The peer was in a bate. The Bill had passed. It made him drop his monocle in his soup...
ON mornings after a big vote, Westminster often has a sheepish air. Dawn’s cautious light filters into the cloisters where MPs realise some of them might have got a little carried away the previous night. Rhetorical slights maybe ran out of hand. Whips wear the raddled expressions of sadists who look at crimson stains on the carpet and wonder if they were a little over-enthusiastic with the sjambok.
Normally there is a sense of tranquility, even of post-coital shame. Laughter, too, as wits re-live the more lurid moments of spent passion.
Rishi Sunak called a 10.15am press conference to celebrate his Wednesday night success in getting his latest Rwanda Bill through the Commons. On Wednesday morning, there had been wild predictions his government would collapse. By teatime, it was evident he had cruised home. The crisis had been over-hyped, not least by the rolling-news TV channels. Sky News! Beth Rigby’s eyelashes must have melted, she got so close to the camera lens.
Frenzy having abated, the Prime Minister gave a short speech about the legislation’s next stage. ‘There is only one question,’ he said briskly. ‘Will the Opposition in the appointed House of Lords try to frustrate the will of the people? Or will they get on board and do the right thing? It’s as simple as that.’
The voice was slightly scratchy, but Rishi isn’t terribly good at triumphalism. Maybe he knows the Lords will be as difficult as heck. He made repeated attacks on Sir Keir Starmer’s two-facedness and lack of ideas. ‘Our plan is working,’ said Mr Sunak repeatedly. ‘ The House of Lords must pass this Bill,’ he continued. ‘ We are making progress to stop the boats. Now it is past time to start the flights.’
BUT what was that in the distance? Carried on the breeze from Radio 4’s studios in central London, it was the rumble of distant thunder, or gunfire, or an old man beating his fists against a wall. Sometime Liberal MP Lord Carlile, now a crossbench peer, erupted extraordinarily all over the Today programme. One moment he was there, in one piece, the relics of his combover hairstyle discoverable to any archaeologist; the next moment, pop!, he was all over the ceiling and windows and floor. Simply exploded.
Lord Carlile, a lawyer, was in a bate. He was appalled by the Bill just passed by the Commons. It had made him drop his monocle in his soup. It had made him do the nosetrick while supping his malmsey. He was so liverish – so enraged that a government with a large majority was actually trying to govern – that he abandoned all proportion and bellowed that Mr Sunak had taken ‘a step towards totalitarianism’.
The peer added that the Government was ‘ elevating itself to an unacceptable level above the law’. The Bill was an example of ‘politicians meddling in the law’. He and his fellow lawyers in the Lords were so jolly annoyed that they were going to do their damndest to put MPs back in their place.
Lord Carlile is only 75 years of age, so it would be surprising if he had succumbed to advanced senility. Nor, given the hour at which Today is broadcast, can we easily
attribute it to excess of flammable fluids or other forms of stimulant. Here was the palpable snarl of a hopping-mad dikigorocrat (dikigorocracy being, as I floated yesterday, the rule of lawyers). Among his lordship’s complaints was the claim that Rwanda was ‘not working as a deterrent’. Er, that might surely be because lawyers like him had so far stopped the policy from being implemented,
suggested the show’s presenter, Nick Robinson. ‘You can always blame the lawyers!’ screamed Carlile, before the interview was brought to an abrupt halt, maybe after his day nurse injected him with sedative.
We should expect more of this sort of thing in coming weeks when noble and learned lords consider the Bill in that outrage to democracy known as the upper house.