How fares the 1922 Committee?

Two weeks ago this blog mentioned that David Cameron and the Whips were once again trying to undermine the 1922 Committee, this time by putting up a slate of candidates for the Executive Committee from the 301 group, all people who can be relied upon not to rock the boat too much (and that goes for the much-lauded but ever so cautious Ms Pritti Patel).

Since then I have been told by a veteran Tory MP that while this was undoubtedly a plot by the Whips it was not going to go anywhere as long as the Cameroonie loyalists did not get any of the important positions. To be fair, Graham Brady remains Chairman and John Whittingdale, one of the Vice-Chairmen.

Well, we have had the election. Who won, who lost and what will it mean for the parliamentary party, formerly known as Conservative? Reports are somewhat mixed. The Guardian, who, as readers will recall, broke the story of the slate, thus managing to annoy a lot of Tory MPs, says that it was win some, lose some for Cameron.

Supporters and opponents of David Cameron achieved a score draw in elections to the executive of the 1922 committee on Wednesday, which were seen as a test of Tory backbench mood amid fears that Downing Street is losing its touch.

A bold move by loyalists to achieve "seismic change" in the elections, by removing "bloody rude" members of the old guard, achieved partial success when some critics of the prime minister were unseated. But the modernisers on the 301 Group, who had published a slate of candidates that was handed out to MPs as they voted on Wednesday afternoon, also suffered some setbacks.

The main battle for the two coveted secretary posts on the executive of the 1922 executive resulted in a draw. Karen Bradley, who was on the 301 Group slate, won a post. But Charlie Elphicke, a Cameron loyalist, failed in his bid to take the other.

That post went to Nick de Bois, a popular figure with all wings of the party who was not on the 301 Group slate. But the Thatcherite Chris Chope, who had been strongly supported by the traditional right, was unseated.

And so it goes: Bernard Jenkin survived, Peter Bone did not; some MPs got in with the support of the 301, some like Robert Halfon, part-time rebel, without it and Ms Patel managing to get the support both of the Cameroonie loyalists and of his opponents.

James Forsyth in the Spectator thinks that 301 Group have managed to purge the 1922 Committee, though he acknowledges that Bernard Jenkin and Nick de Bois (the non-slate candidate who got one of the secretarial positions) managed to win because of personal popularity and despite not being part of the slate. There is no mention of Robert Halfon.

Curiously enough, Mr Forsyth thinks this makes the 1922 Committee more powerful because it now definitely represents the parliamentary party as a whole. The fact that the Executive is now full of Cameron loyalists who stood specifically to ensure that the Committee, from now on, toed the line, seems to him unimportant.

Paul Goodman on ConHome is clear: it is a victory for the 301 Committee. He sees it as a change of generations, though he does mention that undoubtedly glasses are being raised in Downing Street and the Treasury. Their boys and girls have won and will ensure that there will be no undue opposition to the leadership that the backbenchers will not have an organization through which they can express their discontents.

Incidentally, it is interesting to note that the definition of a rebel is now someone who voted for that benighted and pointless EU referendum. As this blog and EURef noted at the time, the referendum is a means of fudging the issue. Vote for it and you are a "rebel" though it is meaningless. The fact that most of those MPs, including the fragrant Ms Patel have never put their heads over the parapet on any issue that matters, becomes irrelevant.

The commenters on ConHome who ask whether there really is nothing more important going on in Britain fail to see the point. As far as the Boy-King and his camarilla are concerned the most important matter is controlling everything they can: party, Commons, backbench committees and, soon, the Lords. Nothing else matters to them.

Going after the 1922 Committee again

Readers of this blog will recall that very soon after the General Election of May 2010, the Boy-King who did eventually become the Prime Minister, leading a Coalition government nobody had voted for, showed that one of the most important things on his agenda was an attempt to exert control over the backbenchers' organization, the 1922 Committee. (Here, here and here.)

He lost that battle so now he and his minions have decided to undermine it, using other methods. Claiming that it is nothing but a grumbling post and a completely ineffective one at that, the "modernising 301 Group will be running a slate in an attempt to oust the Tory old guard". The Cameroonie hacks have been primed.

Among them is a youthful hackette, hitherto unknown to me, called Donata Huggins who "writes about politics and life in the Westminster village" in the Daily Torygraph and does so very badly.

