Forget moving the Lords – let’s have an elected senate instead

In two weeks’ time, we will finally escape the European Union, freeing ourselves from its monumental waste. Waste, that is, like continually shifting MEPs and their staff between the two seats of the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg – a farce which the European Parliament itself calculated in 2013 was costing it 103 million Euros (£88 million) a year. So why, then, is our own government seeking to recreate this giant folly in Britain? Proposals floated today include relocating the House of Lords to York, while the Commons embarks on a round-Britain tour.

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I guess that carting the Commons around the country like King John’s baggage train is one way of drumming up business in order to justify HS2, whose business case has otherwise disintegrated at high speed. Put 650 MPs on a train to Liverpool, Newcastle or wherever else the Commons is meeting this week and you’ve filled an entire train.