House of lords

Yesterday saw the annual Commons vs. Lords Tug of War, in aid of Macmillan and sponsored by BAE. Battle was joined at Westminster College Gardens, behind the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. Teams of marines, fireman, hacks and staffers battled it out before the final show down between the elected and the unelected. Disappointingly for the aristocracy, the commoners bagged it.    Champagne and the dulcet tones of TV’s James Landale kept the crowd entertained. Speaker Bercow, defence minister Gerald Howarth and education minister Tim Loughton cheered on their colleagues, while Labour’s Lord Foulkes and Sharon Hodgson became well acquainted with the bar. Tory backwoodsmen Alec Shelbrooke, the loud Yorkshire MP,

If David Cameron had a list of headlines he doesn’t want to see, I’m sure ‘Top Tory in expenses scandal’ would be near the top of it. Yet that’s what he, and we, will read this morning on the cover of the Sunday Times (£). The ‘Top Tory’ in question is Baroness Warsi, co-chairman of the party. And her offence, apparently, is to have claimed expenses for overnight accommodation while staying for free in a friend’s house. Warsi has more or less denied the accusation, saying that she did stay at the property on ‘occasional nights’ as the guest of a party official — but made an ‘appropriate payment equivalent

Generally speaking, Philip Hammond is one of the Cabinet’s quieter members; a sort of human calculator designed to run a department efficiently and with the minimum of fuss. Which is why his interview with the Sunday Times this morning (£) is so eye-catching. There’s very little that’s understated about it at all. ConservativeHome’s Matthew Barrett has already put together a useful summary of the main points, so suffice to say that Hammond is dismissive about both Lords reform… ‘He believes the upper chamber “works rather well” as it is and that voters are “probably largely indifferent” on the subject.’ …and gay marriage: ‘He believes gay marriage is too controversial for

The Queen’s Speech commitment that ‘A Bill will be brought forward to reform the composition of the House of Lords’ is a lot vaguer than theLiberal Democrats were hoping for, or expected just a month or two ago. Crucially, there is no mention of the second chamber being elected. If this was not enough, the bill’s place in the speech — it was the 16th piece of legislation mentioned — sent out the signal that it is not a government priority. It appears that the Tory sceptics of Lords reform have won the opening battle. This impression is bolstered by the fact that leading Tory opponents of Lords reform are content

Today’s Cameron-Clegg event was meant to be very different from the one in the Downing Street garden two years ago: grittier, more real. Watching it, one was struck by the fact that the two leaders still seem comfortable in each other’s company. The dynamics between them are better than those between Blair and Brown two years in. But, thanks to the compromises of coalition, they lack a compelling growth message for the here and now — as opposed to the long term — at the moment. One of their other problems is that coalition makes everyone focus that much more on the political process. The ears of every journalist pricked

Have our politicos looked at last week’s turnout numbers, and thought ‘y’know, we might be a bit cut-off after all’? Reason I ask is because they’re all tripping over themselves today to downplay the significance of Lords reform, and focus the conversation on The Issues That Actually Matter. This, as James said earlier, is what George Osborne has been up to throughout the day. Ed Balls did likewise during an appearance on the Sunday Politics with Andrew Neil. And, most significantly, even Vince Cable echoed their sentiments in his interview on Sky’s Murnaghan Show. ‘We need to just quickly and quietly get on with this,’ he said of reforming the

Yep, they’re inescapable, those Lib Dems. Even when the airwaves are dominated by Rupert Murdoch and Tom Watson, they’re there in the background, quietly adding to the day’s pile of political news. We’ve got Ken Livingstone making a pitch for their votes in the London Mayor’s contest, for instance. And we’ve also got Nick Clegg on what seems like every radio show on air, giving his account of why folk should be Lib Dem voters in the first place. There have been two more significant scraps of LibDemmery than those, though. The first came in one of Clegg’s radio appearances, when he said that he isn’t ‘hung up’ on who

