The Joy of Six 1571

"This is Britain at the end of the hottest summer on record. So, it beggars belief that the Conservatives have chosen this time – or would choose any – to try to scrap the world’s first legally binding framework to cut carbon emissions. Legislation born in Britain and adopted by over 60 countries around the world including Germany, France, Mexico and countless others." Pippa Heylings condemns the Tories' scorched earth policy.

Anna Merlan tells us what ICE's scrobbling of Milo Yiannopoulos tells us about America's far right: "But while Yiannopoulos’ deportation contains an extremely rich vein of schadenfreude – he previously called for deporting 'millions and millions of people' and joked about masturbating while witnessing ICE raids – it’s also indicative of how power, punishment, and influence currently work in the MAGA movement, and broader crackup within that feud-heavy world, where fragile alliances are constantly being made, broken and remade anew."

Simon Ophir on assisted dying, the House of Lords and democracy: "I have delivered palliative and end-of-life care to many patients, including this man. It cannot help everyone and I know that even with excellent palliative care many patients are terrified of death. It is this experience, more than anything else, that makes me so determined to see the assisted dying bill reach the statute book."

"Lloyd George was much driven by his experiences as a child and as a youth, growing up amongst the mostly poor, non-conformist natives of North Wales, groaning under a dominant, minority, privileged class of wealthy, mostly Anglican English landlords and churchmen. He witnessed and early on complained bitterly against unjust evictions of tenants who ‘voted the wrong way’, of tenants who had to pay tithes to a church they did not believe in. Even at school he protested at injustice." Paul Spackman, author of a forthcoming biography of David Lloyd George, is interviewed by Nicholas Alderton.

Ishaan Selby discusses T.H. White's The Goshawk: "While White is generally seen as a misanthropic figure, I read his difficult kinship with the goshawk as an example of a kin relationship that formed outside of hereditary bonds and through a queering of domesticity; one that shows a difficult love and connection outside the bounds of the human."

"What burns on that clifftop isn’t Christianity losing to paganism. It’s a re-enchantment scheme running out of road, with nothing left to offer but a fire. Choose your priests wisely." Moreau Vazh reconsiders The Wicker Man.

The Joy of Six 1558

"Someone who attended a private school in London or the South East is 24 times more likely to become a permanent secretary than someone educated at a state school in the North. For a seat in the House of Lords, the gap is 23-fold. That is not class inequality plus regional inequality. It is what happens when they multiply." Nick Harrison asks if No 10 North will change who runs Britain.

Janice Mak says American schools are increasingly questioning whether every student needs a laptop: "This distinction between passive consumption and purposeful use is increasingly shaping school policy. Updated policies also reflect an emerging emphasis on age-appropriate screen use, student well-being and ensuring that technology can support, rather than replace, direct instruction and student collaboration."

Adam Sherwin reports on the plans to turn off Freeview television and the threat that poses to Talking Pictures TV.

Scott Barry Kaufman argues that the role of luck in successful lives is far greater than we realise.

"Do not be lulled into complacency by the family-film aesthetics. When Mom the Sheepdog instructed Babe the Pig to dominate other animals by abusing them, demeaning them, and telling them what to do, and Babe refused because disrespecting another living creature would be wrong? That moment might have radicalised a generation." Roxana Hadadi discusses the politics of Babe (1995).

"From the end of the Victorian period, Broadstairs was strategically marketing its Dickensian connections through postcards, guide books and festivals. In 1897 Alfred Harmsworth (founder of the Daily Mail) was one of the organisers of a ‘Dickens Village’, which recreated scenes including Defarge’s wine shop, Peggotty’s boat, the Great White Hart at Ipswich and the Old Curiosity Shop. The festival was successful enough to be repeated the following year." Carolyn Oulton on the long history of Dickens tourism in Broadstairs.

Welsh Lib Dems are short of peers and the Lords is weighted towards London and the South East of England

It's not just Shropshire's curlews who are facing extinction. Professor Russell Deacon, author of history of the Liberal and Liberal Democrat parties in Wales, has told Nation Cymru:

"The Liberal Democrats are a federal party with equality meant to be spread between England, Wales and Scotland but this seems to have been forgotten and in the House of Lords it’s very much an English Party!

