of eminently unmemorable press conferences, a tetchy and soon-to-be-forgotten politician told us, multiple times, “I have a plan”. Articulating the detail of the plan, beyond putting the entire effort of the government machine into sending a tiny number of people to Rwanda whether doing so is lawful or not, has, once again, eluded him. His ‘plan’, such as it is, is so badly flawed that it would never have passed were it not for the support of those who went to such lengths to make it clear that they already know that it will fail.

He now fears that the unelected House of Lords, an institution which has always been known as a bastion of traditional conservatism which is why the Tory Party has long resisted reform (even if they're not all Conservatives in the party political sense), might actually act in accordance with those traditional values and defend the rule of law. The result is that he has been reduced to begging those conservatives to follow him by ditching all that they have previously believed and capitulating to the lawless right of his party. He seems blissfully unaware of the fact that at least some of those ‘loyal’ MPs who did not rebel over the last two days of debate voted for the final bill with a degree of confidence that it would be well and truly mauled by their lordships with no need for said MPs to put their own heads above the parapet. Cowardice comes in many forms.

Yesterday’s events also revealed that there is a secret weapon which can deter at least some of the extreme right-wingers who have so successfully cowed Sunak into submission. Giggling. It seems that one of the self-styled leaders of the revolt backed down at the last moment because Labour MPs were giggling and taking the mick as the over-hyped rebellion turned into an impressive demonstration of the willingness of Tories to vote in favour of that which they had so vigorously opposed just hours previously. The only question is ‘who’s weapon is it?’. Whilst Starmer’s ridicule of Sunak earlier in the afternoon proved to be effective against the PM, Labour’s fit of the giggles seems to have worked to Sunak’s advantage. Perhaps he should ask Starmer to organise more of the same the next time the certifiable tendency of his party - a much more accurate description than the rather grandiose and self-important, 'five families' - threatens a revolt.

More words, not action, from Labour?

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Looking back over successive elections since the time of Harold Wilson, I can’t remember a point during the lifetime of a Conservative government when the Labour Party was not promising, or at least talking about, either abolition or else major reform of the House of Lords. Nor can I remember a time when they’ve ever delivered on the fine words once elected. When push comes to shove, there are always other priorities and too many vested interests. And Labour PMs have usually ended up finding that the House of Lords is useful to them as a means of rewarding donors and supporters – or even just getting rid of troublesome MPs.

Today’s Great Announcement of the results of a Commission led by Gordon Brown can only sensibly be read in that historical context; the rhetoric is fine, but will they deliver this time? Some Labour voices in the Lords are already suggesting that the proposals should be watered down or delayed. There are, they argue, more important so-called ‘bread-and-butter’ issues which need addressing first, as though governments can only focus on one issue at a time. The words coming from Starmer and Brown today suggest that they realise that constitutional reform is not as divorced from the immediate economic reality as many seem to suggest: empowering the regions and nations of the UK can also help government to be more responsive, if done properly. That caveat (‘if done properly’) is an enormous one, though. The whole history of devolution tells us that the centre only ever cedes power reluctantly, always seeks to control tightly how it can be used, and always retains the right to ungrant what it previously granted. And whilst the idea that Starmer's Labour will be any different from the Tories on those questions has yet to be either disproven or demonstrated, the history of Labour attitudes to reform once they get elected is not exactly encouraging.

Some of the answers that Starmer and Brown have been giving today already look evasive, and there is a marked lack of detail on how the grand principles will actually work. What do they mean, for instance, when they claim that the replacement for the House of Lords (the council for regions and the nations) will represent the nations and regions? How will that work? How will they be elected? If elections are fought by the same parties as fight elections for the House of Commons, the new ‘council’ will end up being defined more in terms of its party balance (between ‘government’ members and ‘opposition’ members); the idea that, for instance, the Welsh members will vote and act as a bloc fighting for Welsh interests instead of splitting between the government and the opposition is one for the fairies. None of this is answered by today’s announcement – these are, apparently, all matters for ‘consultation’ and debate (which the more naïve might have thought was what the commission was supposed to be doing).

