The Spectator’s Notes | 14 July 2012

A big reason for opposing these Lords reforms is that they would threaten the power of the Commons. If the Commons passed them, however, it would deserve to be threatened. It would display — like No. 10 Downing Street — an ignorance of the constitution and an arrogance about process which undermines the point of Parliament. So the forced withdrawal of the ‘programme motion’ — the guillotine — which probably looked to the outside world like a weird device made more incomprehensible by the fact that the second reading then won a large majority, was actually a classic assertion of the rights of Parliament against the executive.

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One consequence of the reform fiasco is the pivotal power it gives to Labour. Conservative government loyalists say that colleagues must vote for the reforms because only then will the Liberals vote for the boundary changes they desperately want. This is true, but Labour does not want these changes. So, although it feels it has to support Lords reform in principle, it will in practice do everything to ensure that the bill, in practice, fails. Without the guillotine, that ‘everything’ will be a lot. The reformers are trapped, as they deserve to be. 

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The Anti-Olympic ‘Family’ is growing fast. True, we have not got £13 billion of government money behind us, or even an Anti-Olympic Charter, but our principles of Anti-Olympism are clear. Where the Olympic Charter proclaims ‘a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind’, we say, ‘If you want to play games, pay for them yourselves.’ Where the Charter says, ‘The Olympic Movement is the concentrated, organised, universal and permanent action, carried out under the Supreme Authority of the International Olympic Committee, of all individuals and entities who are inspired by the values of Olympism’, we in the Shire say, ‘Piss off, Sauron.’