In her article on the subject of the 1922 Committee and the attempt to subvert it, she commits the cardinal sin of telling her readers that this is a story because the Guardian is reporting it. Does she not know the scuttlebutt herself?

She then adds in her easily imitable way:

The Committee is currently run by a group of mostly cantankerous old farts who do little to further Right-wing ideas in Britain. Just last week they stirred up a fight with the Government on Lords reform. Just imagine if that brought down the Coalition? Not unemployment or economic growth: the things that matter to their constituents, but reform of a place many see as a retirement home for politicians. The Conservatives shouldn't allow Ed Miliband's repetition of "out of touch Tories" to ring true.

And ends the article with the words that fall somewhat short of Wildean with or Bagehot-like profundity:

Put simply, Right-wingers need to chill out and realise that they'll be more effective if they act like they're all in it together.

This, gentle readers, is the standard of the modern Daily Torygraph.

Other media outlets also reported the proposed coup. The Spectator, another Cameroonie rag thought that it was a fuss about not much at all. According to James Forsyth, who is also anxious to show that this is all about modernisation,

Also included on the list are two Cornish MPs, George Eustice and Sheryll Murray, who tried to block the so-called pasty tax. The intention is to show that while the slate is broadly supportive of the leadership and wants a Tory majority at the next election it is made up of people who will tell the Prime Minister when they think he is wrong.

If this slate succeeds, and I expect it will given both its voting weight in the party and its relatively modest aims, it will remove those who have used their position on the ’22 to campaign against the leadership. But the far harder challenge for it will be, as Tim Montgomerie says, to give the ’22 more of a campaigning focus.

One other thing worth noting is that these elections will vastly increase the standing of the ’22. The fact that the new intake are competing so vigorously for posts on it means that the likes of Louise Mensch can no longer dismiss it as an outdated body that does not speak for them.

Whether a 1922 Committee that is entirely in the pocket of the leadership and whose members will be allowed to show phony dissidence by opposing some unimportant measure while certain subjects like the European Union will be off the agenda, will really increase its standing is very doubtful.

Tim Montgomerie is cautiously in favour and thinks this is an attempt to rebalance the Committee in favour of the 2010 intake, which would, in his opinion, push aside a great deal of parliamentary experience. That may well be the aim of the exercise. Get the younger and less experienced lot in and it will be easier to control them. They might not stand up against bullying the way the Committee stood up to it in 2010. It is also useful to add that, despite all the predictions, the 2010 intake is extremely loyal to the leadership and will not do much against it.

Craig Woodhouse in the Evening Standard writes in that vein as well:

The new generation of Tory MPs was accused of being “government patsies” today as they launched a bid to revolutionise the party’s key backbench committee.

A group of broadly pro-leadership MPs took the unusual step of announcing a slate of candidates — mainly from the 2010 intake — they want to succeed in next month’s internal elections to the 1922 Committee.

The reason this election is happening, incidentally, is that next week will see the long-delayed opening of the new session of Parliament with the Queen's Speech on Wednesday, May 9. Though what exactly the extra-long session has achieved remains a mystery.

Is it worth the trouble?

People I know and like have told me that I was wasting my time on the 1922 Committee. Who really cares, said they, on the shenanigans within the party formerly known as Conservative? Nobody, of course, except the ever decreasing number of members. However, the structure of British politics, hollowed out by various agents, including the EU, is of importance. One day we shall want to use it again. Building from scratch is never easy as a number of post-Communist states have demonstrated.

On a far more important level, I have been following, together with his many supporters, Cranmer's battle with the ASA. Any reader who is unaware of the ASA's outrageous and dishonest behaviour and of His Grace's capable fight with them, ought to spend a little time catching up.

In his most recent posting Cranmer wrote:

It is a question of impartiality, which matters profoundly in political processes where force and influence compete with manipulation and facts: if an organisation with quasi-judicial authority professes to be objective in its investigations, then its senior staff and officers must not only be impartial, they must also be seen to be impartial. There cannot be even the merest hint of a political agenda subverting that professed neutrality or corrupting the overriding commitment to fairness and justice.

He then goes on to detail why the Chairman of the ASA, Lord Smith of Finsbury, formerly known as Chris Smith MP and Culture Minister, cannot be said to be impartial or objective.

Cranmer is absolutely right. These things are of importance. Some of the discussion on the blog is interesting though, I note the presence, comme d'habitude, of a ninny who advises the blog author to get over it and start writing about something else. He gets short shrift from the others, I am glad to say.