They are also promising legislation to ‘protect’ the powers of the Senedd and the other devolved administrations, but the ‘how’ is again missing. Unless they are proposing constitutional changes which will abolish the idea that no legislation passed by one government can tie the hands of any future government (and they certainly do not seem to be proposing that), then all they can really promise is that the next Labour government will offer such protection for the duration of a single term. It’s not much of a promise in reality. The real underlying problem, the one that they have completely ignored, is the supposition that ‘sovereignty’ is invested in the monarch by God and exercised by Westminster by the grace of the monarch. It’s the inevitable result of a monarchical constitution. Without moving to a position where ‘sovereignty’ is expressly recognised as belonging to the people in each nation or region, on whose behalf it is exercised through the various parliaments, it’s hard to see how they can deliver the long term changes needed. The founders of the Labour Party would have had little problem with understanding that, but the timid creatures currently inhabiting the party will continue to run a mile from the idea of real empowerment.

Smart thinking?

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For as long as I can remember, the Labour Party has been promising either abolition or reform of the House of Lords. Under Blair, they actually took a few baby steps, and managed to reduce the number of seats occupied by hereditary peers to a ‘mere’ 92, but then progress stalled, partly because it was too hard and partly because they’ve never been able to agree with each other on exactly what reform is needed. They’re at it again today – the current temporary manager of their Scottish branch office has said that Labour will replace the House of Lords with an elected Senate, in which the members have “…a mandate to represent their nation or region”, and in which “Scotland and other parts of the UK [will be given] a greater say in UK-wide legislation”. It’s meaningless waffle, announced before the work has been done to flesh out how such a mandate would work in practice (spoiler: it can’t and won’t), let alone how ‘Scotland and other parts of the UK’ can avoid simply being outvoted in a whipped vote (spoiler: they will be outvoted).

This is, apparently, one prong of Labour’s three-pronged ‘big idea’ “as an alternative to Nicola Sturgeon’s plan for a second referendum”. Another of the prongs is “a legal duty to cooperate between the UK Government and the Scottish Government”. Well, yes. The chances of English politicians – even Labour ones – accepting that England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland should be represented as and treated as equals has a probability close to zero. And what exactly does it mean if the different governments have very different views on what needs to be done? It sounds more like a demand that devolved administrations do as they are told than a means of guaranteeing no interference in devolved issues. His third prong is “joint governance councils to replace the Joint Ministerial Committees [which] would have a statutory footing”. And how exactly does that future-proof devolution against the next Tory government which can simply repeal the legislation or, if it follows the current example, just ignore it? This master plan is supposed to persuade Scots, in particular, that they should forget any idea of taking control of their own affairs and depend on Labour instead. It’s embarrassing that Labour should be reduced to such half-witted sloganizing.

The problem with devolution is, and always has been, that devolving power within a unitary state whose constitution is based on the belief that God invested all power in the monarch who merely allows parliament to exercise it on a temporary basis means that power is only ever loaned and can always be taken back, something which the Johnson government is doing ever more frequently. No form of words in any Act of Parliament can ever be depended on as long as such Acts are based on the absolute right of the legislature to reverse them and the sacred doctrine that no parliament can ever bind its successors. It’s a constitutional principle in which Labour are as heavily invested as the Tories. The UK could be saved (leaving aside whether that is desirable or not) as a political entity, but it depends on reform on a scale which Labour are incapable of even imagining, let alone implementing. A written constitution, an acknowledgement that it is the people not the monarch who are sovereign, switching to full proportional representation – these are the minimum guarantees which can allow the degree of effective autonomy which might be enough to deter some from seeking independence.

Labour is not only offering none of those things, it is instead declaring that it will form a minority government and dare the SNP and other non-Tory parties to bring it down by opposing any of its policies. And that’s another half-baked plan in itself. Whilst it’s true that voters in England might be mightily annoyed if the SNP brought down a Labour government in a way which led to a return of the Tories, the assumption that the same would be true in Scotland is a very shaky one. It assumes that SNP voters will accept a Labour government for which they did not vote imposing its will on them because the alternative is a Tory government for which they also didn’t vote imposing its will upon them. Threatening to be as dictatorial as the Tories they hope to replace doesn’t immediately strike me as the smartest of moves. But then, it wasn’t being smart which led to Labour losing almost all its support in Scotland. At least they’re consistent.

Where's the Praetorian Guard when it's needed?

