Never say that Guido’s graduate training programme doesn’t lead to places. Five years ago Ross Kempsell was a reporter. He was a pretty good reporter and his copy was as grammatically precise as you would expect from someone with a double-first from Cambridge. He went from Guido to become TalkRadio’s political editor, then to Downing Street as a Special Adviser, with a sojourn at The Times, before going to CCHQ to run the Conservative Research Department – honing it into a war-room with a focus on attacking the opposition and driving the news agenda. When he was Prime Minister, Boris Johnson valued his loyalty and advice highly. Hence he rewarded Ross with a peerage.
On the red benches Ross will no doubt be an energetic and articulate advocate for liberty. Congratulations, M’Lord.
It’s been a busy week for the House of Lords Commissioners for Standards, as inquiries have been opened into two big names. The Shadow Leader of the Lords, Baroness Smith, and Lord Ed Vaizey both face probes for their registers of interests. Baroness Smith is being investigated for two breaches – related to an incorrect register entry – whilst Ed Vaizey is being looked into for the non-registration of interests. This now brings the total number of cases on the Standards Commissioner’s in-tray to seven. To be fair to our noble friends, keeping an up to date register of interests can’t be easy for the old and infirm.
Starmer is drawing up plans to stack the House of Lords with “dozens” of new peers if Labour win the next election… despite previously claiming the upper chamber is “indefensible” and vowing to abolish it entirely just months ago. U-turn number 32 already on the horizon…
According to The Times, Labour is worried that with 122 peers in the Chamber to the Tories’ 263, they’d somehow struggle to implement their agenda – and most of their current peers are ancient anyway. A shadow cabinet minister said:
“We will need to appoint dozens of them, at least. The current cohort aren’t getting any younger, and there’s so few of them doing the actual work that they are increasingly knackered.”
Why Labour is so concerned isn’t clear. It’s a longstanding convention that the Lords doesn’t block the governing party’s manifesto. And if Labour are serious about abolishing the whole chamber, stuffing it with “dozens” more peers isn’t the way to show it. Just weeks ago, Angela Rayner called Boris’s resignation honours list “a carousel of cronies”. Those Starmer ‘flip-flop’ flip-flops are still for sale…
It turns out it’s quite useful to be a luvvie of the chattering metropolitan classes. Despite being found guilty of breaching sleaze rules in the Lords a couple of days ago, you’d be hard-pressed to have read anything about Lord Barwell’s standards breach in the mainstream press. Guido would know – he completely missed the report’s publication…
On the February 2nd, a Lords Standards investigation into Theresa May’s former Chief of Staff concluded he broke the House’s rules on declaring potential conflicts of interests, after a complainant pointed out he’d failed to publicise his ‘Gavin Barwell Consulting Limited’ personal service company on his register of interests.
When responding to the Standards Commissioner’s initial email, Barwell explained he was told he only had to “voluntarily declare” the service, “but only if I did so for all my clients”. Interestingly he chose at that point to declare he was in the process of applying for a leave of absence from the House, which he has now taken…
The investigation was cut and dry. The Commissioner concluded Barwell broke paragraph 12 of the Code of Conduct owing to him not ensuring his entries in the Register of Interests were correct and up to date.
“While the context of Lord Barwell’s discussion with the Registrar of Lords’ Interests about the registration requirements in November 2021 is not completely clear, he did express a clear intention to register all his clients at that time but failed to see through that intention.”
“In the circumstances, as well as correcting his entry in the Register of Interests, I proposed that a letter of apology to Baroness Manningham-Buller, Chair of the Conduct Committee, would be sufficient remedial action in this case. Lord Barwell has since written to Baroness Manningham-Buller (see Appendix 1) and updated his entry in the Register of Interests.”
At least now he’s taken a leave of absence he can focus his attention on persuading his paymasters at Clarion to stop screwing over tenants…
UPDATE: The day after the Standards Commissioner concluded Barwell broke the House’s rules on declaring potential conflicts of interests, Lord Barwell registered a new firm and gave his occupation as “Public Affairs Consultant”.
Claire Fox has slammed the House of Lords for their Remainer hypocrisy, as they complained the EU Retained Law Bill gives the government too much power, while having voiced no constitutional objection to the EU law bodies creating the powers without any such scrutiny.
“Don’t get me wrong, there are problems with this bill. The government may have missed an opportunity to use the retained law issue as a spur for democratic renewal… but to note that what ever the anti-democratic measures of the skeleton bill, there is a popular mandate behind the bill’s intent.”
“Many of the core objections we’ve heard today seems to be driven by a failure of imagination. My Lords have cited professional bodies, NGOs, Employers Organisations, Trade Unions Leaders, Lawyers, all who appear unable to imagine social and economic progress happening without retained EU laws.”
The 4000 retained EU laws were put on the UK statute books without members of this unelected house crying democracy. Earlier we were assured it was all ok, because – as one noble lord explained – there were special behind-closed-doors committees that scrutinised them. No mind that no matter how many British voters might object to any one of those laws, there was nothing, zilch they could do.”
Fox also called out the TUC line of argument that says without retained EU law, UK workers will be at the mercy of the evil rightwing Tories. The first time, she points out, she heard about ‘minimum service requirements’ during strikes was when they were being “eulogised in the European Parliament’. All very good points…
With all the focus Sky News / Tortoise is putting on their collating of MPs declarations it is easy to forget the other half of the legislature – the Lords – is often the scene of even murkier activity. Going by his register of interests, you might think 2022 had been a quiet year for Peter Mandelson – the Prince of Darkness registered no speaking events, nor foreign trips. Yet one co-conspirator has been quick to point out that this picture isn’t quite complete. In March 2022 Mandelson took a leaf from the New Labour relic’s playbook and schmoozed an authoritarian regime. He spoke at the Doha summit in Qatar, alongside David Beckham, which must have been convenient considering his consultancy has recently opened an office there. Just don’t tell Sir Keir.
Mandy then took a much-needed break from the stresses of Westminster politics for a visit to the Milken Summit in Singapore. That’s the same Milken indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and fraud and then pardoned by President Trump. Of course, these could well be above board – assuming they were paid by Mandy himself or his consultancy – it’s just not exactly transparent. It doesn’t take a master of the dark arts to work out why Mandy might want to keep the trips on the down-low…