So, for the last time I hope, here is a little more about the 1922 Committee. The "modernisers" by which one means the people who ensured that the Conservatives did not manage to win against the least popular government in living memory, are rejoicing. Graham Brady, the Chairman, is calling on everyone to unite and stop the infighting, which would indicate that things are truly bad and the Committee's meetings may well start resembling those of Tower Hamlets Council.

Modernisers hope the group, which has traditionally acted as a “safety valve” for the party, will now form greater links with Tory HQ and its volunteers around the country.

They also hope meetings can be moved from Wednesday to Monday so MPs can unite around key events in the Parliamentary week, and want the 1922 to become an “umbrella” for other policy groups right across the party.

New executive member George Hollingbery said the election had shown an “appetite for change” but stressed the new MPs wanted to work with colleagues on the changes.

“This stuff will all take time, none of this will happen overnight,” he told the Standard. “The ’22 has been here a lot longer than I have and will be here for a long time after I’ve gone.”

So the plan is to use the Committee, which is supposed to be the voice of the backbenchers separate and, sometimes, against the leadership, to establish complete control of the Parliamentary party and local associations by the leadership. Time for a 2012 Committee, perhaps? After all, the 1922 was created at a time of a creaking coalition.

Not all is smooth sailing, though. It seems that the Treasurer of the "influential 1922 backbench committee" has criticized William Hague for "criticizing British firms", which is hardly the Foreign Secretary's job and neither is addressing the CBI Conference. Instead, Mr Binley thinks, Mr Hague should be doing more to free British business from EU red tape, though he does not actually explain how that can be done. Clearly, the intelligence level of the new Executive Committee is not spectacularly high.

A thought comes to one: does this mean that Conservative MPs will be allowed to attack Mr Hague to show their supposed independence of the leadership?

Who could be so heartless as not to laugh?

Just two days after the Boy-King backed down from an unnecessary confrontation with his loyal subjects the 1922 Committee, exactly what he was afraid of happened: the wrong person was elected to be the Chairman. Sigh! They were so much better at ensuring the right results in the dear old unlamented Soviet Union.

The new chairman is Graham Brady, winning far more comprehensively than anyone else has won anything in this Parliament: 126 votes to 85. He is supposed to be more critical of the leadership than his opponent, Richard Ottaway, and first came to everyone's notice when he expressed an opinion over the desirability of grammar schools back in 2007. Also, he appears to think that the coalition, far from being a thing of joy for ever, has created "difficult circumstances". Hmm. No wonder, the Boy-King tried to prevent his election.

The role of the 1922 Committee and its Chairman is to encourage Caesar to remember that he is mortal. Never a popular role but, as we have seen time and again, it never does to underestimate the 1922 Committee. The Boy-King was wise to back down; he would have been wiser not to create enmity in the first place.

Looks like the 1922 Committee is fighting back

Tim Montgomerie reports on ToryBoy Blog that the 1922 Committee (whom Conservative Party leaders have underestimated at their peril in the past) are now asking for "clarification" of the rules as, apparently, voted through by the Conservative Party on the Boy-King's demands. The Boy-King, incidentally, cannot be member of the 1922 Committee by definition, so one wonders how he could demand that its rules be changed.

It would appear that the motion that had been voted through was curiously vague (there's a surprise) and, as the Sunday Telegraph wrote yesterday, the constitutionality of the vote is questionable, not to mention the new government's commitment to the promise of returning power to Parliament.

It is at times like this, with a small majority of a hung parliament that backbenchers can have any power, which is, presumably, why there has been a concerted effort to block that before it is too late and the government might find itself being made accountable to their own MPs.

What matters to the Cleggerons

Only one thing, as far as I can see, and that is staying in government, for they are not exactly in power. With all the problems this country faces, the House of Commons is debating the Fixed Term Parliament Bill that its own Select Committee considers to be "unnecessarily rushed" and one that raises a number of legal and constitutional questions.

We have already had attempts to muzzle the 1922 Committee and, undoubtedly, there will be legislation to ensure that votes of no confidence become as difficult to pass as possible. All to the greater good of keeping the Cleggerons in government for many more years. And just to make sure that nothing interferes with that plan, they are proposing to postpone the next Queen's Speech, due in a year's time till spring 2012 so that sessions do not come to an end before every bit of planned legislation is pushed through.

