Johnson's callow cuifs get to decide on Scotland's laws
Westminster will now include - permanently - a junior advisor aged 29 with no discernible achievements and Boris Johnson’s 31-year-old tennis partner, a friend of his wife Carrie. That makes a staggering total of 94 Brexit-supporting, Johnson-erected members of the House of Lords, who will twist the British parliament to the right for decades - like the Trump appointees on the Supreme Court but with far less scrutiny and for a lot longer.
These seven may not know the first thing about Scotland - they may not be able to find the Northern Isles on a map, say which side of the border Darlington is (like Rishi Sunak), or understand the devolution settlement. Yet they now have the lifelong right to debate and amend legislation that affects Scotland - a right Scotland’s elected government doesn’t have.
The seven have achieved little - they are famous only for partying during lockdown and skipping duties as Kabul fell in favour of a deckchair at the Oval to watch the cricket. Yet, they have been handed on a silver platter the freedom to muck about with Scotland’s laws. Idiots and sycophants they may be, appointees of a proven liar they certainly are, but they can now lord it up from the green benches, wrapped in ermine, M’Lud M’Lady each other, and pick and choose which - if any - of the measures Holyrood passes go through. They are more important in the hierarchy now. They have more power. That’s the way the UK works.
The Lords recently helped to pass the post-Brexit Internal Markets Act - without the consent of Holyrood. That law pisses on the principles of devolution. It forbids Scotland from diverging from whatever the English Parliament chooses to enact. The majority of English voters aren’t bothered about a bottle deposit return scheme? Then Scotland can’t have one either. The English government doesn’t want children to have their human rights enshrined in law? Scotland has to leave them out too - and trust the Home Office to protect young refugees. England has elected a party that wants to drop standards on chemicals to the floor, allow bee-killing pesticides and plastic wet-wipes that take 100 years to disintegrate? Well Scots must suck it up. Johnson’s useless, unelected acolytes get to decide.
Westminster has decided that all sovereignty rests with itself and it only lends powers to Holyrood - powers that these London-based pipsqueaks will now get to sit in judgement over. So much for the promises that Scotland would have “the most powerful devolved legislature in the world”.
As well as debating and amending legislation and sitting on powerful committees, members of the Lords can even take up ministerial posts. For example, Malcolm Offord is a right-wing propagandist and Tory donor who failed to win election in Scotland. Now he is Minister of State and this week helped to scupper Scotland’s bottle deposit scheme - whilst owning shares in a business that benefits from the “profits before planet - polluter doesn’t pay” principle which the UK government holds so dear.
Upon resigning as an MP after having sight of a report that concludes he misled Parliament, Johnson has been allowed to pass an “Honours” list which includes titles for his dog walker and hairdresser, as well as these party peers.
Charlotte Owen, 29, will be the youngest ever Peer. She has a new entry in Wikipedia which reads:
“Owen graduated from the University of York in 2015, gaining a 2:1 in Politics and International Relations.She is not known to have any formal professional qualifications or experience of work. She worked as an intern and parliamentary assistant, before joining the 'Number 10' Political Unit as a special adviser in an unknown role under successive prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.”
Ross “Anyone for tennis?” Kempsell, 31, is a member of Carrie Johnson’s close circle and likely attended the “Abba party” - in the middle of lockdown they danced and blasted ‘The Winner Takes it All’ from the windows of their flat number 11 Downing Street to celebrate the resignation of special advisor Dominic Cummings (who hated Carrie and titled her “Princess Nut-nuts” on the basis that he thought she looked like a squirrel). This party has never been properly investigated.
Sean Bailey resigned as chairman of the London Assembly’s police and crime committee after a photo showed him posing with Tory aides while raising glasses beside buffet food when London was under coronavirus rules. Indoor socialising was banned in December 2020.
Dan Rosenfeld was criticised for spending an entire workday at a cricket match during the British government’s chaotic handling of the fall of Afghanistan; Johnson’s long-term aide Ben Gascoigne, former city hall adviser Kulveer Ranger; and Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor who is battling a controversy over the Teeswork project are also now lifelong members of the UK Parliament. They can never be voted out.
