Baroness Jenkin is really tightening the straps in the Lords. After whipping up a storm with her written question about fetish clothing in the civil service, she’s now got her sights set on a matter that really binds the nation:
What is she smoking…
UPDATE: A co-conspirator gets in touch to say it appears Jenkin has mixed up the BDSM acronym with the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions Movement while the question was written during minutes of the meeting. Still, there does seem to be a bit of a theme…
Jacqui ‘I’m a disgrace and shouldn’t be a peer’ Smith was given a peerage over the weekend to serve as education minister in Starmer’s “change” government. Co-conspirators will remember that Smith was the first to fall to expensegate in 2009 – taxpayers paid for her husband’s porno thrills and almost everything else, literally including the kitchen sink, right down to her 88p bath plug. She resigned and declared in 2012 on Question Time: “I don’t think people who have been disgraced should go to the House of Lords”…
It’s worth remembering what the former Home Secretary said last time an ex-politician with experience of government entered the Lords to work again. Literally nine months ago on the For The Many podcast she said:
“It is a bit of a sign that you’re coming to the end of a government… it’s not undoable, where I think it matters more and it mattered when Peter Mandelson came back is – it slightly suggests that you don’t think there are any of your own backbenchers who are able to do it and there might be a few people that are a bit peeved about it… it is also done, as the Peter Mandelson thing was done, as an attempt to try to limit a potential defeat that is coming down the track…”
Starmer will be surprised to hear his government is coming to an end…
Apart from booting octogenarians out of the Lords, Starmer’s manifesto promises “to introduce legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote“. That drags a few descendants of Labour giants down with the rest…
- Stephen Benn, 3rd Viscount Stansgate (son of Tony).
- John Attlee, 3rd Earl Attlee (grandson of Clement).
As a bonus, also up for the chop are Raymond Asquith (great-grandson of Herbert) and Rupert Carington (son of Peter). Some devoted history fans might view the remaining Lords as a bit of a rump…
Sunak’s bill designating Rwanda as a safe country was approved by the Lords at 12:09 a.m. after Lord Anderson withdrew the final remaining amendment. In the fifth round of ping pong Anderson, whose amendment would have made had another body judge Rwanda safe (not just Parliament), said “the time has come to accept the primacy of the elected house and withdraw from the fray“. James Cleverly has put out a celebratory video. Sunak, meanwhile, says the “focus is to now get flights off the ground, and I am clear that nothing will stand in our way of doing that and saving lives.” The government has booked charter flights for June. That’s the easy bit over – it’s open lawfare now…
Starmer said to Robert Peston this afternoon:
“I’m fed up with the fact that families across the country see their bills go up and down on energy businesses bills go up and down on energy because of the actions of Putin or Trump across the world.”