"Not long ago there were six Welsh peers from Wales representing the Liberal Democrats; after the next general election because they can no longer attend after the age of 80 they will become extinct. This does not bode well for the future of Liberalism in Wales."

Welsh Liberal Democrats, says the news website are angry because for the 13th year running, none of them have been nominated for seats in the House of Lords.

And it points out that:

The Welsh Liberal Democrats currently have four members of the House of Lords: Baroness Christine Humphreys, who is 79; Lord Martin Thomas, who is 89; Lord Mike German, who is 81, and Lord Roger Roberts, who is 90.

A Lib Dem source is quoted as pointing out that we had no new appointments at all to the House of Lords between mid-2015 and mid-2024. This is true, but our problem of having a lack of Welsh peers remains.

The House of Lords is now a baroque institution with a huge unelected membership, and new members are as likely to be appointed as a consolation for political failure as they are for achieving eminence in their field. It belongs in Imperial China or Ruritania but not in a 21st-century democracy.

And it's membership is not equally drawn from across the nations and regions of the United Kingdom. In 2023 the House of Lords Library published a research paper breaking down its membership.

Looking at the nations, the percentage of Lords' members from each was:

England                  85.4

Scotland                   7.7

Wales                       4.1

Northern Ireland       2.6

Overseas                 0.2

And for the English regions it was:

London                                  24.2

South East                            20.8

East of England                    11.1

South West                            8.4

Yorkshire and the Humber     5.8

East Midlands                        4.3

North West                             4.3

West Midlands                       3.6

North East                              3.0

Once again, the UK is revealed to be wholly overcentralised, something which having London as its political, economic and cultural capital makes inevitable. Electing a second chamber from the nations and regions would at least ensure they had fair representation in it.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: My hereditary peer peers

"Beaver Castle" eh? I think I can see what's going to happen this week. 

Meanwhile, I am reminded that in the early days of these diaries Lord Bonkers wrote that the Duchess of Rutland "kindly showed me her Belvoir".

Tuesday

I have been touched by the number of people who have written to express their concern about my position if Starmer expels my hereditary peer peers from the House of Lords. Please do not upset yourselves: I hold a Rutland peerage, and thus under the Treaty of Oakham am guaranteed membership of the House of Lords in perpetuity. 

Sadly, the same treaty guarantees the pre-eminence in this county of the Duke of Rutland, even though he lives in Leicestershire. His home is at Belvoir Castle, which, by an irony I find in no way amusing, is pronounced ‘Beaver Castle’.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• The only estate in England with a breeding population of corkindrills

Brecon and Radnorshire and Nigel Tufnell

With a by-election taking place Brecon and Radnorshire, I have naturally been thinking of the 1985 by-election in Brecon and Radnor, as it was then called.

That contest was caused by the death of the sitting Conservative Tom Hooson, who was a cousin of Emlyn Hooson, the former Liberal MP for neighbouring Montgomery.

Tom Hooson had gained the seat at the 1979 general election, but for 40 years before that it had been held by Labour.

So, in contrast to the contest taking place there at the moment, the 1985 by-was a fight between Labour and the Liberals.

I was between engagement sat the time and so was able to spent several days in Brecon and Radnor. On polling day I was in Cwmtwrch near Ystradgynlais.

Situated at the very north of the Valleys, it was a strongly Labour area. One of my memories of the day is having a gang of small boys practically fighting each other for the honour of delivering my Liberal leaflets in a close where every house had a Labour poster.

Elsewhere in the constituency the demographics were different and the landscape was stunning.
I have heard that Lloyd George got a mention in some of our leaflets, which reminds me of a story I have told here before:

A young Liberal activist was telling at a polling station out in the wilds somewhere, when an elderly farmer turned up. 

"What are you doing?" he asked. "I always take the numbers for the Liberals."
It turned out that for years the farmer had come along on polling day, collected numbers for a couple of hours and then taken them home with him. 