They will join more than 800 members of the Lords, 87 of them appointed by Johnson – including his brother Jo Johnson, Lord Evgeny Lebedev of Siberia, who is bankrolled by his oligarch father, the KGB agent Alexander - whom Johnson met with in dubious circumstances - and Lord Peter Cruddas. The Lords’ appointments committee unanimously opposed the selection of Cruddas but Johnson overruled them. A few days after accepting the title, Cruddas donated £500,000 to the Conservative Party. The Washington Post reported that 22 of the most generous Tory donors have been made Lords since the Conservatives came to power in 2010. Others made valuable personal gifts to Johnson before being “ennobled”.
Some Scots believe the Labour Party will make it all good after the next election. Former PM Gordon Brown - a rare example of a Labour grandee who has not accepted a peerage - has proposed a Senate of the Nations and Regions for the UK. Brown, to give him his due, is well aware of the implications for Scotland of not doing this. Gavin Esler in his book “How Britain Ends’ makes the point that if England was serious about maintaining the Union it would have abolished the House of Lords years ago. But it is not and it won’t.
The backlash from hundreds of self-serving Labour peers has already begun. They claim - of course - to be concerned not for themselves, their powers, pretty clothes, and expenses allowances - but for the body politic. It couldn’t possibly work to have two elected Parliaments, they say, ignoring the fact that most senates or upper houses across the world from Canada to Switzerland are elected, in a way that ensures fair representation across the whole territory. It is an interesting aspect of the debate over the future of the House of Lords that Scotland is almost never mentioned. They literally do not seem aware that there is a Scottish dimension to this story.
The Labour Party has been promising to abolish the Lords forever - and so far all they have done is make it worse. In 1999 they changed it from a hereditary body which was at least fairly stable, into a huge, old-farty windbag of Prime Ministerial patronage. The same year the Labour Party made their ill-judged ‘reforms’ to the Lords that created the clamjamfry of crooks, cronies and cretins who now rule over us, the Scottish Parliament was reconvened after a pause of almost 300 years. On that occasion, Sheena Wellington sang the words of our national poet, Robert Burns.
Ye see yon birkie ca’d ‘a lord,’
Wha struts, an stares, an a’ that?
Tho hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a cuif for a’ that. (cuif - a spineless fellow)
For a’ that, an a’ that,
His ribband, star, an a’ that,
The man o’ independent mind,
He looks an laughs at a’ that.
It was a moving moment when the whole body of the Parliament joined in on the last verse:
Then let us pray that come it may
As come it will for a’ that,
That Sense and Worth o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree an a’ that.
For a’ that, an a’ that,
It’s coming yet for a’ that,
That man to man, the world, o’er,
Shall brithers be for a’ that.
Oof! Strong stuff. Love it. I find it so hard to hold it all in my head. Thank you for paying attention and drawing attention to all this.
Seriously, Jackie: what part of "Power devolved is power retained" did you not understand since 1999? Of course Westminster thinks it has ultimate power over the whole of the UK—because it does, and always has! I can't help but think it's either ignorance or hypocrisy when supporters of the Scottish Parliament start throwing their toys out of the pram at the apparently "sudden" realisation that the Westminster Parliament can overrule any of the policies and legislation of the devolved administrations. That's always been the case; we've just not had two separate administrations at both UK and Scotland levels so ideologically determined to not cooperate with each other that it makes the average primary school playground look like a model of adult cooperation.
You make some very good points about the "quality" of the latest entrants to the House of Lords; even more so about the horrendous democratic deficit they embody within the UK political system, but your anger and shock at this apparent revelation is frankly... disappointing. You should know better. This situation is nothing new; it was always a potential danger within the devolution settlement, as established. Sadly, the days when Jack McConnell's Labour/LibDem administration could successfully work with a Labour Home Office to create a Scotland-specific "Fresh Talent" initiative – that encouraged migrants to settle here and so help combat the country's falling population – would appear long gone. And, with those new puppets in the Lords, appears even less so.