On the whole, I am not a fan of Denis MacShane's but I do agree that this constitutes a major power grab for the sake of "a smooth transition to a new system of fixed-term Parliaments, when general elections would take place every five years". Whenever I hear of any proposals for a smoother running of government I start wondering whether I should take up an offer made to me by a Texan friend to go over and learn to shoot. The smooth running of government is not a desideratum in a free society. Mind you, I cannot understand why they want to grab all this power over the electoral cycle and the running of Parliament - they have given away powers to legislate to the EU.

All our Prime Ministers are unelected

Some good news to start with: Larry the Cat, who is not the Camerons' cat but a civil servant tasked to get rid of mice and rats (the four-legged ones) in Number 10, is staying on to take his rightful position under the new Prime Minister. I had always assumed that the Camerons were more of a dog family but kept a cat because of the difficulties of canine life in Downing Street. Not a bit of it. Larry is part of the government machine as is Palmerston, the Foreign Office cat. Sadly, being a civil servant not a politician, he cannot become the Prime Minister. Not yet, anyway.

The other piece of good news is that not writing about the supposed fight over children between May and Leadsom over the week-end meant that I do not have to write about it at all. By  Monday morning it was all over and Andrea Leadsom had pulled out of the contest. Did she jump or was she pushed? We do not know for certain but can make our own assumptions.

What we do know is that she was comprehensively stitched up by the media and, specifically, by the paper of record, the Times. All the stories that had been spread about her turned out to be untrue and Rachel Sylvester admitted that she had introduced the issue of Leadsom having children and May not into the conversation. The little we know from the tape (most of it is still in the secret archives of the paper of record) confirms that. Leadsom was probably naive not to insist on seeing that article before it was published and one could argue that alone shows that she is not ready for Number 10. But do we really want a situation in which less than honourable hacks decide who can and who cannot become party leader and Prime Minister? I find that appalling as I find it appalling how many people continue to believe and repeat the headlines even though doubts about the veracity of the story emerged very early.

Another curious aspect of the whole brouhaha has been outlined by Ross Clark in the Spectator: A traditional family life is now a handicap. Angela Eagle can explain that being gay, working class and a northern lass gives her some kind of a special insight into the country's mentality; Theresa May can (slightly more justifiably) excite people's sympathy because apparently she could not have children; but try talking about your children and implying that perhaps bringing them up does give you some qualifications and empathy with a very large proportion of the population and you are dead in the political arena.

How outrageous that Jeremy Corbyn’s challenger should bring her class, her geographical birthplace and her sexuality into the leadership debate, suggesting that they would make her a more suitable leader than Corbyn. Or maybe it isn’t outrageous that someone should draw on their personal experiences while campaigning for office. I certainly haven’t come across anyone else making the point I have just made, and neither did I hear anyone protesting when Stephen Crabb talked about his council house upbringing while launching his leadership bid, nor when Sadiq Khan went on ad nauseam during the London mayoral election about his father being a bus driver.

In which case why was it such a scandal when Andrea Leadsom suggested that being a mother gave her valuable experience for being Prime Minister? If being northern and working class makes you better able to understand a section of the population then surely being a parent helps you understand the demands on millions of other parents. Moreover, having to juggle the needs of work and childcare and still follow a successful career surely shows the world that you have valuable skills in time-management.

And we accept all this manipulation. Truly we get the media and the politicians we deserve.

Having got all that out of the way, let me turn to the inevitable cries that have already started: Theresa May is an unelected Prime Minister. We had them when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. He, too, was unelected. Well, of course, they are. All our Prime Ministers are unelected. We do not have a presidential system and we do not vote for Prime Ministers. We vote for MPs and through them for parties in the sense that the party with the largest number of MPs forms the government, choosing the leader according to their own rules.

Ah yes, I am told, but Theresa May (or Gordon Brown) did not lead their parties in an election. True.
A surprising number of Prime Ministers did not do so, when they were appointed to their jobs. Usually I start with 1940 when Churchill became an unelected Prime Minister but, for once, I shall go a little further back.

So here is a list of appointed Prime Ministers from 1916:

1916: Lloyd George becomes PM without an election when Asquith falls
1922:  Andrew Bonar Law became PM after the 1922 Committee revolt against the Coalition but called an election almost immediately
1923: With Bonar Law resigning because of his terminal cancer Stanley Baldwin is appointed PM. He, too, called an election soon after his appointment, which was inconclusive and led to a vote of no confidence, which, in turn, led to
1924: Ramsay Macdonald being appointed to be PM
Baldwin's second term came after he had led the Conservative Party to a huge victory but
1935: Baldwin was appointed Prime Minister of the Coalition government as Ramsay Macdonald's health was failing; he then won an election but
1937: Baldwin resigned and Chamberlain was appointed PM.

