The inflated rabbit narrowly avoids becoming the elephant in the room

I hope the bed doesn’t contain any vibrant young people or the Lords will face even angrier calls for reform

FIVE times the House of Commons considered whether to let people aged 16 and 17 vote in the EU referendum; and five times the Commons rejected it.

Yet still the House of Lords kept on urging it to change its mind.

This type of legislative to-and-fro is known as “ping-pong”, although it’s a bit of a misnomer, given how slow and cumbersome the process is. It isn’t often that you watch a game of table tennis in which one player serves, and then takes a seat for a week or so while waiting for his opponent to hit his return. Played at that speed, the sport would have no more fans than… well, parliamentary politics.

Yesterday, six days after the Commons’ most recent rejection of votes at 16, the Lords had yet another go at rejecting the rejection.

Lord Faulks (Con) tried to defend the Government’s position. The Lords couldn’t overturn the MPs’ verdict because this was an issue of “financial privilege”. Extending the franchise to those aged 16 and 17, he explained, would cost the taxpayer £6 million. Think of all the printing costs that would be incurred: the extra ballot papers, the extra postal votes, the extra “mail shots” (that is, leaflets etc) from the official campaign teams…

Nonsense, argued Lord Tyler (Lib Dem). The Government had conjured this figure from thin air. It was “a rabbit from the hat”, he protested hotly. “And the rabbit has been inflated!”

Personally, I’ve always had my concerns about magicians using innocent animals in their acts. But if it is true that one has been pumping air into a live rabbit, causing the poor creature to swell to grotesque proportions, bulging monstrously from ears to bobtail, then it should be a matter for urgent investigation.

“We have heard a frankly terrible speech from Lord Tyler,” harrumphed Lord Cormack (Con).

This was mildly startling, as debate in the House of Lords is normally so courteous. Yet Lord Cormack evidently felt that, in this case, candour was essential. I suppose he didn’t want the inflated rabbit to become the elephant in the room.

Another peculiar metaphor came from Lord Dobbs (Con). The UK’s “unwritten constitution”, he explained, was “a rumpled bed” whose “sheets” occasionally needed “straightening”.

But, by banging on indignantly about the Government’s refusal to listen to them, peers had “climbed into an entirely different bed. This is no longer about the rights of vibrant young people, but about the rights of largely elderly and entirely unelected peers.”

I hope the bed doesn’t contain any vibrant young people or the Lords will be facing even angrier calls for reform than it already is.

At the end of the debate, the Upper House voted. Would the Commons be forced to consider votes at 16 for a gruelling sixth time?

Unexpectedly, no: the Lords at long last backed down, by 263 votes to 246.

The Government had won. The world’s slowest game of ping-pong was over.