It represented a folk memory of Lloyd George's day. Any Liberal organisation in the area had long since disappeared. All the was left was the ancestral knowledge that taking numbers somehow helped the party.

Labour had held Brecon and Radnor for the 40 years up to 1979 because they had won a by-election there in 1939. It took place on 1 August, just as this year’s contest will.

At the 1935 general election Labour lost to a National Government supporting Conservative. It’s candidate was Leslie Haden-Guest, the father of the diplomat, dance and choreographer Peter Haden-Guest.

And Peter was the father of the actor Christopher Guest, best known for playing Nigel Tufnell in Spinal Tap.

As Leslie Haden-Guest had been made a hereditary peer in 1950 and the title had passed down to Christopher, Nigel Tufnell was a member of the House of Lords for three years before Tony Blair’s reforms removed most of the hereditaries in 1999.

The press misses a big story in Nick Clegg: The Liberal Who Came to Power

I have just listened to the second part of Steve Richards' Radio 4 documentary Nick Clegg: The Liberal Who Came to Power.

The press coverage beforehand concentrated on Jeremy Browne's opposition to the idea of selling ourselves as the party of the centre and on Shirley Williams observation that Nick likes to surround himself with young people, not all of whom are particularly competent - Simon Titley's belligerent youths.

I agree with both, but Shirley Williams said something else important that the pre-broadcast coverage missed.

She said that Nick Clegg has a low opinion of the House of Lords.

I was talking to a peer in London the other week - as one does - and was told that relations between Nick and the Lib Dem group in the Lords are not good. The peers feel they are required to do a lot of hard work to improve the poor (and often illiberal) legislation the Commons sends to them and do not get the recognition from Nick that they deserve.

This poor feeling between Nick and the Lords, I was told, in part explains the poisonous progress of the Rennard affair. Many Lib Dem peers are inclined to stand by one of their own because of it.

Conservative backbenchers are scribbling on the constitution

I have just watched Jacob Rees-Mogg trying to defend the absurdity of Conservative backbenchers voting to amend their own government's Queen's speech.

But then respect for the constitution, which used to be a hallmark of Conservatism, has pretty much been thrown out of the window. Forget Burke and representative democracy: the reaction of modern Conservative MPs when they find themselves part of a minority in the Commons, is to demand a referendum.

The latest example, reports the Guardian, is over the Coalition's plans to bring in equal marriage.

Political Animal reminded us on Twitter earlier today that Margaret Thatcher once quoted with approval Clement Attlee's argument that the referendums "a device of dictators and demagogues". He was right and so was she.

Tory backbenchers opposed AV and the reform of the Lords (even though the latter was in their own manifesto), but they are quite ready to trash the constitution if they think it is to their advantage.

The Conservatives' defeat on constituency boundaries is entirely their own fault

Today the Liberal Democrats voted with Labour to scupper Conservative hopes of a redrawing of constituency boundaries before the next election. This is widely thought to have greatly reduced the likelihood of a Conservative majority at that election.

This Lib Dem move was a response to the Conservatives' refusal to support progress towards reform of the House of Lords.

When you recall that Lords reform was in the Conservative manifesto at the last election, you realise just how foolish they have been.

Stephen Tall helpfully pulled out the relevant quotes in a Lib Dem Voice post from April of last year:

We will work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber to replace the current house of Lords, recognising that an efficient and effective second chamber should play an important role in our democracy and requires both legitimacy and public confidence.

And as Stephen points out, reform of the Lords was also in the Coalition Agreement.

I blogged as follows at the time Lords reform was blocked:

The Conservatives' willingness to throw away the redrawing of constituency boundaries, and thus greatly diminish their chances of a majority at the next election, is odd to say the least. 

It strengthens my belief that their backbenches are simply ungovernable. As I have argued before, One of the Coalition parties is not up to government - and it's not the Lib Dems and David Cameron is the new John Major. 

Some Conservatives have principled objections to reform of the Lords - or at least the reforms currently proposed. (They are, after all, Conservatives.) Others have no wish to lose the probability of an agreeable retirement job if things go wrong at the next election. 