Before anyone starts making stupid comments about Neville Chamberlain let me say it quite forcefully that had there been an election in 1940 as intended, the Conservatives under him would have been returned triumphantly.

And so we come to 1940, from which the situation is a good deal more clear-cut with no real problems with the few coalitions we had.

1940: Churchill appointed PM and, obviously, could not call an election. In any case he leads a war-time coalition that is not dissolved till spring 1945 when Attlee demands an election, not something WSC was keen on. Labour landslide. Churchill loses one more election in 1950 and Conservatives are returned in 1951 though only just and without a popular mandate, which does not matter under our system.
1955: Churchill finally retires and Anthony Eden is appointed PM. He called an immediate General Election and increased the Conservative majority considerably. Well, we all know the sad story of Eden's premiership.
1957: Harold Macmillan is appointed PM. Did not call an election till 1959 which he won.
1963: Sir Alec Douglas Home is appointed PM after Supermac's resignation. Calls election in 1964 and loses though only just by five seats.
1976: James Callaghan is appointed PM after Harold Wilson completely unexpected resignation. Calls election in 1979 and loses.
1990: John Major is appointed PM after the drama of challenge to Thatcher and her resignation. Calls election in 1992 and wins.
2007: Gordon Brown appointed PM after Tony Blair's rather protracted resignation saga. Calls election in 2010 and loses.
2016: Theresa May appointed PM after David Cameron gambles on the EU referendum and loses, resigning immediately. No need to call an election especially as we now have fixed term Parliaments.

For the sake of brevity I have written of PMs losing or winning elections. Of course, it was the party they led that did so. Let me reiterate my two points:

1. None of our Prime Ministers are elected and
2.  Quite a few of our Prime Ministers even under the modern party system were appointed as their predecessors resigned. Some called an election immediately, some delayed; some then led their parties to victory, some did not.

All very depressing

The news yesterday was particularly depressing; worse than that was the discussion around some of the items.

The picture on the front page of the Evening Standard of the Queen shaking the bloody hand of Martin McGuinness filled me with despair. The man should have been put on trial for multiple murder and for involvement in many more. Instead his hand is shaken by Her Majesty who, no doubt, had to go and spend some time washing her own fingers afterwards. It is appalling that she was made to do this. I cannot even begin to imagine how survivors of murderous attacks and families of those who had not survived must have felt.

Compared to that, the information that Tony Blair was guest-editing the paper elicited nothing but a snort of derision from me. The Standard is so bad that even Blair could not make it appreciably worse though I did leaf through it even faster than usual, speeding past his cronies Bill (Clinton), Bob (Geldof) and others.

If I thought Sarah Sands, the editor, capable of such a joke, I would have assumed that she deliberately handed the editing over to Blair today so she would not be responsible for the first publication of that dreadful picture (no I am NOT linking to it) but I really do not think she has enough sense for that.

The other depressing news is that the wrecking of the House of Lords misnamed reform is going ahead though I am looking forward to it tying up Parliamentary time to the exclusion of absolutely everything else. This may be Cameron's Hunting Bill, which took seven years, interminable hours of debate and was finally passed in a seriously botched version.

It seems that Cameron, who spoke in support of this measure at PMQ has threatened to sack any Minister who opposes this utterly un-Conservative piece of legislation. There are threatened rebellions but, as usual, I do not hold out much hope. The best one can assume is amendments that develop into long debates though, as usual, there is talk of guillotining these in the Commons, which would be outrageous on a matter of constitutional change.

The egregious Deputy Prime Minister, leader of the Lib-Dims who managed not to improve on their electoral achievement two years ago and whose support has been sinking steadily since then, has told us in his own inimitable fashion:

We should just get on with it. I hope people won’t tie themselves in knots in Westminster. It’s something people want.

I have not come across many people outside the rather ridiculous Westminster hothouse who do want this or even care about it.

When it comes to MPs, that is members of the elected House, the public is quite adamant:

The head of the Commons anti-sleaze watchdog today warned MPs they should be “very worried” over reforms to their pay and pensions.

