House of lords

It is odd to think that in just a few months we’ll be having only the second nationwide referendum in our history and no one is particularly excited about it. This is largely because the plebiscite is on AV, an unloved voting system that is a half-way house between first past the post and a proportional system. (Just imagine the level of conversation there would be if the vote was to do with Europe not electoral reform). At the moment, the yes side has a growing lead in the polls http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/3115. But, given the vast number of undecideds, this could change very quickly. The No campaign, though, will have to

There’s a febrile atmosphere in Westminster tonight. The coalition is poised for a frontal assault on the privileges of the House of Lords and there is an expectation that today’s dramatic developments in the phone hacking saga are the beginning of something not the end. The coalition’s actions on the Lords have been prompted by Labour’s filibustering of the AV bill. But there’s no guarantee that it will succeed. First, it has no majority in the upper house. Second, a lot of Tories peers are worried about just how many Clegg inspired changes to the constitution the coalition is pushing through. On the phone hacking front, there’s a sense that a dam broke today: the rogue

The May 5th date for the AV referendum is under threat because the bill paving the way for it might not get through the House of Lords in time. The problem is that the referendum bill is linked to the plan to equalise constituency sizes which Labour is steadfastly opposed to. So Labour lords are blocking its progress. One Lib Dem lord complains that the problem is ‘all these Scottish ex-Labour MPs who are behaving like they are still in the Commons.’ Labour is stressing that it would happily allow the bill to be split in two and then vote through the May 5th date. But the coalition won’t agree

The Lib Dem manifesto committed the party to a fully elected House of Lords. The Tory manifesto talked about a ‘mainly-elected’ second chamber and in 2007 David Cameron voted for ‘the other place’ to be 80 percent elected (interestingly, George Osborne voted for a fully elected Lords). The coalition agreement committed the government to a ‘wholly or mainly elected upper chamber’. So it is hard to see how a Lords that retained a twenty percent appointed element could be portrayed as a major Lib Dem triumph as, according to today’s Guardian, the coalition wants. There has been talk in Westminster that Clegg’s consolation prize if the AV referendum is defeated

Patronage remains a strong statement of leadership, and an indication of a leader’s competence. As James noted yesterday, Ed Miliband chose the occasion to play one of his few picture cards: Maurice Glassman’s accession into red ermine is a major PR coup for Labour in the battle to be ‘progressive’ and community-focused. But Miliband’s list is also noteworthy for those it excluded. The Times has the details (£): ‘He decided against handing seats in the House of Lords to Nigel Doughty and Sir Ronald Cohen — who have given more than £6 million to the party since 2005 — as well as Jon Mendelsohn, Labour’s fundraising chief. All three had

Today’s peerage list contains more interesting names than usual. Jullian Fellowes — Downton Abbey, Gosford Park, Snobs — is the one who will get the most attention. It is a sign of how confident David Cameron is feeling that he has risked the reopening of the whole class question. But perhaps, the most intriguing Tory appointment is Patience Wheatcroft. One imagines that she wouldn’t have taken the role unless it was a way to allow her to serve on the political front line. Howard Flight’s appointment to the Lords rights a wrong: his sacking as a candidate before the 2005 election was as unfair as it was hasty. A few

Peter Mandelson’s decision to support Gordon Brown right to the end enabled him to cease being a purely factional figure in the Labour party. The multiple standing ovations he received at the last Labour conference were a recognition of that. As he put it, he was now the prince of stability not darkness. It was easy to see how Mandelson could become one of the elder statesmen of the party. But The Third Man has thrown all this away. Mandelson is once more a highly factional figure. He has admitted that he wouldn’t have stopped his Cabinet colleagues toppling Brown if they could have and that Labour would have done

It’s John Prescott’s birthday – or Lord Prescott, as he will soon be. How odd of JP to don the ermine, given that he is on record saying that he hates titles, flunkery and ‘flooding’ the House of Lords with appointees – a practice in which he and Blair excelled as it happens.  He appeared on the Today programme this morning to defend his lordly person and was emphatically unintelligible. Listen to it; it’s a classic. You know Prescott’s the EU’s environment ‘rapporteur’? Terrifying.   John Humphrys objected to Prescott’s hypocrisy, but if Prescott doesn’t want to retire from public life then he must sit in the Lords. Which is an argument for

Plenty of eyes on the Tory grandees at the moment.  I mean, the right of the party isn’t exactly delighted with the LibCon coalition – so the search is on for figureheads to lead the resistance.  Which is why Andrew Neil’s interview with Douglas Hurd on Staight Talk this weekend is worth paying attention to. As it happens, Lord Hurd is quite complementary towards David Cameron and his role in organising the coalition.  Here’s the actual quote: “I think it was a brave thing to do.  It might have gone terribly wrong, but he went straight for it and he was completely straightforward in saying this is what this is,

I wrote yesterday that Lord Ashcroft’s statement about his tax status should have drawn a “rather neat line under the issue”.  Sure, it’s hardly ideal that someone with such influence in our politics hasn’t been paying UK taxes on much of his wealth (something which could equally be said of Labour donors like Lord Paul and Lakshmi Mittal), and was keeping mysterious about it.  But at least, now, most of the uncertainty surrounding Ashcroft’s position has been removed.  And we have his indication that he will become a full UK taxpayer in due course.   But I hadn’t counted on the tenacity of Labour, who are trying to spin this