It was revealed this week that Gordon Brown would, unlike his predecessor Tony Blair, be exercising his right as an outgoing Prime Minister to appoint a new set of Life Peers to sit in the House of Lords.
Cambridge only just outstrips Oxford 10-8 in terms of new peers, but it is not the ratio of Oxbridge Lords- and Ladies-to-be that concerns me. Gordon Brown, who has become somewhat of a specialist in desperately clinging to power without a popular mandate, has simply pushed many of the nuts and bolts of what was the New Labour machine up into the Lords after electoral defeat, just when we thought we had seen the back of them, in what is clearly the death throes of a dying political beast. In May, we democratically declined Labour's request to run the country again, yet now our Upper Chamber has become populated with those who we thought we had seen the last of with the decline of the New Labour Project. It seems that to get rid of this political turd, we shall have to flush more than once.
One such has-been is the charlatan Roger Liddle. A notorious political turncoat, Liddle is infamous for his chumminess with the Prince of Darkness, Peter Mandelson, and for his enormous indiscretions whilst an insider at Number 10. Over his colourful political career, he has been a member of the Social Democrats and the Lib Dems before settling with the Labour party. He lost every time he stood at a General Election (three times), before crawling off to the private sector for several years. Bearing in mind that David Laws has sadly had to leave office over a relatively minor personal indiscretion regarding expenses, Roger Liddle is about to assume office despite his appalling corruption track record. He was caught red-handed by The Observer in one of the earliest cases of New Labour cronyism and sleaze: 'Lobbygate'. The undercover reporter was shown to the office of Mr Liddle to discuss influencing policy in return for a cash lump sum, whilst Liddle was at Number 10 as a Special Advisor on Europe to Tony Blair.
Also amongst those named to receive the Baron's coronet is notorious ex-Deputy Prime Minister and lifelong class warrior John 'Two Jags' Prescott. Once quoted as having said 'I don't want to be a member of the House of Lords. I won't accept it' and advocating strongly against 'flunkery and titles' whilst in government, he now accepts becoming a Lord on the basis that he is 'only taking a peerage to turn Pauline into a Lady'. Great, misplaced class aspirations are just the motivation we look for in potential Members of the Upper House of our parliamentary system…
Worse than this, among those due to be ennobled are disgraced public civil servant Sir Ian Blair, whose poor leadership lead to the death of innocent Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005 at the hands of the gung-ho anti-terrorist unit of the Metropolitan Police. So, a peerage and a £400,000 pay-off? That beats being shot in the head at Stockwell tube station. It certainly beats the meagre financial compensation offered to the de Menezes family. If that is what a public fall from grace is like, it almost makes it worth achieving high office just in order to fuck up. New Labour's favourite cop Sir Ian was so unpopular that even a senior Scotland Yard official remarked of the Commissioners' appointments to the peerage: 'each deserved their elevation to the Upper House. But Ian Blair? Many of us are speechless'.
Brown has also considerately chosen to ennoble the sacrificial lamb of the 'Bigotgate' farce, Sue Nye. The ex-Director of Government Relations who was forced to take a bullet for the ex-PM when his commented that a Rochdale grandmother was 'a bigoted old woman'(!). Fair dos, I suppose, she has taken her fair amount of shit from the press, but from failed Alistair Campbell-wannabe to Baroness Nye? Really?
We have also now, worryingly, given a peerage to the Unionist Reverend Sir Ian Paisley, whose fervent religious homophobic zeal and anti-Irish Republican hatred incites civil unrest and constantly blocks progress towards a peaceful resolution of the Northern Ireland question. This man is now being given power by an ex-PM who no longer holds office to promote his own crazy agenda in an elevated political forum.
When will this all end? Tony Blair talked of abolishing the Lords in 1997, Neil Kinnock rejected rumours that he would enter the Lords in 2003 stating that he was 'not even sure if I would enter a reformed House of Lords' a year before accepting a peerage. They join a long list of failed would-be reformers of our passé system, including Harold Wilson (later Baron Wilson of Rievaulx) who, instead of changing the Upper House, published his 'Lavender List' elevating all his cronies to the peerage.
It seems the prospect of scarlet robes and an outlandish title brings out the inner snob on our ‘politicians of the people’.
Very well written. Labour insist they are more in touch with the population than our Bullingdon Boys leading the Tory party but still go on appointing each other for peerages and extortionately large pensions. To be honest, I wouldn't expect anything more from power-hungry New Labour.
About as well argued as the opinions found in the daily mail comments. Why are the Tab publishing these redundant and somewhat blinkered views of some tory boy?
Good point. HE'S A TORY, DON'T LISTEN!
Grow up.
Not that tories are good.
But you aren't.
And this article is.
Perhaps this recently ennobled scum should face the same fate as that which ex-Labour leadership cabdidate John McDonnel so notoriously recommended for Lady Thatcher. Forget the new politics and reach for the Luger.
Lager surely ?