Three Cheers for the House of Lords | 12 October 2011

As a general rule complaints that the opposition are too beastly for words should not be taken too seriously. They reflect a sense of entitlement on the part of the governing party that, whenever it may be modestly frustrated, quickly becomes peevish, sour and silly. If this is true of parliamentarians it is even truer when considering the bleatings of partisan pundits cheering on Team Red or Team Blue. Again, if you judge these squabbling teams by different criteria then you forfeit some right to be taken seriously.

So it’s depressing to see a commentator as urbane and generally sensible as Benedict Brogan make such an ass of himself in this piece about how nasty Labour types and “organised” Crossbenchers are – the beasts – frustrating the government in the House of Lords. All this is new, he says, because Labour are bringing parliamentary tactics from the Commons into the rareified air of their Lordships domain.