But the argument I heard most often was that the Tory backbenches were furious that the Liberal Democrats had not supported Jeremy Hunt in the Commons vote of no confidence over his conduct during News Corporation's takeover of BSkyB. 

It is not so long since a man who let a young subordinate take the rap for his own misconduct would have aroused the ire of the knights of the shires. Now the Tory backbenches hero is a silly man with a silly haircut. And they are prepared to sacrifice their chances at the next election to support him.

I would add now that David Cameron showed an abysmal lack of leadership over Lords reform, obliging Nick Clegg to make all the running on the issue. So the proposals that came forward were Lib Dem proposals - I remember approving them, or something very like them, when I was on the party's Federal Policy Committee a decade ago.

No doubt the Conservatives had rather different Lords reforms in mind. So David Cameron should have negotiated with the Lib Dems over them, arrived at proposals that both parties could support and then led on them himself.

But he lacked the courage to take on his own party, hid behind the Liberal Democrats and as a result now finds it much less likely that he will win (or survive as Conservative leader) the next election.

At least one Conservative MP may oppose boundary changes

Liberal Democrat and Labour peers have combined this evening to defeat the Conservatives' plans to redraw constituency boundaries. Much to the annoyance of the Conservatives.

David Cameron, it is said, will have a stage a final attempt to get the measure passed by the Commons later this month. But the prospect of the Tories persuading all the minor parties to vote with them and thus defeating the combined vote of the Lib Dems and Labour now seems remote.

And at it is possible that at least one Conservative will vote against the plans in the Commons. Here is Glyn Davies, the MP for Montgomeryshire, writing on his blog just before Christmas:

If passed, the Montgomeryshire I have known man and boy would be no more. The new constituencies that touch on mid Wales will have population centres elsewhere. My local party association is so horrified by the implications of the proposals that it has told me in no uncertain terms that they want me to oppose the new boundaries. 

And at a personal level, I would hate to see all the work we have done to build our Association in Montgomeryshire disappear in a cloud of angry blue smoke - because I believe those who have done this transformational work will not carry on. The outcome would be so horrific that I simply couldn't carry on either. The principles which underpin an MP's work are country first, party second and self third - and this change will end Parliamentary democracy in mid Wales as we know it. 

I face some choice. If I vote for the new boundaries, I will be turning my back on all I've worked for in public life and all those I've worked with in Montgomeryshire.

Davies does not commit himself to voting against the measure in this post, but his views do seem to me to be just what a Conservative should believe on this question.

As I wrote on this blog in August of last year:

the argument that all local quirks and traditional loyalties must be sacrificed to abstract notions of fairness is an odd one in the mouth of a Conservative

I could add that Conservatives should also be keen to ensure that rural interests are not crowded out by urban ones. And if that means smaller constituencies in areas like the Welsh border, so be it.

Labour peer calls for nuclear attack on Afghan border

So far it has not been picked up by the British press - a reader directed me to Press TV and there is also a report on the website of the Pakistani newspaper The Nation - but on Thursday a Labour peer called for a nuclear attack on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.

Here is the former defence minister Lord Gilbert speaking in the Lords that day:

I draw your Lordships' attention to what used to be called the neutron bomb. It is a very misleading description. It was not necessary a bomb. It was a warhead that could be attached to a torpedo or a missile. The main thing was that it was not a standard nuclear warhead. Its full title was the ERRB-enhanced radiation reduced blast weapon. 

I can think of many uses for it in this day and age. It is something that we could go and talk to the Chinese about. Building on the example that I just gave your Lordships about the Straits of Magellan, you could use an enhanced radiation reduced blast warhead to create cordons sanitaire along various borders where people are causing trouble. 

I will give an example. Your Lordships may say that this is impractical, but nobody lives up in the mountains on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan except for a few goats and a handful of people herding them. If you told them that some ERRB warheads were going to be dropped there and that it would be a very unpleasant place to go, they would not go there. You would greatly reduce your problem of protecting those borders from infiltration from one side or another. 

These things are not talked about, but they should be, because there are great possibilities for deterrence in using the weapons that we already have in that respect.

If you ever doubted the need for reform of the upper house, John Gilbert here makes an eloquent case for it.