Ken Olisa, senior board member of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, has received scores of damning assessments of politicians’ value during his review of parliamentary salaries.

Responses from the public branded MPs “despicable, incompetent, corrupt and treacherous” and said they “should get paid the same amount as British Army privates”.

Maybe it is time the government had a look at the Commons. Oh wait, they have had a look. So far they have managed to legislate on a set parliamentary term, have controlled the possibility of introducing a vote of no confidence, made two attempts to control the 1922 Committee and are now intent on destroying the independence of the House of Lords. Not, I think, a government that cares about democracy, constitutionalism or liberty. Yet their vandalism of the British Constitution is applauded by the very people who should find it abhorrent.

An elected House of Lords, I hear in jubilation from members of the party formerly known as Conservative and others of UKIP. We are progressing towards democracy.

Well, that depends on your definition of democracy. If it consists of nothing else but voting and the right for anyone who gets more votes than other candidates to do whatever they like, then these people should be supporters of the European Parliament (UKIP might be since that is the only place in which they can get any seats) and of an elected EU President. Surely, once that President is directly elected by the people, or however small proportion of them bothers to vote, it will all be democratic.

If, on the other hand, one thinks of the need to control elected dictatorships, the need for some balance in the political structure and the need for independence in at least some of our legislators, then possibly an elected House of Lords is not the answer to the problems we are facing.

Of course, this is all displacement activity. As I asked one Conservative MP who was pontificating on the need to reform the House of Lords in such a way as not to lose the primacy enjoyed by the Commons, what does any of it matter while most of our legislation comes from the EU? She refused to discuss the matter, dismissing the European issue as of no importance. That tells you a great deal about Conservative MPs and their understanding of the legislative process.

No, they can't repatriate powers

It is good to see Lord Spicer becoming considerably more courageous than he was when he was simply Michael Spicer MP and a less than defiant Chairman of the 1922 Committee. This sort of transformation, I maintain, is one of the best arguments for the existence of a House of Lords that does not depend on the whim of the electorate or of the party machinery.

Yesterday he asked a Starred Question:

To ask Her Majesty's Government which powers they are seeking to repatriate from the European Union.

Remember that promise? It was at the heart of the Conservatives' campaign to win the eurosceptic vote and was much touted by all and sundry, including the great Daniel Hannan MEP. Some of us said at the time that this was not possible without a complete re-writing of the Treaties, which cannot be done without an IGC, unanimous agreement and implementation in all the Member States. To achieve a unanimous agreement other Member States would demand something in return for agreeing to whatever it is the Boy-King or his minions proposed. It was never going to work unless some radical threats were employed.

It would appear that HMG has come round to that position if Lord Howell's harrumphing answer is anything to go by:

My Lords, our priority has been the European Union Bill, but we have begun initial work on the balance of the EU's existing competences and what they mean for Britain. This complements our ongoing activity with the Commission to reform the EU institutions. All this work needs to be undertaken before we can determine the way forward, but we are also taking some action now. We will want to limit the application of the working time directive in the UK and we are deciding whether to opt into legislation on criminal justice on a case-by-case basis with a view to maximising our security, protecting our civil liberties and preserving the integrity of our criminal justice system.

That is a very long way of saying that there is nothing we can do and, therefore, we are not going to do anything.

Lord Spicer, clearly briefed by some of his colleagues, persisted:

Does my noble friend agree that, so long as the acquis is at the centre of the European treaties, it will be impossible to repatriate any powers?

More harrumphing from HMG in the person of Lord Howell:

My Lords, the acquis obviously embodies an accumulation of powers. We are now in the 21st century and I suppose that we would all wish to see, if I may use a domestic analogy, a bit more localism in the management of our affairs. However, we are reviewing the situation. The work is at a fairly early stage and I cannot make any further detailed comments on that matter now.

What on earth does it matter which century we are in if the EU is stuck in the middle of the last one and HMG happily goes along with it?

For once Lord Pearson of Rannoch was allowed to get in early and put the matter brutally:

My Lords, will the Minister not come clean and admit that not a comma can be changed in the treaties, nor can the smallest power be repatriated, without the unanimous consent of all 27 member states, and that therefore the repatriation of powers is really not possible?

And the response? Yes, you guessed it: more harrumphing and yet another reference to this being the 21st century, which is completely true and a very good reason why we should not be part of a completely outdated project, one, which was outdated almost as soon as it was proposed, moreover.

