Diary – 7 July 2012

House of Lords reform is like a dose of the clap: it may feel good at the time, but the result is an unending pain in the proverbials. I can’t, er, speak from personal experience, but even the briefest glance at the government’s plans to elect the Lords makes the point. The new bill comes to the Commons next week, for what promises to be a stormy debate. It’s a disastrous hotchpotch which will create a free-floating class of electorally empowered senators on 15-year terms, with no constituencies and no possibility of re-election to discipline them. Even Lord Strathclyde, Leader in the Lords, has admitted that the new senators will have no accountability. Result: competing chambers, legislative gridlock, cronyism, and a free pass for the government of the day. Oh, and a permanent balance of power for the Liberal Democrats in a far more powerful upper house. I wonder if that has something to do with it?

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Even the Lib Dems could learn something about constitutional mischief-making from the great 18th-century radical John Wilkes, who had a genius for it.