The error of involving Gordon Brown

Sir Keir Starmer says the House of Lords is ‘indefensible’. It is an odd thing to say about an institution which has lasted more than 700 years. It is slightly like saying the common law is indefensible, and extremely like saying that the monarchy is indefensible (which is, I think we know, what Sir Keir does actually believe). There are several defences to be made for the Lords. They are just not, strictly speaking, democratic ones. But I must stick to my rule (see last week) of avoiding the subject of House of Lords reform. The funniest bit of Sir Keir’s constitutional plans is that he chooses to justify them in economic terms. Apparently, his new layer of elected regional non-Lords will bring new prosperity to the United Kingdom. As the word suggests, a constitution means a thing knit together, a way of governing a whole realm, developing over centuries. It is not a corporate plan for UK plc to year-end X. I sense an uneasiness in Sir Keir, both about Lords reform (the pointless aggravation) and about his own error in getting Gordon Brown to come up with the new ideas. Mr Brown is a very difficult politician. He combines being a genuinely big personality who overshadows his colleagues and successors with being stupefyingly boring and stale in his public utterances.

Sir Keir’s latest answer to the manifold inefficiencies of the NHS is to hire more staff. It is fascinating that no political leader since Covid dares to bring forward any proposal to make the service more efficient. Take the old problem of blocked beds. It is well known that many are caused by having no suitable care into which elderly patients can be discharged, but there are other difficulties which ought to be easier to remedy. One is that hospitals, like other public services, such as railways – but unlike private ones, such as supermarkets – see the weekends as a period of rest.