Shirley Williams questions Jersey's status as a tax haven

On Tuesday Shirley Williams asked a question in the Lords about the value of offshore accounts held by British citizens in the Channel Islands and the steps that are being taken to investigate them:

Jersey is one of the most secretive tax havens in the world. In a tax haven, neither corporate profits nor other profits of a corporate nature are taxed, nor are capital gains. Will he say whether there is any way in which those large, wealthy corporations which make their profits out of the UK consumer in this country can be persuaded or cajoled by HMRC into paying the taxes that they should? 

Secondly, can any steps be taken to prevent illegal profits - I am referring to those from, for example, fraud and theft ... - from being placed in secret accounts in a way that enables such people to escape international justice altogether?

In a sign of the strange times we live in, the minister replying was another Liberal Democrat, Dick Newby:

In respect of international corporations, the key thing is the extent to which we can extend international co-operation in that respect, which is why the recent announcement of the UK Chancellor and the German Finance Minister, following a G20 Finance Ministers' meeting in Mexico, was very important. 

We are now looking at concerted international co-operation to strengthen international tax standards. However, at the moment, it may mean that international companies can pay less tax than they would otherwise owe. We are trying to catch up with new forms of commerce and to make sure that tax is paid in proportion to where people are undertaking their business.

Lord Tunnicliffe also asked about Jersey:

My Lords, the Minister mentioned £19 billion that is tied up in Jersey related to UK citizens-a very precise figure. Does this mean that there is sufficient transparency, and that we have a sufficient viewing, of what is happening in Jersey? Do we have sufficient HMRC resources addressing that? And if the answer to both of those is yes, does he have a feel for the amount of money that the UK Exchequer could expect out of these people if we were better able to get hold of that money through agreement?

It is early days, but it looks as though people are beginning to question Jersey's deeply anomalous status as a Crown dependency whose policies disadvantage the huge majority of Her Majesty's subjects.

Those new Liberal Democrat committee co-chairs in full

Several new Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Committee co-chairs have been appointed by Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg.

Paul Burstow has also been elected as chair of the parliamentary party. The former chair Lorely Burt stood down after being appointed as parliamentary private secretary to Danny Alexander.

The new appointments in the House of Commons are:

• Gordon Birtwistle - Business, Innovation and Skills
• Mike Crockart - Energy and Climate Change
• Julian Huppert - Home Affairs, Justice and Equalities
• John Leech - Culture, Media and Sport
• Greg Mulholland - Work and Pensions
• Alan Reid - Transport
• Mark Williams - Wales
• Roger Williams - Food and Rural Affairs
• John Thurso - Constitutional and Political Reform in addition to the role he holds for the Scotland committee.

The new appointments in the House of Lords are:

• Lord (Jonathan) Marks of Henley on Thames - Justice
• Lord (Monroe) Palmer of Childs Hill - Defence
• Lord (Mike) Storey - Education
• Lord (Martin) Thomas of Gresford - Wales

Thanks to the East Midlands Lib Dems site, which has the full list of Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Committee Co-Chairs.

Nick Clegg rubbishes cash-for-seats deal story even more effectively

From BBC News:

Mr Clegg yesterday slapped down the idea and insisted that all 50 Liberal Democrat MPs will vote against boundary changes in retaliation for the Conservatives' failure to support House of Lords reform. 

He went on to mock Mr Shapps with a reference to the MP’s controversial history of running a business under an alias that sold advice on how to make a quick fortune. 

"I suppose finally that's a get-rich-quick scheme which he is actually prepared to put his name to," Mr Clegg said.

I wonder if something is stirring in what we may loosely call the minds of right-wing Conservative MPs. Are they beginning to realise that blocking any reform of the Lords was not such a bright idea after all?

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Lord Steel of Aikwood - "A Poor Show"

Lord Steel of Aikwood: "A Poor Show"

Lord Steel of Aikwood’s supporters will say that he was once a great radical, supporting abortion reform and the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. Well, I recall that period myself – it occupied several weeks in… 1967, I think it was. I am obliged to record, however, that I have since then found him Increasingly Hard Work.

