Will Widdy f inally waltz her way into the Lords?
IS THE former Tory Minister turned Strictly contestant Ann Widdecombe making another bid to step up into the Lords? For in her latest newspaper column, she defended Boris Johnson’s much-derided decision to give a peerage to Conservative donor Peter Cruddas.
Cruddas stepped down as party co-treasurer in 2012 after being caught in a sting by undercover reporters for offering access to then PM David Cameron for a ‘premier league’ sum of £250,000.
Widdecombe, 73, said it was an ‘outrage’ the episode was used to discredit Cruddas because the cash-foraccess allegation was a ‘falsehood’. Certainly, libel judge Sir Michael Tugendhat, father of Tom, the Tory MP, found in favour of Cruddas.
But the Appeal Court largely reversed this, saying what Cruddas had proposed to the undercover journalists was ‘unacceptable, inappropriate and wrong’. That was why the House of Lords Appointments Commission blocked Johnson’s earlier attempt to ennoble Cruddas. But Boris decided its concerns about a man who had just happened to have donated £3 million to the Tories were ‘historic’. With the ermine about to be wrapped around Cruddas’s shoulders, the number of peers will tip over 830, and has caused some to accuse the PM of bringing the Lords into disrepute.
Widdecombe once claimed she was an ‘obvious candidate’ for a peerage and that fresh appointments to the Upper Chamber were necessary to redress its ‘balance’. But in recent comments she described the Lords as ‘too bloated’ – although I’m sure she’d make an exception if asked.
NOTHING sums up Sajid Javid’s time as Chancellor better than the renovations carried out on his Downing Street flat. Unlike some politicians – £6,764 sofas for John Bercow comes to mind – parsimonious Javid chose a new shower screen and moth treatment.