PEERS IN POCKET OF EUROPE

Lords told to declare fat EU pensions ahead of their debate on Brexit

PEERS with generous EU retirement packages were last night urged to declare them publicly before intervening in this week’s Lords debate on the Brexit Bill. More than 20 peers who worked in Brussels built up lavish EU pensions.

They include Labour’s Lord Mandelson who will receive almost £35,000 a year thanks to his former job as trade commissioner.

Yesterday he urged his fellow peers not to ‘throw in the towel’ on Brexit despite the clear Commons vote in favour of the Bill allowing Theresa May to trigger Article 50 – the formal mechanism for leaving the EU.

The former Cabinet minister suggested that he hoped the Lords would inflict a series of defeats on the Government as the Bill passes through the Upper House.

But campaigners said peers with EU pensions should publicly declare an interest. They claim many in the Lords fear they could lose their entitlements if Britain goes for a ‘hard Brexit’ and fails to agree an amicable deal with the EU.

The pro-Brexit group Change Britain said the combined pension pots of former MEPs and EU commissioners in the Lords added up to £10.2million, giving payouts worth more than £500,000 a year in total. Ex-Tory minister Dominic Raab said these peers had a vested interest in thwarting Brexit and should be honest about their intentions.

Peers will debate the Bill today and tomorrow before amendments are considered next week. The Bill was passed overwhelmingly by MPs without any amendments.

But the Lords, where the Government lacks a majority, are considered much more likely to pass two main amendments.

One would require a ‘meaningful’ parliamentary vote on the final Brexit deal. Mrs May has said there will be a ‘take it or leave it’ vote – if Parliament votes against, the UK would leave the EU without any deal at all.

Peers headed by Lord Pannick, the QC who opposed the Government in the Article 50 case at the Supreme Court, want to have a vote earlier in the process and for Mrs May to have to go back to Brussels to renegotiate if her first deal is rejected.

The second amendment is to guarantee the rights of EU nationals living in the UK.

Lord Mandelson told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show there was a ‘strong body of opinion’ among peers over both issues and in his view the Government could be defeated on them.

He said: ‘ At the end of the day, the House of Commons must prevail because it is the elected chamber. But I hope the House of Lords will not throw in the towel early.’

His intervention comes days after Tony Blair was accused of undermining democracy by urging sup- porters to ‘rise up’ against Brexit. Justice Secretary Liz Truss said Lord Mandelson was a ‘blast from the past’ who should accept the EU referendum verdict.

Yesterday Lord Mandelson did not mention his pension as a former EU trade commissioner.

Mr Raab said: ‘Lords with generous EU pension pots should be open with the British people and declare this when they speak in Parliament on Brexit. The public would be rightly outraged if peers voted to protect their Brussels bonuses rather than respect the referendum result.’

A poll last night found that support for Lords reform would soar if peers obstruct or delay Brexit.

The ICM survey for Change Britain said 43 per cent are more likely to back abolition or reform in such circumstances, compared to 12 per cent who would be less likely.

Despite this, Labour peer Lord Hain vowed to force votes on such issues as forcing Mrs May to keep Britain in the single market.

‘He is a blast from the past’

YOUNG men in a hurry are meant to be the people who change the world — disrupt it, even. But something odd has happened. Now we have old men in a hurry. And their remarkably undiminished force affects all of us: even what we eat.

Last week, the U.S. food behemoth Kraft Heinz announced plans to mount a £115 billion takeover bid for its AngloDutch rival Unilever, although yesterday it said it was pulling out. It’s not so surprising that the business which owns Heinz Tomato Ketchup wanted to devour the one that sells Hellmann’s mayonnaise, and make the perfect corporate Marie Rose sauce.

No, the surprising thing is the ages of those driving what would have been the second-biggest takeover in history. For Kraft Heinz is controlled by two men, Jorge Lemann and Warren Buffett, whose combined age is 163.

Lemann, a former Brazilian tennis champion, is 77. Buffett, the world’s richest investor through his voracious firm Berkshire Hathaway, is 86. And they are spring chickens compared with Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway’s influential deputy chairman. Munger — who still takes the stage with Buffett to answer shareholders’ questions at every Berkshire Hathaway AGM — is 93.

Paul Polman, the chief executive of these venerable corporate sharks’ latest intended mouthful, Unilever, is a mere 60. According to the Guardian, he ‘spends substantial amounts of time travelling and lecturing on issues such as global poverty, climate change and refugees’.

Healthy

Memo to Unilever’s boss: your work/life balance might impress the Guardian, but if you don’t fancy the prospect of being displaced by older men, you’d better start putting in more hours at your day job.

What we mean by ‘old’ is changing, largely thanks to improvements in medical treatments for chronic conditions. But it remains the case that most people retire in their mid-60s — and that the official retirement age has so far taken little account of the change in our prospects for a long and healthy life (when we might be contributing to the economy, rather than becoming mere recipients).

Thus it was that when Donald Trump launched his run for the presidency of the United States, many newspapers — ludicrously — questioned whether, at 70, he might be too old for the job.

Stamina

The New York Post warned that Trump ‘would be months older than Ronald Reagan on his election day’ and quoted some eminent doctor demanding more medical details than Trump had provided: ‘It’s not a matter of what illnesses you bring, but what’s your endurance going to be like, and how do you prepare your body to endure a lot of stress.’

Does Trump appear like someone lacking the necessary stamina and endurance? His campaign was extraordinary in its intensity, relying almost entirely on his personal energy. It seems the man barely sleeps at all — hence the sometimes illconsidered tweets emanating from his bathroom at 3am. And his 80-minute presidential press conference last week, whatever else you might think about it, displayed an almost demonic force.

Trump has never smoked a cigarette, or even — so he tells us — imbibed a drop of alcohol. But I don’t think his astonishing vigour can simply be attributed to looking after himself. Some people just have enormous energy and drive, which does not greatly diminish as they age.

My own father, Nigel Lawson, is a bit like that. Last February, well into his 80s, he accepted the invitation to chair the Vote Leave campaign, which at that point was in danger of breaking apart over personal disagreements within the organisation. He knocked a few heads together and sorted it out with brisk efficiency. The fact that he’d had a number of operations in recent years did not seem any obstacle.

My father has the undoubted asset of an undimmed, highly analytical mind, wellattuned to problem solving. But the real lesson I take from the achievements of such older men — and, indeed, of all successful people — is not that they are especially clever. Intelligence gets you only so far, and if it is not combined with common sense, then, in either business or politics, not far at all.

No, the secret to success — at least in terms of achieving what you want out of life — is energy. Again, Trump is a perfect example. I don’t believe he is stupid, as many lazily claim. But he is no Einstein. Apart from anything else, he seems to have a very short attention span.

But he has — and seems always to have had — a seismic energy, almost enough to bend the space around him. This attribute is not actually physical in its origins, but stems from a person’s character. And because it is part of character, rather than an asset akin to a sprinter’s fast-twitch muscles, it barely diminishes with age.

Energy

It is true that such tremendous mental drive can have consequences on a person’s body. I recall Margaret Thatcher’s close adviser Charles Powell warning me, many years before that ex-Prime Minister began to endure a series of minor strokes, that she would ‘pay a high price’ for decades of getting by with no more than four hours’ sleep a night.

But nowadays, we can all take pills which give allegedly old people the sort of blood pressure more associated with the metabolism of a 30-year-old.

This might be one factor in explaining why the Queen, now 90, still carries out the heavy duties of head of state, or why Sir David Attenborough, almost exactly the same age as the monarch, has just agreed to narrate a new series of his show The Blue Planet.

As for the young in years, don’t worry: your turn will come (eventually).