I understand exactly the noble Lord's concern on this, but I think that he is being a bit defeatist. It seems to me that there is a very widespread will throughout the European Union to reform it and indeed, if I may borrow a phrase, to make it fit for purpose in the 21st century. That certainly involves a sensible pattern of competences between the nation member states and the central institutions. Therefore, I think that, by gloomily saying that nothing can happen until everyone agrees, the noble Lord is taking a very negative approach to an area where European reform is perfectly possible.

Various peers then proceeded to attack Lord Howell and the government policy with Lord Dykes going off on a tangent (as ever) by demanding that he and they should become more enthusiastic Europeans. Not for the first time one has to wonder what exactly is the purpose of Lord Dykes's existence.

Nevertheless, we are left where we were before: HMG may huff and it may puff but it won't blow that house down.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more

Henry V had it easy - he didn't have UKIP to deal with and, anyway, he would have known what to do with them. We, however, need to discuss them and their performance in politics, such as it is.

I am delighted to say that the Boss on EU Referendum has commented at length and very knowledgeably (here and here) on my previous posting. I shall, in due course, respond to some of the points made and to comments on this blog.

In the meantime, I should like to pick out just one aspect of the discussion because it has shown up on the EURef blog as well and has become a mantra among UKIPers and their supporters (of whom the Boss is definitely not one).

Whenever I pointed out that UKIP has now been in existence for twenty years, that it gets a great deal of media attention and that the political situation in this country and over the water ought to be immensely helpful I was reminded by people who are too lazy to check their facts that new parties need time. How long did it take the Labour Party to achieve anything?

Here is the answer to that question and I have produced it on other threads for the benefit of UKIP.

The Labour Party was formed in February 1900 and was first called the Labour Representation Committee. As such it sponsored fifteen candidates and won two seats in the election of October 1900. In 1903 there was a secret electoral pact between the LRC, represented by its Secretary, Ramsay Macdonald and the Liberal Party, represented by its Chief Whip, Herbert Gladstone. (The idea of an electoral pact has been discarded by the UKIP leadership but is, in any case, unlikely to be proposed by either of the big parties seriously.)

One outcome of the Lib-Lab Pact was that the LRC won 29 seats in the 1906 election, that is six years after it had been founded. The new MPs then formally adopted the name of the Labour Party. Despite the odd set-back the Labour Party managed to win 42 seats in the 1910 election, ten years after it had been founded.

The First World War produced a split in the party as it had produced one in most socialist parties across Europe between those who supported the war and those who opposed it. There were further splits and splinterings after the war and the revolutions in Russia. However, the Liberal Party emerged from the war rather battered as well, so the Labour Party managed to win 142 seats in 1922 and 191 in 1923, forming the first Labour government in 1924 with, admittedly, support from the Liberals. There is a more detailed history here.

Curiously enough, as soon as I produced some of these facts I was told by the same people who had been challenging me on the subject that it was irrelevant because the situation is completely different. Of course, it is different. It always is. For one thing, there is no major war being fought. Nevertheless, some similarities do exist.

We have an electorate, large parts of which feels disenfranchised and disenchanted; we have serious crises in this country and across the Channel, which affect this country; we have a new(ish) party that is supposedly producing new ideas and new directions and that is getting more publicity than the early Labour Party did. Yet, not only does this party not perform as well as the other one did, it does not come anywhere close to performing well.

Or as the Boss puts it:

Looking to our history here does not help at all. Going back to the 1920s, and the emergence of the Labour Party as a force in politics, which eventually displaced the Liberals, cementing in its prominence in the 1945 election, we had a situation where a disaffected electorate switched loyalties.

Now, we are seeing the same disaffection but, instead of switching loyalties, the electorate is progressively opting out of the political process altogether.

This could and probably is the sign of a greater malaise in the system. Let us not forget that democracy in its present form, which is, according to some people a holy of all holies, is, in fact, a very recent experiment in political systems and may have already proved itself to be a failure. There is nothing sacred or, for that matter, necessarily intelligent in crowd sourcing (to use a very modern expression) policy and we may well  have to face up to the fact that the constitutional liberals who opposed it were right.

Or, alternatively, it is a good enough system and could be fixed but, at present, we do not have a clear idea how to do it. One thing is certain: as long as UKIP and its supporters refuse to acknowledge that the fault is in themselves and not in the stars (to paraphrase the Bard) they and we are going to get nowhere.