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Caligula, the third emperor of Rome, never actually appointed his horse to the Senate, despite the popular myth. He certainly wanted to, and fully intended to, but he was assassinated by the Praetorian Guard before he could implement his plan. The historical record suggests that it wasn’t so much that he believed that the horse would be particularly good at the job, it was more about showing that he had the power to appoint it, and that no-one could stop him. It wasn’t his only foible – he also spent huge sums of the empire’s money on building projects, some of which were useful and others merely bizarre, like the 3 mile floating bridge which he ordered to be built from impounded merchant vessels weighted down with sand and tied together across the Bay of Bauli so that he could gallop back and forth across it. It seems that his reign started comparatively normally but after just a few months in the job he suffered a serious illness which left him unhinged and he spent the rest of his life displaying his worst tendencies, including outright cruelty to others (including members of the Senate) and a series of brazen affairs. It was during that latter period that he became famous for the phrase “Remember that I have the right to do anything to anybody”. In an empire with a lack of checks and balances, he did things simply because he could do them and get away with them.

History never precisely repeats itself, but there are often parallels. Appointing a brother and a whole batch of cronies to the House of Lords isn’t the same as appointing a horse to the Senate, for instance, although the bits about impractical bridges and brazen affairs do strike a certain chord. Suffering a serious illness after a few months in post also rings a bell, although I wouldn’t argue that Covid-19 was responsible for the PM’s unhinging, not least because the evidence for a fully hinged prior state is somewhat lacking. But the most obvious parallel is the apparently untrammelled power to appoint whoever he wishes to the legislature, whether they’re suitable or not, with little control over the process. The parallel which is so far sadly missing is the presence of a Praetorian Guard, even if, in these more enlightened times, a political rather than a literal assassination would suffice.

"We can't vote them out"

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One of the core beliefs of Anglo-British nationalists is that the UK is somehow the font of democracy.  If there’s a phrase that they love, it’s the idea that England (and the term really was coined in relation to England not the UK) possesses the ‘mother of parliaments’.  It’s one example of the way in which the Anglo-British nationalist perspective differs significantly from both a more European perspective and the facts of the matter.

The English parliament is far from being the oldest in the world – that honour belongs elsewhere – but more importantly there is often a conflation of two very different concepts; having a parliament is not at all the same thing as being a democracy.  The fact that a monarch at some point convened a council of barons to advise him does not amount to the establishment of democracy.

Democracy is not a UK invention; it is very much a foreign one, later imported to the UK.  Indeed, from an objective rather than jingoistic perspective the UK looks to be a recent and reluctant convert to the principle of democracy, only introducing universal suffrage theoretically in 1928 whilst not doing so in practice until the right of some people to vote twice or even three times in the same election was abolished in 1948; and still refusing to abolish the role of hereditary peers, appointees and bishops of the official state religion.  ‘Democracy’ in the UK is a work in progress rather than a fully implemented concept, and that progress remains painfully slow leaving a version of ‘democracy’ which looks antiquated and arcane from the perspective of astonished Europeans.

It’s true, of course, that the Westminster system has been the model for many other countries, but these are countries which used to be part of the British Empire and for which their system was designed, unsurprisingly, by the colonial power in Westminster.  Those who think their own system perfect are hardly likely to suggest a better one for anyone else, and the copying process invariably included the retention of the hereditary head of state and a role for the completely unelected Privy Council until such time as the countries ‘granted’ their independence got around to changing it.

Yet despite the obvious and plentiful evidence of the UK’s own incomplete transition to democracy, the Anglo-British nationalists lecture the rest of Europe and the world about democracy and complain that the European Union is somehow ‘undemocratic’, just because the people of one member state, the UK, can’t unilaterally vote out the president, commissioners and civil servants appointed by the governments of 28 member states, completely overlooking the fact that the people of the UK can’t even vote out their own head of state, or even the members of one of the two houses of parliament.  The astounding part is that so many people fall for this false commitment to ‘democracy’.

Finding allies in strange places

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When the House of Lords amends legislation presented by a Labour government, certain sectors of the media are keen to present the institution as a bulwark for freedom and democracy against the evils of socialism; when they amend legislation presented by a Tory government, they become traitors and fifth columnists.  That’s how it appears to me anyway.  I’ll admit to a deep sense of unease that the UK’s system of democracy is so badly broken that the defence of parliament’s right to take the decisions rather than be simply railroaded by the government is only being defended and promoted by a bunch of hereditaries, appointees and bishops.  Some might argue that it demonstrates the value of having a second chamber which can take a less partisan approach to whatever subject is being debated.  I think it demonstrates the need for a parliament which has more distance between it and the government with more room and time for proper debate and scrutiny, rather than one where MPs are simply whipped either for or against the government of the day.  (At a more mundane level, it does demonstrate why at least some of us independentistas believe that – for as long as such an undemocratic and unaccountable body as the House of Lords exists – it is better to have a voice there than not.)