There was that damned ‘Alliance’ he was so keen on: I tried to convince him, with the aid of a boxful of matches emptied out on the table, that we could not possibly win a majority by standing down in half the seats in the country, but he seemed unable to grasp the arithmetic involved.

Then there was his performance as the first Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament. He tried to establish a tradition that, whenever the monarch visited Edinburgh, the Presiding Officer would lead the procession, walking backwards and alternatively bowing and capering while all the time making little cooing noises of pleasure to himself. I am, I trust, betraying no confidences when I say that the Lord Lyon King of Arms was not impressed, and I am pleased to note that Steel’s successors have allowed his practice quietly to fall into desuetude.

Now Steel has come out against electing the House of Lords, just as his fellow Liberals appear to be making progress with the idea. Perhaps my own position – mine is a Rutland peerage and I am thus guaranteed membership of the upper house, however it may be formed, under the Treaty of Oakham – leads me to take too light a view of the sacrifice reform will ask of existing members, but I recall those weeks in 1967: Steel was pretty hot on Lords’ reform then. Indeed, he was given to making disparaging remarks about “unelected legislators” and – or was this a fancy on my part? – casting pointed glances in my direction.

Whatever the truth of that, now he is himself an unelected legislator he sees nothing wrong with the idea. I have to say, in all candour, that I find that A Poor Show.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• David Boyle's wonderful opening ceremony
• Giving up the captaincy

Does Cameron's lurch to the right give Nick Clegg an opportunity?

I was depressed by the changes David Cameron made in his reshuffle, particularly the way they marked the death of any support for localism or green politics in Tory circles.

However, writing in tomorrow's Guardian, John Kampfner argues that those changes have presented Nick Clegg with a welcome opportunity:

What has been found to work is when, publicly but politely, one leader says: "We advocated A, they advocated B, but we agreed to settle on C." All surveys in Europe suggest that the public respects an open airing and settling of differences. 

Yet the Lib Dem leader consistently dismisses this notion. Instead he has fluctuated from the mistaken love-in on the lawn and the kamikaze mission over tuition fees, to visceral anger over Cameron's undermining of the AV campaign and House of Lords reform. 

This month's reshuffle presents Clegg with an unlikely opportunity. He can now have no doubt about Cameron's intentions. The Conservative rump of the cabinet is as red meat as it could be – authoritarian and sceptical about climate change. Some of Clegg's team were taken aback by the changes. They shouldn't have been. 

With the coalition entering the second half of its projected five-year lifespan, the Lib Dem leader needs each and every day to tell the public what his party is seeking to do, what it will put up with, and what it won't. This can be done without petulance – at least on the Lib Dem side. If Tory backbenchers, in denial over their failure to win in 2010, wish to force an early election or go into minority administration, let them.

Nick Clegg conceded too much to the opponents of Lords' reform

In the course of a characteristically sparky performance in the Commons last week, making a statement on House of Lords reform and answering questions, Nick Clegg uttered said something that worried me:

For now, the immediate decision for the Government is how we fill the gap in the legislative timetable. We will bring forward measures to promote growth—the Government’s priority and my priority—and the Prime Minister and I will shortly be announcing details of that package.

This seemed to constitute a tacit acceptance that it was foolish to pursue reform of the House of Lords at a time when the economy is in such a poor state.

The truth, of course, is that all governments are doing many different things at any one time. It is perfectly possible to reform the Lords while giving the economy all the time it needs.

But it worried me for a deeper reason. Hasn't the Liberal and Liberal Democrat case always been that our economic malaise is closely connected with our flawed constitution and politics? I was sure that if I searched this blog I would find a senior Lib Dem making just the case.

Well, I searched it and did found just that. What I did not expect was that the person making the case would be Nick Clegg himself.

Here is the start of a House Points column I wrote for Lib Dem News in January 2009:

Is concern about accountability and democracy a luxury at a time of economic crisis? That was the question Nick Clegg asked the audience at Portcullis House, Westminster, on Tuesday night. 

