Derry Irvine has not gone to pieces, as some former colleagues predicted that he would after being suddenly sacked as Lord Chancellor last June. Friends say that, if anything, he drinks less than he did in government and that his intellect is as sharp as ever.
Convention debars former lord chancellors from practising law after leaving office. This leaves Irvine with time on his hands. He sits assiduously on the back-benches of the House of Lords, always voting with the government. He voted with the government again on Monday night, but could not prevent the Constitutional Reform Bill plunging to defeat.
It is unlikely, however, that Irvine was greatly saddened. Friends say that he is horrified by the inept way ministers made their case, and is in any case privately opposed to most of the reform package. He would hardly be human if he did not take some pleasure in his successor, Lord Chancellor ‘Cheerful Chappie’ Falconer, making such a tremendous hash of things.
Monday was a humiliation for Falconer. A great deal was personally at stake for him. He had convinced Cabinet colleagues that the government should introduce this heavyweight constitutional legislation not in the Commons — as precedent seemed to demand — but in the Lords. ‘We were naive,’ sighed a minister on Monday. ‘We thought Charlie would be in a stronger position to do a deal with the judiciary. We thought he could talk turkey with the law lords.’
Falconer certainly tried to strike a deal. But he failed. Seven current and former law lords voted against the motion; not a single one for the government. Two former Cabinet secretaries voted against (though former Treasury permanent secretary Lord Burns, angling for the BBC chairmanship, was in favour).
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