It was announced last night that the government’s recently appointed ‘anti-Semitism tsar’ John Mann would be given a seat in the House of Lords. Mann resigned the Labour whip over the weekend after 18 years as an MP, blasting his former leader as unfit to govern following the party’s risible attempts to remove anti-Jewish members. The move will see the recently appointed Lord, who probably would have lost his seat of Bassetlaw at the next election, continue to hound the opposition over the party’s anti-Semitism problem.
However, his elevation to the Lords – and the £305 daily allowance that comes with it – will no doubt have caused Lord Mann much heartache and soul-searching. In March 2017, he tweeted out a story from the Mirror about the by-election for a hereditary peerage. Rather than merely expressing disdain at the peculiar constitutional hangover from New Labour’s incomplete Lords reforms, Mann called his new political home an ‘absurdity’ and argued that the entire upper chamber should be abolished.
Abolish this absurdity – House of Lords and the title given to Mr Alistair Campbell.
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