It remains to be seen whether the government will attempt to reverse all the defeats being inflicted upon it when the legislation returns to the Commons.  It’s hard to see at the moment how May can afford not to try, with the extremists on her own side demanding that she do so; but it’s equally hard to see how she can get a majority in the Commons on all of the issues on which she’s been defeated.  When members of her own party are describing the compromise towards which both parliamentary arithmetic and economic reality are pushing the government as ‘cretinous’, it is clear that the underlying tensions over Europe which brought down so many of her predecessors are getting stronger rather than weaker.  There is only a limited period during which the government can continue to stick its fingers in its ears and claim that the EU’s categorical statements are merely an ‘opening negotiating position’.  Meanwhile, other Brexiteers seem to believe that all be well if only the Prime Minister would sack her chief negotiator.  The problem, apparently, is simply that the UK is not being forceful enough in demanding that the EU dismantle itself in order to accommodate the UK.

I don’t know how all this will end, but I suspect that the only thing left which gives the government and the Tory party any chance of surviving in power until Brexit day next year – let alone until the end of the transition period – is the abject failure of the main opposition party to seize the opportunity in front of it.  Public opinion seems to me to be moving, albeit slowly, and even if it’s not yet clear that opinion has turned against Brexit itself, there is increasing evidence that majority opinion would tend to favour remaining in the single market and customs union if given the choice.  For sure, I’d agree that that is Brexit-in-name-only, but a determined and united opposition party prepared to show some leadership on the issue could probably gain a majority around such a proposal.  It would be in line with what their voters and members are saying as well, but they seem no more able to unite on a clear line than the governing party.

There’s something strange and uncomfortable about a position where those doing most to mitigate the effects of Brexit are the unelected peers, whilst the main opposition party is effectively aiding and abetting the extremists through a lack of resolve, clarity and leadership.

Irrelevance in ermine

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Despite all the ferocious warnings that they were given not to get above their stations (and there’s a curious thing for commoners to tell aristocrats, isn’t it?), their lordships decided to go ahead anyway and pass what most of us would see as an eminently reasonable amendment to the Brexit Bill.  But treating foreigners as people rather than as bargaining chips in a negotiation isn’t the style of the UK Government, so they will be seeking to reverse it, as is their right - in constitutional terms, even if not in moral ones.

I found the remarks of the Tory MP for Monmouth in the report on the stern warning that he gave their lordships interesting in what it told us about his mindset (and presumably the mindset of many of his colleagues).  He told us, in effect, that he’d never previously given a moment’s thought to whether the House of Lords performs any useful function or whether it needs to exist at all. 

At one level, I’m not really surprised; the acceptance of ‘what is’ as the natural order of things is a central belief to those whom he describes as ‘true blue conservatives’.  But at another level, the lack of critical thinking and analysis of the way in which the UK is governed, and the blind adherence to the way we’ve always done it, goes to the heart of the problem in the way we are governed.  Are the honourable member for Monmouth and his colleagues about to stumble, by accident, on an important truth?  I suspect not; there will be a stamping of feet and some over-the-top rhetoric, and then things will return to normal, with their lordships told to stop trying to behave as though they’re a meaningful part of the legislative process.  And they'll dutifully obey, won't they?  They know their place.

Bludgeoning their lordships

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It’s not clear whether the suggestion from ‘a government source’ that the House of Lords could face abolition unless they ‘do their patriotic duty’ by voting for Brexit was a deliberate attempt to float something which could later be denied or simply a sign of incompetence.  As a rule, incompetence is the simplest solution when a government appears to contradict itself, but in this case I’m not so sure.  And, of course, the ‘source’ didn’t actually suggest that the government would move to abolish the Lords; merely that there might be an ‘overwhelming’ public demand that they do so.

It’s entirely possible that there are some in government who would want to put the frighteners on their noble lordships – well on those lords awake enough to notice, anyway.  And it could be argued that it’s not so much a threat as a prediction; given the tabloid outbursts against the ‘treacherous’ judges who dared to uphold the law over Brexit, it is wholly conceivable that those same tabloids will turn against the Lords if they dare to even suggest amendments to the Brexit Bill.  And they won’t even have the potential fear of being held in contempt of court to temper their language.

There’s something very ironic, though, about the idea that the Lords might eventually be abolished by a Conservative government, with the full support of the right-wing press, after Labour’s abject failure to deal with the problem whenever they’ve had the opportunity over the last century.  And if it comes to pass, is it even conceivable that we would see Labour rushing to defend the institution?  I’d like to think not, but these days, who knows?