Here, CoffeeHousers, is this week’s episode of The View From 22 podcast. Thank you for the continued feedback, we’ve tried to take as much as possible into account. In this episode, Fraser looks at the London Mayoral race and whether Boris can still bag it (0:26), given the downturn in the government’s fortunes. Tanya Gold, our restaurant critic, reports on how Ken and Boris have been faring on the stump. James Forsyth discusses (8:07) the fall of Jeremy Hunt and the Murdoch appearances at Leveson, as well as the trouble brewing for Cameron over Lords reform (15:30). You can listen below with the embedded player or — even better —

Further to James’s post on the Cameron interview, here’s what jumped out at me: 1. ‘Governments have difficult months. This government came together to dig this country out of the huge economic mess that it’s in…’ This is the official No.10 explanation about the last few months; that it’s the problems of the austerity agenda. As James Forsyth says in his political column in the current magazine, there are strongly-held alternative explanations. 2. ‘We’re not just a bunch of accountants dealing with the deficit…’ Cameron kicks off with this, an interesting phrase as it has been used by those criticising his Chancellor’s economic message. Osborne’s critics says he no agenda

In his interview with Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics, Nick Clegg argued against a referendum on Lords reform on the grounds that the three main parties all agree on it and so, in an absurdly patronising phrase, there’s no need ‘to subcontract to the British people’ the decision. He also added that it would cost several hundred million pounds. Now having been on the wrong side of the AV referendum result, Clegg knows how potent the waste of money charge can be — remember those anti-AV posters. But I suspect that this is going to be a difficult line for him to hold for as supporters of a referendum

In the debate over House of Lords reform, the Lib Dems are trying to say that they favour an elected House of Lords and anyone who opposes them is a reactionary in favour of the status quo. They believe that this is their best chance of winning the argument. But, in reality, things are more complicated than that. Some of the Tories most sceptical of the Clegg proposals are actually believers in an elected second chamber. They just don’t want it to be done through STV, a system that the Lib Dems favour because it would hand them the balance of power there. The issue of the voting system under

Why is Lords reform such an explosive issue? The subject should induce narcolepsy, but even loyal Tories are threatening to launch a rebellion against it that will make the Maastricht revolts look like child’s play. Subscribers to the Spectator will remember the James Forsyth article which first argued that Lords reform was an irreconcilable difference that was likely to break the coalition partners. In light of the last 24 hours, it’s worth revisiting: Irreconcilable differences, James Forsyth, The Spectator, February 25th 2012  It has become clear over the last few weeks that we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the coalition. Once, the rows between Tories and Lib Dems used to be about

What should worry David Cameron about tonight’s meeting of the 1922 Committee on Lords reform was that it was not just the usual suspects who spoke out against it. The two MPs presenting the case against were members who have never defied the whip: Jesse Norman and Nadhim Zahawi. Those present were particularly struck by some polling data that Zahawi, who used to run YouGov, presented. It showed that when asked what issues were a priority for them zero per cent of the electorate mentioned reform of the Lords. Even when prompted, this number only rose to six per cent. But Zahawi’s polling shows that if reform does go ahead,

Andrew Adonis, one of the policy brains of the Blair government and now seated in the House of Lords, has a letter in tomorrow’s edition of the Spectator responding to Neil O’Brien’s cover article of last week. In it, Adonis suggests one way that the political class could help purge the Londonitis from its collective system: move the House of Lords to Greater Manchester. Here’s the full text of the letter, for CoffeeHousers: Sir, As Neil O’Brien rightly says, London is New York, Washington and LA rolled into one, which is unhealthy for our national politics. So I have a serious suggestion. If the House of Lords is going to

The motion passed by Liberal Democrat conference this morning means that the party is neither supporting nor opposing the Health Bill. The rebels having lost the vote on whether or not to debate their ‘Drop the Bill’ motion, but managed to amend the so-called Shirley Williams’ motion to remove the line calling on their peers to vote for it. This is a blow to the leadership who were confident last night of winning the vote this morning. But it is nowhere near as bad as the conference — which, remember, still has the power to make party policy — deciding that the bill should be dropped. It is, though, another