Home
Page

The Song Remains The Same

QUESTION: Who wrote the following?

Tony [Blair] wants to expel the remaining hereditaries, and have a fully appointed Upper House. As soon as one imagines the Appointments Committee that will create this chamber, one sees how rank the whole operation will be.

"Think of the lunches; the hackery; the behind-the-scenes schmoozing and fixing; the quiet words from the Government Chief Whip; the winking, the nose-tapping. the soft belching in the Savoy Grill Room, or Glyndeboume, or Ascot. It is a disgusting way to choose the revising chamber of a great and ancient legislature. That is why it attracts a machine politician and power freak like Blair, and that is why it repels [former foreign secretary] Robin Cook, who still has something of the democrat about him. Like some thoughtful people on the Tory benches, Cookie wants a wholly elected second chamber. This would protect the Upper House from jobbery, and the Prime Minister's desire to stuff it with his cronies."

ANSWER: Boris Johnson, in the Daily Telegraph, on 30 January 2003. His editor at the time, Charles Moore, was one of the cronies Johnson appointed to the Lords last week, along with the man who paid for several of his holidays, as well as his own brother.

AS WELL

27% increase in public money spent on peers' allowances and expenses last year plus a 5% increase in the number of peers able to claim allowances and expenses thanks to Boris Johnson bumping up his cronies last week

Private Eye 1528 - August 14th 2020