At one level, it could be a case of the proverbial ‘ill wind’, if the Brexit process were to be the catalyst leading to the wholly desirable outcome of abolishing an institution which is hopelessly outdated, and which has survived for as long as it has only because our elected representatives are more wedded to tradition than to democracy.  There is a danger, though, of looking at only one part of the problem, namely that part which acts as some sort of restraint on the executive.

Most of the arguments for having a second chamber at all are to do with the failings of the first chamber.  And those problems were well illustrated by the way in which the Brexit Bill was conceived, written, and rammed through the House of Commons.  They call it ‘scrutiny’ and ‘holding the government to account’.  In reality it was neither.  Arguing that we need a second chamber to provide the scrutiny which the first fails to provide, and that it needs to be unelected because that’s the only way it can be free enough to do the job, serves only to underline how seriously deficient are the House of Commons and its processes.

I’d be delighted to see the Lords abolished, and the sooner the better.  But let’s not overlook the concurrent need for reform of the Commons to ensure that it isn’t just a rubber stamp for the government of the day.  And that reform probably needs to start with Proportional Representation.

Living in the past

Tweet There seems no logical reason why a monarch whose only role in the government of the country is to do as she is told by ministers should be privy to the confidential documents and papers otherwise seen only by ministers.  And there’s even less reason for her children or grandchildren to have access to the same material.  The monarch doesn’t even need to know what is in the acts which she signs into existence, let alone the detail of the discussions which led to them.

Similarly, there is no logical reason why a mixed bunch of appointees, hereditary aristocrats, and senior clerics from one particular sect of one particular religious tendency should have any formal input into the laws which govern our behaviour.  Yet this, like the access of the monarch and her offspring to confidential material, is part of the fabric of the constitution of the UK.

The only reason why either practice survives is unwillingness on the part of successive governments to depart from history and tradition.  In all other aspects of activity, governments – of both parties – repeat the mantra that we must reform to be more ‘efficient’.  Removal of outdated practices is seen as inherently ‘good’ in almost every field – except when it comes to dealing with the remaining privileges of inheritance and rank.

If we were designing a constitutional structure from scratch, it’s hard to believe that many would even suggest either a hereditary head of state or the curiosity which is the House of Lords, let alone assign any powers or rights to either of them.  It’s even harder to believe that such suggestions would be taken seriously.

Tinkering on the fringes by restricting the powers of the Lords ever to disagree with the Commons, or debating which documents the monarch should or should not see, is missing the point.  I wouldn’t go as far as the French revolutionaries’ approach of “off with the heads”, but peaceful democratic abolition of both institutions is long overdue.

Promises, promises

Tweet I don’t know when the Labour Party first adopted a policy of reforming the House of Lords, but it sounds like one of those things that has ‘always’ been policy.  I can certainly remember many Labour leaders talking about it when in opposition, even if ‘it’ hasn’t always meant exactly the same thing.  But they’ve never got around to actually doing anything about it when in government.  It’s one of those things that are just ‘too difficult’, although the euphemism usually adopted is that ‘there are more important priorities’.

So Ed Miliband’s statement that a Labour government led by him would actually do something needs to be read in the historical context, and is probably not worth a great deal as promises go.  Besides, at this stage his suggestion of it becoming some sort of Senate with regionally-elected representatives has not been thought through a great deal – apparently that’s to be left to the constitutional convention that he plans to establish.  Giving them a few years – perhaps the whole term of a parliament – is enough to sound like a commitment to radical reform whilst leaving Miliband with a cunning ruse to kick the issue immediately into the long grass.

It raises a question, though, about the purpose of the constitutional convention itself.  Slowly but surely, he’s announcing all the decisions in principle before it’s even established – the second chamber will be retained with similar functions, but with the method of election to be determined; there will be more power delegated to cities; there will not be two or more different classes of MP; the list grows.

Setting up a convention to carry out a thorough review of the constitution sounds like a radical idea, but it increasingly looks like it’s going to be little more than a means of getting someone else to put the flesh on the bones of an already determined Labour policy.

Still, sounding radical whilst delaying action is a familiar approach.  It’s been successfully deployed by many of his predecessors, so why wouldn’t it work for him too?  I suspect that their lordships will still be around for a few more decades yet, sadly.