He was speaking at an event marking 20 years of the campaign group Charter 88. Now part of Unlock Democracy, Charter 88 was set up to campaign for constitutional and electoral reform. A book – Unlocking Democracy: 20 Years of Charter 88 – has also been produced for the anniversary. 

Nick’s answer was clear: “An economic crisis is a political crisis as well.” He argued that this government’s mismanagement of the economy is directly related to our unreformed constitution. A winner-takes-all electoral system encourages a cycle of boom and bust and makes it too easy for the policy agenda to be captured by vested interests such as the City. 

A more pluralist system would have forced the government to listen to a wider range of voices. Better still, it would have forced it to listen to Vince Cable.

I don't know if that last point was in the speech or was dropped in by me, but Nick was right in 2009 and his argument holds just as true today.

GUEST POST House of Lords reform in a 1950s whodunnit

Charles Beaumont looks An English Murder by Cyril Hare

"England, alone of all civilized countries, retains in its constitution an hereditary legislative chamber." - An English Murder, Cyril Hare (1951)

The Tory media screeched that the idea of an elected legislature would lead to “blood on the floor and the walls and the ceiling” and Boris Johnson, who owes his job to the largest direct election in British politics declared “[i]t is crucial to the success of the Upper House […] above all that it is at one remove from the electorate”. The average liberal got a forcible reminder of conservatism’s tight grip on the gullet of British politics.

At times like this, it’s important to be reminded that liberals are not crazy, dangerous or unpatriotic. And I can think of no better way to do this than by wallowing in the shameless nostalgia of a favourite novel, An English Murder, by Cyril Hare. First published in 1951 but still in print, this tells the story of a Christmas house party at Warbeck Hall, the crumbling family seat of impoverished aristocrats. It’s a classic whodunnit: an unpleasant bully is murdered on Christmas Eve and as the house is cut off by snow those present must solve the mystery. All of the main characters have a motive for the killing and the wonderful Dr Wencelaus Bottwink, historian late of Prague University, who is at the hall researching the Warbeck archives, has the role of detective thrust upon him.

So far, so ordinary, conservative even. However, as the plot unfolds it becomes clear that the motive hinges on knowledge of an obscure aspect of English law.  The novel ends with a dig at the hereditary legislature, demonstrating that it was outdated in 1951 and (in this case) had in fact led to blood on the floor.

An English Murder is a gentle parody of the classic country-house mystery.  Its author, Cyril Hare, did not have an obviously radical background: he was an Oxford-educated judge from a well-off Surrey family who enjoyed field sports. Although his works demonstrate a generous and progressive mindset, An English Murder is not a campaigning tract. I can find no evidence that at the time it caused Daily Mail outrage or foaming at the mouth from the 1950s equivalent of Boris Johnson. As such I find it an important reminder that we liberals aren’t crazy or bloodthirsty and even 60 years ago people found it bizarre that the activities of your ancestors might entitle you to legislate for others.

'Charles Beaumont' is a pseudonym as the author holds a politically restricted position.

Lords reform: Jeremy Hunt may have cost the Conservatives the next election

Because they tend to do well in parts of the country where population is growing and badly in areas where it is shrinking, the redrawing of constituency boundaries helps the Conservatives. Because that redrawing does not happen very often, Conservatives find themselves fighting on a political battlefield that slopes against them.

They feel strongly about this. I have heard Sir John Major complain that the boundaries robbed him of a decisive victory in 1992, with the result that his majority had evaporated by the end of his time in office.

To an extent this is the Conservatives' own fault - Labour ran rings around them at the hearings last time there was a major redrawing of boundaries. And the argument that all local quirks and traditional loyalties must be sacrificed to abstract notions of fairness is an odd one in the mouth of a Conservative, but that is how they feel.

So the Conservatives wrote a radical redrawing of constituency boundaries, with little room for variation in size, written into the Coalition agreement.

This would have given them a much better chance of winning an overall majority at the next election.But it looks as though they will not get it after all.

Because an article in tomorrow's Guardian says:

Nick Clegg is expected to announce next week he has been forced to abandon Lords reform in the face of implacable Conservative backbench opposition that David Cameron has been unable to overcome. 

