This week marks 50 years since Harold Macmillan’s ‘Night of the Long Knives’, in which he sacked a third of his Cabinet. As if to mark the anniversary, Tory MPs this week sunk the dagger into the Liberal Democrats’ plans for House of Lords reform. So great was the potential defeat — the largest in
Home The government cancelled a vote setting a timetable for a Bill to reform the House of Lords after dozens of Conservative MPs were ready to rebel. The Bill, which gained a second reading thanks to Labour, was brought in at the insistence of the Liberal Democrats. Six men from the West Midlands were charged
It is never a good idea for a government to look stupid: least of all now. Yet that is what is happening over Lords reform. Nick Clegg wanted to wreck our currency. He failed. Then he wanted to wreck the voting system: another failure. He has now transferred his wrecking petulance to the House of
It is a basic principle of international diplomacy that one does not interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign states. These days it seems more honoured in the breach than in the observance, Syria being the latest target. The ‘democratic human rights of the oppressed’ is usually the reason (or excuse). In the ancient
Out of proportion The bill to reform the House of Lords looks like being another failed attempt by Liberal Democrats to bring proportional representation to Westminster. But where did the idea of PR come from? — The first such system was proposed by Louis Antoine Saint-Just, a deputy in France’s National Convention after the revolution.
What went wrong Sir: I hope our Prime Minister read your editorial (7 July) on why as a country we have been engulfed in such a profound financial upheaval. Many months into this crisis, we’ve still heard no coherent account from our political leaders as to what went wrong, just a bit of populist banker-bashing