Nods, winks, and peers of the realm

Tweet I find it hard to believe that Elfyn Llwyd’s call last week for Plaid to have more peers was preceded by a great deal of consultation with his party’s leader, Leanne Wood.  Given her long-standing opposition to the nomination of peers, Elfyn’s call looks a little incongruous to say the least.  Still, not even Elfyn’s best friends or biggest fans would say that always being “on message” was one of his fortes. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on your perspective, I suppose.  For party managers, being “off message” is always likely to be a problem, but for most others it probably depends on whether you agree with what he’s saying or not.

Personally, I agree with Elfyn and think Leanne is wrong on this one.  A party like Plaid has to choose between engaging with the institutions of the state and keeping them at arm’s length.  There are sound arguments for abstentionism, which was long a popular position amongst Irish nationalists.  However, there is little history of abstentionism in Wales, and it seems to me that if you’re going to engage with some institutions of the state you may as well engage with all of them and exercise as much influence as you possibly can.

On the substance of the critique of the existence and nature of the House of Lords itself  however, it would be hard to find any difference between Leanne and myself.  The fear is that appointing members serves to legitimise the institution, but a party which claims only to enter the House of Commons in order to secure Wales’ withdrawal from it can surely apply exactly the same argument to any other institution.  

Whatever, the real question which I wish to address here is the mysterious way in which the institutions of the British establishment work when it comes to the appointment of peers of the realm.

When Plaid chose three nominees for peerages (Dafydd Wigley, Eurfyl ap Gwilym, and Janet Davies), their details were passed through the murky “usual channels” to number 10 - and the then prime minister studiously ignored them.  That was, for a while, the end of the story.  I – and I think many others – believed that we had made our nominations, and that Brown was simply blocking them.

It turned out that we hadn’t actually “nominated” anyone at all; the PM was not ignoring our nominations because there were no nominations to ignore.  This only became clear after the election of Cameron as Prime Minister. 

Shortly after Cameron came to power, Ieuan Wyn Jones had an opportunity to lobby him for the appointment of Dafydd Wigley to the House of Lords.  (Although of course Dafydd had by then withdrawn his name, and was no longer one of Plaid’s nominees – but that’s another story).  Nods were nodded, winks were winked, it was made clear that the party would be allowed to submit one nomination, and in June 2010 I found myself presented with a nomination paper to complete and sign (political nominations have to be completed by party chairs - a revelation to me).

I really hadn’t realised that there was a formal channel available for submitting nominations to an allegedly independent panel.  Perhaps I should have known that – it would be a fair criticism of me that I hadn’t even made the effort to identify whether there was a formal process – but I’ll admit that I didn’t.

Anyway, after a brief hiatus while the NEC agreed to reinstate Dafydd Wigley as a party nominee - a precondition to my signing any nomination - the form was duly completed and submitted and, hey presto, three months later Dafydd’s peerage was duly confirmed after the said “independent panel” had given it their careful consideration.  In essence, despite the lengthy period which appeared to be passing from a public perspective, the actual period between formal nomination and appointment was a very short one.

It neatly illustrates the difference between the written-down formal process - which is the submission of a form, consideration by an independent panel, and appointment or rejection; and the actual process – which depends on a series of nods and winks from the right people before you even get to the starting block. 

Perhaps we should have challenged that more strongly at the time.  With the benefit of hindsight – and hindsight is always a wonderful thing – I think we should have accepted the nod and the wink, but pushed the boundaries by making three nominations at that point rather than just the one.  That would really have forced the establishment to either accept or else formally reject our nominations, rather than two of them remaining in a strange and continuing sort of limbo.

However we did not do that, and unless the other two nominations have been formally submitted since I stood down as Plaid’s chair in July 2010 (completing Wigley’s nomination was one of my final acts), I suspect that the party has only ever nominated one candidate.  So whilst I agree with the substance of what Elfyn says, in that Plaid should be more strongly represented in the second chamber, I’m not convinced that Plaid itself could not do more to achieve that if it really wanted to.  But that probably takes us right back to the question of whether Elfyn was speaking for his leader or not…

Tantrums and principles

Tweet The one common factor to emerge from the bust up in Westminster over reform of the House of Lords and changes to constituency boundaries is the utter cynicism of some politicians.  None of the three UK parties emerges with much credit.

Those in the Conservative party who seem to think that they can sign up to an agreement with another party and then pick and choose which elements of the agreement they support have displayed a certain amount of arrogance as well.  I even saw one of them suggesting that the response by Nick Clegg was immature.  It didn’t look to me as though the immaturity was entirely one-sided.