It is a bitter second blow to Clegg, who has already been forced to swallow abandoning electoral reform for the Commons, leaving the government's democratic reform agenda looking relatively threadbare

The same report points us to an article on the paper's website in which Chris Rennard says:

If the Lords is not to be given more legitimacy, then the case for reducing the number of MPs (and increasing the proportion of the payroll vote in the Commons) will also be weakened.

Quite. And if the Conservatives are going to pick and choose which parts of the Coalition agreement they are to support they can hardly complain if we Liberal Democrats now begin doing the same.

The Conservatives' willingness to throw away the redrawing of constituency boundaries, and thus greatly diminish their chances of a majority at the next election, is odd to say the least.

It strengthens my belief that their backbenches are simply ungovernable. As I have argued before, One of the Coalition parties is not up to government - and it's not the Lib Dems and David Cameron is the new John Major.

Some Conservatives have principled objections to reform of the Lords - or at least the reforms currently proposed. (They are, after all, Conservatives.) Others have no wish to lose the probability of an agreeable retirement job if things go wrong at the next election.

But the argument I heard most often was that the Tory backbenches were furious that the Liberal Democrats had not supported Jeremy Hunt in the Commons vote of no confidence over his conduct during News Corporation's takeover of BSkyB.

It is not so long since a man who let a young subordinate take the rap for his own misconduct would have aroused the ire of the knights of the shires. Now the Tory backbenches hero is a silly man with a silly haircut. And they are prepared to sacrifice their chances at the next election to support him.

Nick Clegg attacked by Scottish pub

The Earl of Glasgow, says BBC News, has told the corporation that the Liberal Democrats risk looking "foolish" by pursuing reform of the House of Lords and that the party's election hopes could be damaged.:

"It's probably going to get bogged down [in Parliament] and I don't think it's going to get through. It's going to be another constitutional humiliation for Nick Clegg and, therefore, the party."

Quite why a Scottish house is pontificating on constitutional matters...

This just in. It has been pointed out to me that the Earl of Glasgow is not a public house but an hereditary peer who takes the Liberal Democrat whip. Who knew?

David Steel goes arse about face on Lords reform

If you judge a man by the company he keeps then David Steel's remaining admirers must be weeping at this paragraph from this morning's Guardian:

The other former Tory cabinet ministers [besides Geoffrey Howe and Norman Lamont] who signed the letter are the former Northern Ireland secretary and party chairman Peter Brooke, the former Scottish secretary Michael Forsyth, the former agriculture minister Michael Jopling, the former transport secretary John MacGregor, the former attorney general Patrick Mayhew, the former Scottish secretary Ian Lang and former environment, industry and social security secretary Patrick Jenkin. Another signatory is the former Liberal leader David Steel.

A man who devoted his life to campaigning against complacent Toryism has joined its ranks.

If you doubt me, just see what the Liberal manifesto said in the three general elections in which Steel was the party's leader.

1979

The House of Lords should be replaced by a new, democratically chosen, second chamber which includes representatives of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom, and UK members of the European Parliament.

1983 (this and 1987 were joint documents published with the SDP)

In the light of these deficiencies in the structure of government, we propose ... to increase the accountability of Government to Parliament by reforming the operation and procedures of the House of Commons, to make its control of the executive more effective and to reform the powers and composition of the House of Lords, which must include a significant elected element representative of the nations and regions of Britain.

1987

"In recent years the House of Lords has proved the value of a second chamber by its careful scrutiny of bills which got little attention in the Commons and by its willingness to defeat the government on issues of national concern. But there can be no justification for basing the membership of the second chamber so largely on heredity and on the whim of Prime Ministers. The Alliance will work towards a reform of the second chamber linked with our devolution proposals so that it will include members elected from the regions and nations of Britain and will phase out the rights of hereditary peers to vote in the Lords."

If Steel has better ideas for bringing about a more democratic House of Lords than those Nick Clegg has brought forward then by all means let him propose them. The House of Lords, after all, is meant to be a revising chamber. But this cosying up with the opponents of a political lifetime does him no credit.

It is hard to resist the question: "So, unelected peer David Steel, what made you decide that unelected peers are a good idea?"