Welby’s Lords performance feels more Grace Kelly than Your Grace
As ever, the House of Lords was choice in its language. House of Cards creator Lord Dobbs mentioned “muscular Turks”, which must have had whoever mans the defibrillator in the Upper Chamber perking up to standby. Lord German’s complaint that the Rwanda Bill asked their lordships to believe “black is white” elicited side-eye from peers.
The Earl of Kinnoull, Convener of the Cross Bench peers, offered a learned discourse on the Salisbury Convention. On the day the PM had chosen to unveil a major policy announcement via an interview with the viral content spreader Ladbible, it was nice to hear a speech that wasn’t designed with Tiktok in mind.
Perhaps the most anticipated speech of the day came from Justin Welby, graduate of the Thomas Becket school of Church-state relations. His assessment was clear: “The Government is continuing to seek good objectives in the wrong way, leading the nation down a damaging path.” Similar things might be said of Welby’s tenure at Lambeth Palace and its effect on the Church of England. Physician, heal thyself!
You sensed that Welby knew he was in the limelight. More Grace Kelly than Your Grace. Behind this self-imagined role as unofficial Leader of the Opposition was a more conciliatory note. However, as the speech wore on, it was clear which way the archiepiscopal wind was blowing: the Archbishop said that “sadly” he would need to wait until the Bill’s third reading to vote it down.
“Here we stand, we can do no other,” concluded Welby, with a deliberate misquote of Martin Luther, before promptly sitting down next to the Bishop of London. Only the current Cofe high command could turn up at a debate about the policy issue of the day, and end up making it about themselves.
The Lords tut-tutted, clutched their metaphorical pearls and belched out purple prose; Lord Hennessy described the rule of law as the “most lustrous of our values, almost talismanic in its virtues”. But alternative policies were thin on the ground. “I’m very much looking forward to hearing the specifics of what the opposition will do”, said Lord Dobbs. “We will wait, we will wait and we will wait.” And wait we did. “All people are made in the image of God”, said the Bishop of London. Which means, presumably, that we can never refuse to admit anyone again.
But it was Labour’s Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede who took the palm for the most “motherhood and apple pie” offering. He wanted to stop the boats by “restor[ing] the aid budget” and co-operating with “our friends in Europe”. He might as well have suggested a border force staffed entirely by unicorns.