Then we have the Labour Party, who claim to support reform of the House of Lords but decided to vote against it largely to put the Liberal Democrats on the spot.  And then we have the Lib Dems themselves who've responded to an act of bad faith with what looks like petty petulance.

Clearly, Clegg found himself in a position where simply rolling over and accepting that the Conservatives were not going to deliver on one of their coalition pledges would have left him looking weak - or perhaps that should be ‘even weaker’.  However, given his commitment to the continuation of the coalition, he needed to find a form of retaliation which was nonlethal. 

Protecting MPs from a cull may achieve that aim, but it isn't exactly the most populist issue he could have chosen to start drawing lines in the sand.  Worse still from his perspective, it might even secretly please more Tories than it upsets, given the worries many were facing over their own seats.  Heads they win, tails the Lib Dems lose.

Even Commoner than the Commons

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This is quite an old story, but I’ll admit that it had passed me by.  The UK Coalition is introducing a new stage in the legislative process called the ‘public reading’ stage, which creates a formal mechanism for members of the public to comment on, and suggest amendments to, parliamentary bills.  It’s been piloted on the rather Orwellian-named “Protection of Freedoms” Bill, but will in due course be introduced as a formal stage for all legislation.

I can’t imagine that many of us will take advantage of this process, or that the Government would pay very much attention to anything we did say.  It is likely, however, to be used by a range of interest groups, often people who have a degree of expertise and knowledge which is lacking in the average MP.  The sort of expertise and knowledge which supporters of the continuation of a second chamber argue that chamber should provide.

At the heart of the debate about the future of the House of Lords is the desire of some to have a mechanism by which someone else can do the job which MPs seem patently unable or unwilling to do, namely to scrutinise badly drafted legislation and suggest amendments.  At the same time, however, they want to avoid giving those scrutineers any real power or influence which might enable them to challenge the right of the House of Commons to pass badly-drafted legislation any time it the government so wishes.

This new legislative stage might provide an alternative way of doing that; and the scrutineers wouldn’t even need to be paid, let alone provided with an elegant club house in Westminster with nice red benches upon which to rest their backsides.  It’s not a bad idea, although I have a preference, whatever other changes are made, for those sitting on the green benches to do the job for which they are elected rather than behave as slaves to the whips.

Abolish their lordships

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Europe isn’t the only question on which the Tory Party is in danger of tying itself in knots; they seem to have a similar urge for self-inflicted damage when it comes to reforming the House of Lords.  And there seems to be at least a degree of overlap between those who regard reform of the Lords as a dry irrelevant constitutional issue, not to be embarked upon at a time when the economy should be the central consideration, and those who regard reform of the UK’s terms of membership of the EU as being an absolutely vital and urgent question.

It made me wonder whether they’re not both to do, at least to a degree, with the question of where power lies, or is perceived to lie.  The fear of the opponents of reforming the Lords is that an elected chamber would have a democratic legitimacy which would make it a rival to the Commons; and those who want to turn the UK into some sort of associate member, at best, of the EU are forever talking about ‘repatriating powers from Brussels’.

The common thread is that, in both cases, they want to see all power residing in one place, the Commons.  It’s no coincidence that some of them are also strong anti-devolutionists.  There’s an irony of course.  It’s certainly true that the Commons has lost a lot of power in recent decades.  But most of it hasn’t gone to the Lords, to Brussels, or to the Welsh and Scottish parliaments, however – it’s gone to the Executive.  And it’s been ceded by the legislature to the executive by the MPs themselves, who have allowed successive governments to take more and more power away from them.

The problem with the government’s proposals for reform of the Lords is that they don’t go far enough.  If we didn’t have a second chamber, I can’t believe that anyone would suggest that we needed one (there is, for instance, no serious suggestion that either Wales or Scotland need an additional chamber).  The role of the second house has evolved largely by accident, from a place where the aristocracy were represented to a place where laws can be revised or delayed (but not too much). 

All of the proposals for reform seem to take its existence as a given; they only deal with how its members are selected.  But if the Commons did its job properly, and was less beholden to the Executive, we wouldn’t need a second chamber at all.  The logical position for those who fear an elected chamber is to call for abolition, and to make the Commons more independent of the Executive.  They seem, though, to want to pretend that they have the real power rather than actually seek it.

Off with their heads!

