Desperate tactics in the House of Lords of late, as the Abolition of the Labour Party Act – or the Parliamentary Voting and Constituencies Act, as the coalition persists in calling it – limped towards its end stages, having been booted back to the Commons time and time again.

This act reduces the number of MPs by an entirely arbitrary amount, which will significantly disadvantage Labour and the Liberal Democrats to the benefit of the Conservatives. Colour us all surprised. As a cunning ruse to distract the poor old Liberals from this fact, those wily Tories stapled a nice juicy AV referendum to the side of the legislation, in the hope that the dimmer half of Nick Clegg’s party wouldn’t notice that they’d abolished themselves until Her Maj had given the royal assent to the orders for their execution.

Thanks to 13 years of investment in education, the Labour peers were slightly quicker off the mark, and worked hard in the upper house to make life difficult for the government, who lost by one vote in a critical division, and only narrowly won a further vote by four.

While Labour were in power, opposition peers were noble defenders of the Magna Carta, parliamentary sovereignty, intellectual debate, and everything that those who thunder forth in the Telegraph letters page hold dear. Now the natural party of government is in charge, roaring ‘full steam ahead!’ and steering the ship of representative democracy directly into the iceberg of political expedience, the media have started muttering darkly about ‘filibusters’ and ‘anti-democratic measures.’

In spite of the media advantage, David Cameron’s overbearingly bombastic approach towards his own peers and the crossbenchers threatened at one stage to alienate many of those who pride themselves on their independence, and whose support he needed in order for the bill to be signed off in time for a referendum in May. The solution? Entertainment for their lordships! As a ‘reward’ for staying through the night to vote, the Conservatives laid on such enticing events as a talk by Sebastian Coe, and another by the chap who wrote Downton Abbey. Happily for Cameron, things did not get so bad that he had to threaten his own peers to toe the line by facing My Thoughts on Everything by Norman Baker.

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Although Chuka Umunna has barely been in parliament long enough to work out where the loos are, he is already building himself a formidable reputation. For a start, he’s a strong contender for the Laura Kuenssberg Endurance Award, in honour of his willingness to headline on the midnight bulletins, only to pop up on the Today programme a few hours later giving the government both barrels. Not only that but, as the ladies of Westminster are wont to sigh, he’s far easier on the eye than Dennis Skinner, and infinitely less likely to cut you dead if you can’t prove conclusively that you are an eighth generation miner from the Nottinghamshire coalfields.

Snapped up by Ed Miliband as his PPS – a form of elevated bag-carrier – shortly after his election as leader, Umunna’s star looks set to rise and rise. However, the young Jedi learned a salutary lesson in media management of late via, surprisingly, the Daily Mirror. This estimable nag in the stable of the fourth estate has been running the Gizza Proper Job campaign, which highlights how big companies with expensive solicitors are weaselling out of giving their staff the employment rights they are entitled to by law.

While the merit of this campaign is in no doubt, some have questioned whether the newly elected member for Streatham should be appearing in one of our principal organs of record holding aloft a sign imploring the readership to give him a proper job. It’s as though David Miliband’s banana died in vain.

One satisfied customer

The shad-cab away day to Newcastle recently saw an incident that proves that, even when riding high in the polls, Labour can’t please everybody all of the time. As the illuminati milled around at King’s Cross waiting for their train, a woman was seen eyeing them from a distance. Visibly gathering all her strength, she eventually ploughed through the throng of MPs, holding her breath as she did so as if ‘Labour’ was catching. Upon reaching the other side, she turned around and spat, ‘Thank God you lot are out of power!’ That at least one punter exists who agrees with the forests being flogged off, the armed services being shafted, Oxford and Cambridge becoming the sole preserve of the rich who have been educated beyond their intelligence, and the abolition of representative democracy should provide some consolation to the Liberal Democrats, the Tories’ most enthusiastic supporters in their pursuit of everything Clegg’s party once claimed to abhor. 

Photo: UK Parliament