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The hole into which Westminster politicians are digging themselves over House of Lords reform is a classic example of the disconnect between them and the rest of us.  To say that the question is not one which greatly exercises people outside the Westminster bubble is something of an understatement, yet some of those inside the bubble seem to think that the sky is about to fall in.

There’s something a little ironic about those who wish to maintain the current undemocratic system demanding a referendum so that we can democratically decide (they hope) to remain undemocratic.  But I find it hard to believe that the question of whether parliamentarians should be elected or not will be any more controversial outside parliament than was the question in last year’s referendum on the powers of the Assembly – or that it will attract any more interest.

Whilst the idea of electing parliamentarians, rather than having some take their seats through heredity and others through appointment, may look like a revolutionary idea to some of their lordships, most of the world would simply wonder how and why the current situation has been allowed to last so long.  And I have a feeling that most of the electorate will be closer to ‘most of the world’ than to their lordships on this occasion.

The reforms themselves seem to be something of a fudge.  Why are some appointees to be retained?  If we want outside experts to look at legislation and give us the benefit of their wisdom and experience, they can do that without being given a fancy title and a seat in parliament to go with it.  Why retain a special place for bishops of the CofE? 

And, most of all, have they even asked whether and why we need a second chamber at all?

The usual answer to that final question is that the first chamber seldom gets the legislation right.  But in any rational world, that would be an argument for reform of the first chamber, not for the perpetuation of a duplicate set of parliamentarians and debate.  Instead of arguing about how many ‘whatever-we-want-to-call-thems’ there should be, how they should be selected, and how much we should pay them, why not just abolish the whole thing?

Lord Who?

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I suppose the SNP would be half-expecting some wild statements to be made during the period between now and their referendum.  And I’m sure that they’ll have people beavering away somewhere preparing answers and rebuttals to all the obvious ones.

I doubt, though, that anything will have prepared them for this one.  The suggestion by a Conservative peer that an independent Scotland would become a target for invasion and that England’s inevitable response to such an invasion would be to “bomb the hell out of Glasgow airport and Edinburgh airport” is one of the daftest statements I’ve seen in a long time.

He is, apparently, a QC and not without political experience, according to his official website.  And it’s a few weeks yet until April 1^st.

I assume that he isn’t speaking officially for his party; I can’t believe that there are many others who even think like this, let alone say it out loud.  Trying to scare the Scots into voting the ‘right’ way doesn’t sound to me like a good game plan.

Fighting past battles

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One of the closest things that I’ve heard from the ‘no’ side to a reasoned argument for retaining the current system of LCOs is that the National Assembly is a unicameral legislature with no revising chamber.  (As, of course are the Scottish Parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly).

In the context in which the argument is put forward, it’s utterly misplaced – the suggestion that a legislature which looks at which powers are to be transferred before legislation under those powers is even drawn up is in any way acting as a ‘revising’ chamber is obviously a nonsense.  But is there, nevertheless, a germ of a point in there somewhere about the dangers of a unicameral legislature?

Acting as a revising chamber was never the original intention of the House of Lords – it was far more to do with securing the representation of different interests, and specifically different classes.  Giving the traditional hereditary aristocracy at least an equal say with the richest of the Commoners was the aim.  But things change with time, and the functions performed by the Second Chamber now are very different from those envisaged at the time of its creation. 

Few would deny that the House of Lords has, on occasion, managed to improve legislation, sometimes significantly so.  Does that prove the need for a Second Chamber?  I’m unconvinced.  Around half the world’s states seem to manage quite happily with a unicameral system of government; it’s far too easy to assume that that to which we are accustomed is somehow the ‘norm’.

I suspect that the real reasons why the UK probably still needs a Second Chamber (albeit not the current one) are that the First Chamber is too dominated by the Executive to give proper consideration to the legislation it considers, and frequently too rushed in its consideration.  Those are the real lessons for our National Assembly, and I’m not sure that they’ve been learned yet; it sometimes appears that the Assembly is in danger of replicating the mistakes of the past with over-compliant backbenchers and rushed legislation.  The so-called 'Mother of Parliaments' has a habit of creating images of itself rather than building on the needs of people.

Insofar as the naysayers have a point (about the need for a revising chamber) what they should logically be proposing is either the establishment of a bicameral system in Wales, or else the submission of Assembly Measures to an existing body (such as the Welsh Grand, if they'd really like to reduce things to farce).  Both of those options, however, start from an acceptance of the legitimacy of the Assembly – and that is the real problem of the ‘no’ campaigners.  They are, in truth, still fighting the battles of the past.